Voceteo

Posted on by teflonbeltran

BY: Alejandro Tañón Díaz

Creating the Scene

Picture the scene, you arrive at a huge parking lot filled with cars and people in their respective teams. Then, you notice all the cars are a bit peculiar — they are all filled to the brim with speakers. The trunk is filled with speakers; there are even more speakers inside the doors; some cars even have mounted apparatuses bigger than the cars themselves. Two cars are called upon for a “roleo”. This means that it is their turn to go head-to-head. The cars line up, the crowd gathers, the judges get ready and they press play. They start with some salsa, noticing the differences between the trumpets and the artist’s voice between the two systems. Then some bachata, while the judges analyze which configuration gives a clearer sound some people dance it off on the side. Finally, they transition to dembow and reggaeton, cranking up the sound as the bass makes the whole parking lot vibrate. With every transition the volume increases and the judges decide the winner based on who had the clearest sound, who reached a higher decibel count, or simply whose speakers didn’t burn out.

This is an autoshow. It is the octagon for “Voceteros”, a space where they can show off all the speaker building, speaker mounting, and parameter tweaking. José Hernández and many other voceteros see “voceteo” as a sport and as art, as it is, in essence, a form of expression. 

Why is it hacking?

They come to tinker with their cars, to “hack” their vehicles so that others will appreciate their creations. They may not call themselves hackers in the classic sense of the term, but they certainly embody the hacker ethos. Anthropologist of hacking Gabriella Coleman tells us that 

“… the very nature of hacking—turning a system against itself—is the process of using existing code, comments, and technology for more than what their original authors intended.”

Making themselves heard/seen (Aesthetics of Excess)

That is precisely what the voceteros are doing. They use their cars for more than what their authors intended. They use them as a way of making themselves heard and seen. Many voceteros have been routinely excluded from opportunities, the decision-making process, and positions of power. Using their speakers, they force us to listen. They use these “hacks” to own the spaces that they have been excluded from and to create their own. 

For this and other reasons, Voceteo is not constrained to the autoshow and the competition. Some earn a living through it, building a shop dedicated to selling and mounting speakers. While others use it as an outlet to destress. Many voceteros like to show off their equipment. Be that while driving around as they go chinchorreando, or when they go to the beach. 

Community Building 

In an interview with the newspaper Primera Hora, the Vocetero Jose Hernandez said the following regarding the history of Voceteo:

“This practice started around the 80s, but it was not voceteo. It was only a competition where you would measure the bass. Now, we measure all types of sounds that come out of the speaker. The word “voceteo” arrives because what we are looking for is that “la voz” or the voice. Before it was the bass, now it’s the voices of different artists. Usually, the competition uses salsa and merengue in the first round. Then reggaeton. There are also some specific competitions where Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” is used.” 

Like many other nuanced arts, Voceteo comes with a tradition of community building. José Hernández became a vocetero because his dad was a vocetero and he grew up with his dad having one of these music systems. Many spend their weekends building and tweaking their systems to then display them as they go up the mountain or at the autoshow. 

Roots of Reggaeton (Emancipatory foundations)

The type of music being played also plays a very important role in the Voceteo. Reggaeton has, since its inception, been an emancipatory genre. Rooted in the sounds of Reggae, Hip-Hop and Rap. While it is now praised worldwide, it started as an “underground movement,” due to its circulation through informal networks and performances at unofficial venues. It created a prominent underground youth culture, that having been pushed to the fringes of society and the law, wanted to express itself. Due to its popularity and therefore its profitability, Reggaeton found itself in the grasp of capital and stopped being officially criminalized. However, the fact that this genre was pushed to the frontlines does not mean it has lost its emancipatory roots. It continues to serve as a medium for people from underrepresented communities to amplify their voices, which are then further amplified as they play through the vocetero’s sound systems.

Criminalization vs Celebration / Who is allowed to hack and for what purposes?

In response to this amplification, many municipalities have made it illegal for cars to have speakers set up in certain manners and to play sound above a certain decibel threshold because of concerns regarding noise contamination. This brings some parallels to the case of lowriders, which communications scholar Cristina Dunbar-Hester has used as an example when arguing that hacks coming from racialized populations tend to not be perceived in a positive sense. Anthropologist Héctor Beltrán adds that “Valuing some forms of hacking and criminalizing others—as well as making some forms of labor less valuable than others—is therefore also central to this hacking genealogy.” 

However, these regulations have some exceptions. These include funerary services, product promotions, and “tumbacocos”, which are vans primarily used for political campaigns around election time. It could be argued that these exceptions produce the same outcome as the voceteo but are protected as their existence helps push forward a specific set of interests that voceteo does not.

Voceteros remind us that the world of hacking is made up of exceptions. Who can hack, where they can hack, how they can hack, and what counts as a hack are all questions embedded in the shifting politics of respectability, as well as the contradictory dynamics of celebration and exclusion. Perhaps we should simply LISTEN to what the voceteros want us to hear.

Audio:

Sources | Further reading:

Image Credit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PuertoRico/comments/ldufmt/el_arte_y_deporte_del_voceteo/

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