The Sonic Construction of a New Capital: Urban Soundscapes and Acoustic Communities in 16th-Century Lima

Abstract

This contribution explores the early modern soundscapes of urban Lima during the 16th century by moving beyond the traditional approximation to the musical history of the city, which has been associated exclusively with the cathedral. Based on the recent approaches of urban musicology and the history of the emotions, this chapter explores the role that music – in its different degrees of elaboration – and more generally that sound had in the complex process of construction of the symbolic capital of which the newly founded city lacked in origin. My hypothesis here is that sound and music had a determinant function in the consolidation of the Catholic colonial regime and the construction of an acoustic identity of institutions, spaces, and communities that integrated the city, making possible the creation of a new spatial sense, the implantation of the doctrine and the coexistence of conquerors and conquered in the new imaginary.