Abstract

This essay discusses the disciplines and concepts used to address the relationship between music and space during recent decades in the Americas. The objective is to show the existence of a subdiscipline of the knowledge called “music and urbanism” whose focus is the changes and continuities of the music/space or sound/city relationship. The text is split into two sections. In the first part, intellectual journeys, I refer to the way in which geography and musical studies have addressed the relationship between music and city, mentioning some fundamental milestones and their main publications both in English and Spanish. In the second part, scopes and concepts, there are three sections that review concepts I consider important for the development of the subdiscipline: first, the foundational concept of “space”; second, the concepts of scene, consumption, cluster, creative cities, festivalization and urban marks, understood as a “bunch” of ideas created to speak of associations between people and human networks; and third, the idea of sound studies and their impact on the conceptualization of the space. Finally, I offer some conclusions on the importance of value creation in the city and this area’s contribution to social sciences, as well as arts and humanities.