The “Collective Circle”
The “Collective Circle”
Music and Ambivalent Politics in Charlotte
This chapter examines how Latino immigrant musicians and audience members, through their music making, debate political questions relevant to their everyday lives as working musicians and residents of a globalizing city. Musicians and their audiences negotiate their political stances through a physical and intellectual process called the circular colectivo (collective circle). The collective circle describes the circle of dancers that often form at Eastside rock concerts in Charlotte, in which dancers slam into each other in dances where jumping and shoving serve to unite band and audience in a collective music-making strategy. But the term has an additional meaning—the collective circulation of ideas through music as bands, audience members, and journalists engage in debates about the political and social importance of what they are performing, how they perform it, and its meaning in the context of a politicized immigrant presence in the U.S. South.
Keywords: politics, circular colectivo, collective circle, politicized immigrant presence, globalizing city, Latino immigrant musicians, Latino audience, working musicians
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