I returned home from a work trip and was finishing dinner when at once a gradual rumbling of sound began to erupt all around my home. It enveloped me. I listened, I wondered, and I heard.
I heard the sound of clanking bottles and cutlery, wooden spoons hitting pots and paella pans as drums, just as I knew my neighbours’ heart beat just as hard with his determination. One by one they join in this political muster—with no discernable pitch, volume, or rhythm. Just thunderous emotion and noise…
Drumming has been used as an alternative to linguistic communication for hundreds of years. It has been “utilized by virtually every culture known to mankind for a multitude of purposes”. It has been used for religious rituals, social dances, sporting events, special ceremonies, in preparation for hunting, and as a prelude to war.
Today, here in town it is used as protest.
Every night at 22.00, the night sky fills with sound for ten to fifteen minutes, travelling long distances. Sound emanates from balconies, terraces and through windows all around Sitges. The atmosphere is positive and negative, palpable and symbolic. It is joyously solidaristic to some and obtrusive, inescapable senseless noise to others.
Catalunya's Secretary for Foreign Affairs and for the European Union, Maria Badia i Cutchet says, “the way to solve this is to sit at a table and discuss this”. Whether or not the referendum on Catalonia's secession from Spain on Sunday, the first of October will occur or if it will even be legally binding, time has yet to tell.
For now time beats on… the drumming will continue as a call to arms, a call to communicate, a call to talk.
