Street Music In Seek of Music Place in City Landscape

Urban art is a lively event in cities whose concepts are emerged and grown in accordance with changes in societal attitudes, facilities and public life. It includes various arts including performance, graffiti, sculpture and music. Different aspects of urban art are observed in Tehran public spaces where music is played in two macro and micro scales. Despite the influence of music in urban life, it is widely ignored in comparison with other types of urban art so that physical-spatial arena of the city does not provide an appropriate place for music performance. Considering having a suitable urban space for music performance, it is queried whether there is similar condition in various parts of the city for music performance. What do these places feature in making it appropriate for performance? How do these places affect societal and individual attitudes along with street music? This article tries to regain the street music place as a part of urban life and as a lively art. What occurs in contemporary Tehran clearly show that the presence of street musicians is increasing, in macro and micro scale, and its influence is undeniable on formation of urban landscape. In macro scale, ritual music inaugurates immensely. However, ignoring of this art has led to no physical-spatial place for music performance. Observations in Tehran showed that the geographic context by factors such as climate, the economic situation and the type of activities and the dispersal of passers cause differences in terms of musical street performance. Due to favorable climate, recreational spaces and better economic conditions, northern Tehran is more suitable for street performers which only require the physical sense of security and privacy standards for musicians. However, in southern Tehran due to hot and dry microclimate and lack of recreational spaces and activities of the audience, the same street music has emerged in form of ritual, nostalgic music like desert cities. Generally, given the choice of location by musicians, providing mixed use places, particularly recreational, creating a sense of security through the creation of appropriate physical space and adequate lighting along with monitoring, planning and urban management can support street music as a more established urban art. In addition, street music can also benefit from a high social status, increase social interaction and citizen behavior while making people familiar with the customs and culture of different nations. In fact, within these contexts, other factors such as culture and economy can be more influential and more public events, such as combination of music with other urban art will be emerged.