Piñata Sound System Party at Love Bank Park

On Saturday, May 25th from 1 to 4pm join us for a community party at Love Bank Park featuring the unveiling of Matt Joynt, Josh Rios and Anthony Romero's Piñata Sound System for Counterpublic. The Piñata Sound System is a repurposed Ofo bike outfitted as a sound machine that can be checked out and ridden around the neighborhood. Free refreshments and cumbia will be provided for all ages.

As an iteration of an ongoing project, Not Peaceable and Quiet (Piñata Sound System) treats the bicycle as a sound machine and counter-monument transmitting its cultural signal across a localized and imagined community. Borrowing from the tradition of the amplified soapbox, the sidewalk musician, and other portable sound systems, this audio sculpture is completed when activated by a rider in public space.

The path the bike takes not only maps the community of Latinx businesses on Cherokee Street, but also maps the rich sonic history of Latinx diaspora and migration amplifying mixed fragments of cumbia that reflect and refract off the neighborhood. Cumbia, as a culturally expressive form, functions as a vehicle of collective witnessing that plots a narrative of intercultural contact between African, Indigenous, and European sonic styles as they have migrated across the hemisphere.

More information is available at https://counterpublic.us/portfolio-item/romero-rios-joynt