When I was in the seventh grade, I used to go to school by taking the 72A bus to Villa Coapa. The ride on this grimly gray painted bus with blue and green stripes on the side was usually uneventful and fairly comfortable. During one of my rides home one day I remember hearing for the first time the song “Motivos,” which was performed by a strolling musician on the bus who was working for tips. The song resonated in my young mind since I was hopelessly infatuated with Maribel, a beautiful young girl with green eyes. The lyrics as I remember were:
| Unos ojos bañados de luz, son un motive, Unos labios queriendo besar, son un motivo de amor | Eyes showered in light, are a motive, Lips wanting to kiss, are a motive of love |
The mental image of Maribel’s beautiful eyes showered in light made me feel that the song had been written for us. This story is only one of millions that take place in Mexico City in which people experience music while riding public transportation. In the busy streets of this great metropolis, crime, pollution, traffic, and long hours of waiting have often been juxtaposed with live performances of cumbias, boleros, rock, and reggaeton, among many other musics. This musical landscape however, has recently changed with the incorporation of new transportation systems driven by a singular mix of neo-liberal and left-wing populist economic policies. In this article I explore the intersection of these colliding political ideologies, the problematic private use of public spaces, and changes in the public musical landscape, propelled by a mix of the demand for a safer transportation system in the city and neo-liberal interest. To illustrate my points, I take changes in mass transit paradigms as a case study. I devote particular attention to where the individual is located in the urban musical landscape, how this musical landscape shapes his or her experience, and what role these scenarios play in restructuring cultural and urban spaces. I do that by examining three public transportation settings: el metro, el micro, and el metrobus. I discuss the challenges that these transportation settings present when dealing with the demand for safer and more efficient methods of transportation while transforming physical and social spaces for the people who utilize them. This research is based on over twenty years of first-hand experience using Mexico City’s public transportation, but it also constitutes a project in which I negotiate a familiar yet alien fieldwork experience of ubiquitous open-access transportation in an effort to balance the objective observations of an anthropologist and the non-reflexive transit experience of a commuter…
Article in preparation for Ethnomusicology, Society For Ethnomusicology