Revolutionary songs in a gentrifying city: stylistic change and the economics of salvage in southern Mexico

Abstract

In this article, I explore the case of a musician performing revolutionary songs in a restaurant in a town in southern Mexico undergoing rapid gentrification. I draw out the constraints and possibilities for musical creative agency that emerged in a setting in which commercial activity was driven by the accumulation of profit and rent. Here, commercial strategy could be seen to influence close musical detail; yet such stylistic changes were accentuated by these songs' connection to a movement committed to the end of capitalism.Nonetheless, I draw on the recent work of Anna Tsing to argue that recognizing the incompleteness of revolutionary songs' translation into the rapidly gentrifying context of San Cristóbal may help to underline performer agency and creativity.During recent field research in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, a city in southern Mexico with a large tourist economy, I encountered a number of musicians who were concerned with the effects of gentrification on their creative practice. One, a reggae soundsystem artist, compared the economic trajectory of San Cristóbal to that of Brooklyn and Berlin, in which public spaces become "whitewashed" and local musics were sidelined. 1 Another, who had been performing in the street in the city for several years, associated the emergence of "increasingly fancy restaurants" in the centre with greater restrictions on street performance. 2 Finally, another street musician believed that the "capitalist system" had "placed music in an overly narrow structure, in which commercial music predominates", disenfranchising "the music of the world":Inside [restaurants and bars], you have to play commercial music which 90 percent [of musicians] don't like to play, and they play it just for the money. Outside in the street, you play from the heart, for enjoyment, and because there exists a real interaction among the people that like what you're doing (Joel, To spend time with these musicians, then, was to begin to engage with ongoing debates about culture, 2 capital, and diversity.