Musical Engament & Intercultural Dialogue

Previous Research Question: How can critical listening become a tool for questioning the way cultures and musical identities are represented, categorised and interpreted?While this helped me explore how categories such as Latin music shape cultural representation, I realised that the enquiry was becoming too focused on questioning representation, rather than on what listening could actively…

Contemporary music moves easily between cultures through migration, streaming, sampling, remix and electronic production. This circulation creates new forms of exchange, but it is not neutral. Sounds can travel widely while the histories, distinctions and power relations surrounding them become less visible. Categories such as “Latin” can enable discovery while making very different countries, histories…

The term “Latino” becomes a form of self-definition A shared Latin identity is constructed through humour, language and cultural codes, while the surrounding flags keep national differences visible. Latin London is presented as a history of migration, resistance and collective belonging. “Sound Latino” Intervention

I began by thinking about preservation, but music is not preserved by remaining static. It survives through performance, memory, remix and reinterpretation. Migration is not only a context around identity; it transforms identity. Cultural references move, encounter new contexts and acquire new meanings. This shifted my focus from asking what should be preserved? to asking…

My refined research question did not emerge only from theoretical research. It developed through a series of conversations, interventions, observations and moments in which my initial assumptions were challenged. My earlier research focused on how music could preserve Venezuelan cultural identity through migration. This framing assumed that Venezuelan identity already existed as a relatively identifiable…

My research actions began with a relatively clear intention: to observe how music, migration, and Venezuelan cultural identity intersected in concrete situations. However, several important learnings did not appear where I expected to find them. In the DJ set intervention, I thought I was presenting a musical reading of Venezuela through Venezuelan codes: sounds, references,…

Alberto Stangarone is a Venezuelan musician, producer and creative director. Through Todosantos, he was part of an independent Venezuelan music scene that emerged at the intersection of electronic production, the internet, global musical references and a country with very little infrastructure for the kind of music they wanted to make. His trajectory later took him…

Venezuela needs an antidote. Not another promise of salvation, nor an attempt to resolve through art what politics has failed to resolve. After the double earthquake in Venezuela, many Venezuelans abroad described the disorienting experience of continuing with ordinary life: travelling to work, answering emails, meeting deadlines, while knowing that something devastating had happened in…

This first intervention took the form of a Venezuelan listening session/party in a bar in London. My intention was to test whether Venezuelan musical heritage could be activated socially through sound, rather than only explained through words, archives, or formal discussion. I wanted to understand whether a curated musical environment could open conversations around migration,…