LISTENING TERRITORIALITIES: SOUNDS AND SILENCES IN POETRY BATTLES

Abstract

In this article we aim to discuss poetry slams as affective and powerful sonic-musical territorialities (Fernandes; Herschmann, 2015), in which the body becomes an instrument of speech and listening in rituals of sharing. Such performances, popularized in the country in the last decade, seek to create spaces of expression and have been promoted especially in peripheral locations of urban centers or by socially minority communities, such as women, Black people or LGBTQIA+. Thus, we consider that not only the soundtracks that accompany the battles but also the sounds produced by the actors shape the ambiences (Thibaud, 2013) of slam, represented in their ways of“being together” (Maffesoli, 1998). Thus, thinking about sonorities in their affective (Moreaux, 2014) and political (Lima, 2019) dimensions, in this analysis we reflect on the dynamics of sounds and silences in slams as important elements that produce meanings. To this end, methodologically we used participant observation of the performances of two slam events: Slam da Onça, in a community association in the neighborhood of Sussuarana, in Salvador, Bahia, and Slam 188, of which we participated in a square downtown Rio de Janeiro.