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 and traditions appear culturally equivalent. This matters because representation participates in producing how culture is understood (Hall, 1997). Rather than asking whether cultural borrowing is simply right or wrong, my research investigates critical listening as a contemporary form of music appreciation that pays attention to origin, movement, framing and the positionality of the listener.
How can critical listening become a tool for questioning the way cultures and musical identities are represented, categorised and interpreted?
This question explores the gap between how music circulates and how cultural knowledge circulates with it. Conversations with Venezuelan artists such as Alberto Stangarone showed how migration can heighten awareness of cultural origin while generating hybrid and transnational forms. Field observations in Seven Sisters, Elephant & Castle and London record shops showed how distinct Latin American identities and musical histories can be assembled under broader representations such as “Latin London” or “Latin music” (Vargas, 2026b). At Venezuela Remixed, listeners responded through dancing, emotion and musical appreciation without necessarily engaging with the specific Venezuelan references embedded in the event (Vargas, 2026a).
Together, these actions shifted the enquiry towards how categories become meaningful, who gives them authority, and how listeners negotiate them. Critical listening is therefore not assumed to produce a correct interpretation. It becomes a research proposition: what happens when listeners encounter information that complicates the categories through which they initially understand a sound?
My methodology evolved alongside the research question through reading, observation, stakeholder conversations, intervention and reflection. I initially approached the project through preservation, asking how Venezuelan musical heritage might be maintained through migration. However, conversations with Venezuelan musicians complicated the idea of culture as something stable. Stangarone described becoming more conscious of Venezuelan cultural codes after migrating while also incorporating electronic and transnational influences into his practice (Stangarone, 2026, interview). This moved the research towards participation and reinterpretation.
Ethnographic and cultural research informed my observations (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019; Gray, 2003), while critical and autoethnographic approaches helped me examine positionality and representation (Madison, 2020; Herrmann and Adams, 2025). Vis (2022) supported creative intervention as knowledge production. As observation became insufficient, the methodology became increasingly participatory and interactive, using curatorial experiences to examine how meanings are produced, negotiated or resisted.
Primary and secondary research converge around three tensions. First, cultural identity is constructed rather than simply inherited. Hall’s work on representation helped interpret how migration can make particular Venezuelan codes more conscious while also changing their meaning (Hall, 1997).
Second, diaspora can intensify awareness of origin while generating hybridity. Kalra, Kaur and Hutnyk (2005), Cohen (2008) and Gilroy (1993) challenge the idea that diasporic culture is merely a displaced version of an original culture; it is continually reconstructed through movement and exchange.
Third, categorisation is not neutral. Observing “Latin” sections in London record shops made curation significant to the enquiry. Bhaskar (2016) helped me understand selection and framing as acts that organise meaning. Hall pushes this further: repeated representations can make particular classifications appear natural or self-evident (Hall, 1997). This also requires reflexivity: “Venezuelan music” can itself become reductive if treated as a stable, homogeneous category.
Taken together, the research suggests that the issue is not cultural transformation itself, but how differences, histories and relations of power are made visible or obscured as music circulates.
Venezuela Remixed, a listening session and DJ set at Behind This Wall, placed Venezuelan music into public circulation through music, cultural references and conversation. Audience engagement did not necessarily follow this curatorial intention. Participants responded primarily through dancing, emotion, musical appreciation and broad recognition of the music as “Latin”, while the digital participation tool received 15 views, six starts and only two submissions (Vargas, 2026a). Hall’s encoding/decoding model became useful here: meaning intended by a curator is negotiated by listeners through different experiences and positions (Hall, 1980).
For my next intervention I have prototyped a digital record-shop experience that questions how music from Latin America is encountered. The prototype will test what changes when interaction provides additional information about origin, influence and cultural context, while also allowing listeners to generate new interpretations by mixing songs together. By placing tracks in relation to one another, the experience can surface similarities, contrasts and resonances that may not be apparent when songs are heard in isolation. In this way, the prototype creates a space where meaning can emerge through comparison, juxtaposition and reinterpretation.
https://latin-record-shop.ministerio-d-8451.chatgpt.site
To date, the research has involved people from different cultural backgrounds in London. Its intended audience is music enthusiasts globally who are interested in Latin American music, its cultural origins and evolving interpretations.
The project’s strength lies in how external research changed its direction rather than confirming the initial preservation hypothesis. Its main weakness is evidential: I currently have stronger evidence of how my own framing changed than of how different listeners interpret the same musical material. I also need to avoid treating “Latin” or “Venezuelan” as fixed categories while criticising categorisation elsewhere.
The next phase must therefore test critical listening rather than assume its value. The opportunity is to make representation, categorisation and interpretation more visible.
Bibliography
Bhaskar, M. (2016) Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess. London: Piatkus.
Cohen, R. (2008) Global Diasporas: An Introduction. 2nd edn. Abingdon: Routledge.
Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso.
Gray, A. (2003) Research Practice for Cultural Studies: Ethnographic Methods and Lived Cultures. London: SAGE.
Hall, S. (1980) ‘Encoding/decoding’, in Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A. and Willis, P. (eds.) Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79. London: Hutchinson, pp. 117–127.
Hall, S. (ed.) (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: SAGE in association with The Open University.
Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. (2019) Ethnography: Principles in Practice. 4th edn. Abingdon: Routledge.
Herrmann, A.F. and Adams, T.E. (2025) Assessing Autoethnography: Notes on Analysis, Evaluation, and Craft. Abingdon: Routledge.
Kalra, V.S., Kaur, R. and Hutnyk, J. (2005) Diaspora & Hybridity. London: SAGE.
Madison, D.S. (2020) Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance. 3rd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Vis, D. (2022) Research for People Who (Think They) Would Rather Create. 3rd edn. Rotterdam: Willem de Kooning Academy / Onomatopee.
Primary Research
Stangarone, A. (2026) Interview with Venezuelan musician, producer and member of Aeropuerto/Sunsplash. Conducted as part of the MA Applied Imagination research project, 2026.
Vargas, D. (2026a) Venezuela Remixed. Listening session and DJ-set research intervention, Behind This Wall, London, 18 June 2026.
Vargas, D. (2026b) Field observations of record shops and Latin American cultural spaces in London, including Seven Sisters and Elephant & Castle. Research notes, 2026.