An analysis of the soundscapes of protest in Brazil from June 2013 to the occupation of schools in São Paulo in 2015–16. Published in PROTEST. The Aesthetics of Resistance (2018). Zürich, Lars Müller Publishers.
The uprisings of June 2013 marked the return of social unrest to the mainstream political vocabulary of Brazil. What started in São Paulo against a twenty-centavo increase in bus fares quickly became a catalyst for massive protests and demonstrations – largely unseen since the 1990s – that quickly spread to a good portion of the country. Yet it was particularly after the outcome of the 2014 general elections, narrowly won by then-president Dilma Rousseff and securing for her a second term, that the language of Brazilian protest underwent strong changes in both form and content. By listening closely to some of these protests, we find potent lenses with which we can examine this mutation…