Pushed to the Streets in the “City of Music”: Professional Adaptation and Marginalization in Sanandaj’s UNESCO Creative Cities Network Branding

Few visitors can leave Sanandaj, in Iran’s Kurdistan province, without encountering assertions that it is “The City of Music.” This scene, however, did not exist before 2019, when the city joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) in the field of music. Since then, the local UCCN secretariat and the municipality of Sanandaj, have tried both to promote music as a brand for the city and to involve the public and private sectors in integrating culture in urban development plans. In this context, some Lotis—professional musicians who are usually recruited to play in wedding ceremonies—have made the streets their new performance venue. After the pandemic deprived them of their usual livelihoods performing at weddings, they began performing on pedestrian thoroughfares and in other public, high-traffic locations. These performance settings would seem to align perfectly with the UCCN’s agenda, yet Lotis have also faced continued marginalization by city authorities. Drawing on ethnographic research among Lotis, their audiences, and local authorities, and on documentation from the Sanandaj UCCN secretariat, I argue that although the UCCN’s partnership with Sanandaj has provided Lotis with new professional opportunities, police control on the streets has limited these musicians’ creative abilities they are renowned for, i.e., engaging mere observers in the process of merrymaking. By examining how Lotis have reconciled their practice with the municipality’s strategic plans in Sanandaj, I contribute to ethnomusicological research on interrelations between sound and public space, as well as UNESCO intangible heritage programs.