TY - JOUR

T1 - Street Cries and the urban refrain

T2 - A methodological investigation of street cries

AU - Kreutzfeldt, Jacob

PY - 2012/4/13

Y1 - 2012/4/13

N2 - Street cries, though rarely heard in North European cities today, testify to ways in which audible practices shape and structure urban space. As paradigmatic for what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call the refrain, the ritualized and stylized practice of street cries may point at the dynamics of space-making, through which the social and territorial construction of urban space is performed. The article draws on historical material documenting and describing street cries, particularly in Copenhagen round 1929 to 1935. Most notably, the composer Vang Holmboe and the architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen have investigated Danish street cries as respectably a musical and a spatial phenomenon. Such studies – from each their perspectives – can be said to explore the aesthetics of urban environments, since street calls are specifically developed and heard in the context of the city. Investigating the different methods employed in the two studies and presenting Deleuze and Guattaris theory about the refrain as a framework for further studies in the field, this article seeks to outline a fertile area of study for sound studies: the investigation of everyday refrains and the environmental relations they express and perform. Today changed sensibilities and technologies have rendered street crying obsolete in Northern Europe, but new urban ritornells may have taken their place.

AB - Street cries, though rarely heard in North European cities today, testify to ways in which audible practices shape and structure urban space. As paradigmatic for what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call the refrain, the ritualized and stylized practice of street cries may point at the dynamics of space-making, through which the social and territorial construction of urban space is performed. The article draws on historical material documenting and describing street cries, particularly in Copenhagen round 1929 to 1935. Most notably, the composer Vang Holmboe and the architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen have investigated Danish street cries as respectably a musical and a spatial phenomenon. Such studies – from each their perspectives – can be said to explore the aesthetics of urban environments, since street calls are specifically developed and heard in the context of the city. Investigating the different methods employed in the two studies and presenting Deleuze and Guattaris theory about the refrain as a framework for further studies in the field, this article seeks to outline a fertile area of study for sound studies: the investigation of everyday refrains and the environmental relations they express and perform. Today changed sensibilities and technologies have rendered street crying obsolete in Northern Europe, but new urban ritornells may have taken their place.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - sound studies

KW - Bykultur

KW - Urban culture

KW - Sound Studies

M3 - Journal article

VL - 1

SP - 62

EP - 80

JO - SoundEffect

JF - SoundEffect

SN - 1904-500X

IS - 2

ER -