Music, noise and singing in silenceindustrial soundscape and working experience in the factory. The case of Menorca

Résumé

In preindustrial societies, singing and working was - and still is - conceived as part of the same activity, of the same life experience. However, the great social transformation that will imply the industrialization of much of the Catalan Countries at the end of the 19th century, and the progressive impetus of the capitalist production system, will often conflict with the cultural practices of workers incorporated directly from an agrarian society to an industrial one. Thus, focusing on the configuration of the Minorcan factories sound space, we want to show the processes of resistance and resilience in the transition from a pre-industrial culture to different one modeled by Fordist capitalism. Through the musical and sound fact in the factory, we review the workers' experience of industrialization in Menorca, the community organization of the sound space to the hierarchy and control of this space: the workplace as a framework where the limits of what is socially possible is modulated and recreated sonorously in a transforming society.