“The collective circle”: Latino immigrant musicians and politics in Charlotte, North Carolina

Abstract

Through their music making, Latino immigrant musicians and audience members in Charlotte, North Carolina, debate political questions relevant to their lives as workers and residents of a globalizing city. Despite contentious politics around immigration, Charlotte's Latino musicians are not active in the organized immigration-reform movement. Looking at their ambivalent political positionality, I engage with five key themes: how “relationship songs” reveal musicians’ personal politics; the effect of everyday policing on immigrant communities and musicians’ responses to immigration enforcement policies; the politics of laboring as a Latino musician, including the training and professional ethics that accompany music making; the emergence of musicians as “grassroots intellectuals”; and the importance of the “collective circle”—a frenetic style of band–audience interaction—in helping constitute a sense of agency and shape the informal political stances that Latino musicians take.