No visitor can leave Sanandaj, in Iran’s Kurdistan province, without encountering assertions that it is “The City of Music.” This scene, however, did not exist before 2019, when the city joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) in the field of music. Since then, the local UCCN secretariat and the municipality of Sanandaj, have tried both to promote music as a brand for the city and to involve the public and private sectors in integrating culture in urban development plans. In this context, some Loties –professional musicians who are usually recruited to play in wedding ceremonies– have made the streets their new performance venue. After the pandemic deprived them of their usual livelihoods performing at weddings, they began performing on pedestrian thoroughfares and in other public, high-traffic locations. These performance settings would seem to align perfectly with the UCCN’s agenda, yet Loties have also faced continued marginalization by city authorities. This paper investigates how Loties have reconciled their practice with the municipality’s strategic plans. I draw on ethnographic research among Loties, their audiences, and local authorities, and on documentation from the Sanandaj UCCN secretariat. This study contributes to ethnomusicological research on interrelations between sound and public space (Abe 2018, Sakakeeny 2013) and UNESCO intangible heritage programs (Schippers and Seeger 2022). I argue that although the UCCN’s partnership with Sanandaj has provided Loties with new professional opportunities, police control on the streets has limited these musicians’ creative abilities they are renowned for, i.e., engaging mere observers in the process of merrymaking.

This paper explores the intersection of Geographic Information Science (GIS), music and sound studies, and spatial humanities, focusing on preserving sonic heritage and the dynamic relationship between music, sound, and space. GIS-based platforms are particularly adept at highlighting the link between sonic environments and human experience, and can be used to map and analyze soundscapes. In addition, the fusion of GIS and traditional musicological approaches can create immersive sonic experiences tightly interwoven with representations of physical environments. In this paper, we will discuss recent projects, methods, and digital tools that reflect the diversity of approaches to the current study of music and sound within the context of the spatial humanities, emphasizing the transformative potential of experiential learning and community-based projects in advocating for environmental awareness and cultural preservation. We will also highlight innovative tools and technologies such as story maps, digital websites, soundscape compositions, and podcasts. The paper concludes by discussing the potential benefits of public musicology in advocating for environmental awareness and educational initiatives, summarizing new perspectives and research platforms for scholars, artists, and educators.

Political theorist Chantal Mouffe offers an agonistic model of public space as a battleground on which diverse hegemonic projects are confronted and contested without possibility of final reconciliation. Positioned in direct opposition to Habermasian deliberative democracy that privileges rational consensus-oriented debate in the public sphere, Mouffe suggests that agonism is an ongoing project that encompasses diverse and impassioned forms of discourse including aesthetic and emotive expression. In this paper, I echo Mouffe’s interest in the potential for critical artistic practice – that which calls attention to entrenched power structures and encourages dissensus in the public sphere – to engender agonism. I am particularly interested in investigating the potential for critical music practice to not only supplement and engender agonism but to concretely accomplish it. My case study is the famed Rebetiki Istoria music club located in Athens Greece. Drawing on years of ethnographic research, I examine how its music culture engendered agonism by drawing attention to hegemonic power structures, outlining plausible alternatives, and creating a forum for participation in impassioned agonistic debate. I suggest that its success in engendering agonism relied on two components: on the participatory nature of the club and the mediating role of the music culture. My central conclusion is that in the context of the global economic recession in which the very integrity of the Greek democratic project was at stake, Rebetiki Istoria served as an important space for individuals to deepen democracy in the civic realm.