Brazilian cities wage war on beach speakers

Photo: Folhapress

Picture the scene, you’re with friends on a beach in Portugal. You’re enjoying the view, sipping on beers or coconut water, and you decide to put on some music to liven up the atmosphere. Spirits rise, and you turn up the volume. That’s all it would take for you and your friends to be fined up to EUR 35,000 (USD 38,100) for playing music in a public place.

Listening to music at an above-acceptable volume on beaches, parks, and other public spaces is prohibited in many countries as a way of democratizing access for all.

Several Brazilian cities also have laws to prevent people or groups from monopolizing space with their own loud music. But just take a trip to almost any well-frequented beach, from the country’s South to the Northeast, and you’ll see those rules are practically toothless.

From Brazilian funk to country, samba to rock, axé to electronic, the genre doesn’t really matter, but rather that your music is louder than that of your neighboring party. Before long, the sand of beaches and the grass of parks become battlefields.

This has become such a...

Amanda Audi

Amanda Audi is a journalist specializing in politics and human rights. She is the former executive director of Congresso em Foco and worked as a reporter for The Intercept Brasil, Folha de S. Paulo, O Globo, Gazeta do Povo, Poder360, among others. In 2019, she won the Comunique-se Award for best-written media reporter and won the Mulher Imprensa award for web journalism in 2020