A Dembow Salute

 BOOOOOOM BOOOOOM No sé de problema Traigo yerba buena No sé de problema Traigo yerba buena BOOOOOM BOOOOOOM - That is the sound of New York in the summer, more specifically that is the sound of Dominicanyork summers. The quotation above is from PLEBADA, a Dembow song by Dominican Dembow rapper El Alfa and Featuring Mexican breakout star singer Peso Pluma. PLEBADA’s music video features Alfa and Pluma riding around Washington Heights on motor scooters blasting their song. 

 It was genuinely hard to be in New York last summer and not hear this song at least once a day pumping out of a Honda Odysseys with modified speakers that allowed the song to be played at staggering volumes. There has been near endless discourse on the politics of Dominican “auto sound” (the practice of playing loud music from modified car speakers) culture in New York, with headlines decrying the practice of playing loud music as disruptive and cruel to the NYC public who is undoubtedly trying to sleep at the same time that some Musicólogo (people who practice auto sound) is blasting Dembow or Reggaeton at one in the morning. While I don’t mean to come off as naive as to say that people playing loud music late at night can’t be annoying, I am arguing that brave Dominicanyorker Musicólogos are waging an invaluable fight against gentrification with music and deserve their praise. 

There is deep and important scholarship around the issue of the racialized nature of music listening practices. One pressing example is Professor Jennifer Stoever explains in her book The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening wherein she argues that in the wake of the murder of Jordan Davis (a black man who was murdered in Florida in 2012 over his refusal to turn down his music) case there has to be a conversation around the politics of public space being considered white controlled. In the introduction to The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening Stoever writes “Without ever consciously expressing the sentiment, white Americans often feel entitled to respect for their sensibilities, sensitivities, and tastes, and to their implicit, sometimes violent, control over the soundscape of an ostensibly “free,” “open,” and “public” space.”’ These conceptions are even more racialized when Spanish is introduced to the conversation. In his piece Latinos are pressured to speak English but often shamed when they can't speak Spanish Journalist Marc Ramirez makes note of a 2018 incident in which a lawyer berated restaurant staff for not speaking English, this is only an example of the constant occurrence of white people attempting to police sound. 

It is clear from these two examples of the policing of sound that major triggers for white policing of sound are speaking Spanish, loud volumes, and bass-heavy music (In the Jordan Davis case the music that he was listening to was described as “Thumping rap music” in the The Florida Times-Union). Dembow and Reggaeton are right at the intersection of those triggers for white people. This reality of attempting to control sound and make neighborhoods quiet comes to be via gentrification. In her essay Why do Rich People Love Quiet? Novelist Xochitl Gonzalez talks about how Brooklyn is being made quieter by an influx of wealthier (often white) people. In an interview with NPR she says “It's the sense of entitlement, and it's the sense that - the assumption that because there's a temporary discomfort for that person, that multiple people's, like, life at that moment should change for them.” Gonzalez is absolutely right. It is ridiculous for newcomers in a well-established community to attempt to dictate that community's cultural practices. However, I would take it one step further and posit that if people are feeling cultural discomfort with their new neighbors they should leave.

Thank you Musicólogos. You make New York communities richer and act as a hyper-visible front guard to those who would want to see New York turned quiet, polite, rich, and white. To those who have recently moved to New York and find themselves at odds with our city's beloved Musicólogos, I would ask why you want to live here at all? There is no shame or anything that is crazy with not wanting to hear loud music, that in and of itself is perfectly fine. It is beyond me why one would move to Washington Heights, East Harlem, The Bronx, Queens, or most of Eastern Brooklyn if that is the case though. So transplants, before you go yelling at, calling the police on, or in any way harassing your local Musicólogos please gaze into a mirror and repeat after me “I am not entitled to silence, and the world does not revolve around me.”