The Sounds and Voices of South American Football

South American football stadiums are remarkably and consistently loud. Before, during and after matches, supporters produce an almost continuous stream of sound. They beat carnival-style drums, set off pyrotechnics and sing chants that range from non-melodic slogans to fully structured songs with verses, bridges and choruses. These songs often take the form of contrafacta, borrowing melodies from advertising jingles, political marches and popular music across eras – from Sandro to Oasis and Luis Fonsi to Creedence Clearwater Revival. Through this unbroken flow of sound, supporters not only cheer for their teams but also influence play on the pitch, shape match narratives and mediate how games are experienced both in the stadium and through the media.

Although these practices may resemble football expressions heard elsewhere in the world, they have distinct stylistic features. While lyrics are often localised according to specific teams and matches, the music across the continent draws on murga porteña – an Argentine carnival tradition performed with syncopated drums – blended with brass instruments that double the vocals.

More significantly, these sounds diverge from global football culture in their ideological tone, reflecting particular social sensibilities. During more than three years of ethnographic research in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, I came to understand that, for supporters in the region, football is far more than a sport. For these largely working-class citizens, fandom is a way of life, in which sound practices and music-making perform social and political functions that extend well beyond the stadium.

My book, The Sounds of Aguante: Politics of Fandom in South American Football, shows that through sound and music, supporters not only cheer for their teams but also render their precarious social conditions audible. This is especially evident in how they use and understand the voice.

Deep, rounded amplified sounds characterise their collective vocality. By raising their soft palates, supporters place sound in the back of their heads rather than in their chests or throats. Volume and participation are prioritised over pitch precision, which is especially clear during the long open vowels at the end of musical phrases. These euphorically loud moments can exceed 130 decibels, creating and maintaining a cohesive mass of sound. The individual supporter’s vocal colour becomes secondary to the collective sonority of the group.

While vocality and volume can signal moments of collective joy and communal power, there is a destructive dimension, as supporters consistently vocalise to the point of complete hoarseness. This vocal damage is not accidental, but rather intended. Understanding their voices in moral terms, many supporters vocalise to amplify their deprived social conditions, conceptualising the destruction of the material voice as an exertion of agency and human value. The emphasis on damaging the vocal organs makes audible a politics of the body, in which morality is enacted through bodily destruction.

Unexpectedly, I came to this realisation not in a stadium, but during the social uprising that shook Chile in 2019 – a spontaneous movement denouncing the ‘undignified’ conditions shaping the lives of the country’s lower classes. Supporters from all teams had joined the protesters, bringing their songs with them. On one organised demonstration, I joined Los de Abajo (The Underdogs), the barra (supporter’s club) of Universidad de Chile. Although the supporters mostly sang the same chants they do in the stadium, some had been adapted. One, using a melody from Argentina rock icon Fito Páez, featured the lyrics: ‘Ow, cop, what a life you’ve chosen / Hitting humble people is your vocation / Killing poor people is your profession / And so provide protection to the rich’. It was when a supporter, hoarse from singing, shouted ‘aguante!’ (endure it!), urging the crowd to keep going after the police launched tear gas, that I began to grasp the moral and political undertones of vocal damage. Seeing and hearing them push their voices to the limit under a dense cloud of gas made me understand what a supporter meant by saying that “destroying the voice” was itself a statement of “dignity” – the social uprising’s ambiguous yet telling demand. As Los de Abajo later posted on social media, they risked their voices for others: “we’re the voice of those who got tired of screaming for a life with dignity”.

This vocal politics is indeed rooted in a broader context of silencing and inaudibility. The destruction of the vocal organs becomes, consciously or not, a means of asserting dignity, demanding political attention and reclaiming power in a precarious social context. Supporters use their voices and stadium acoustics to make themselves heard in a society that marginalises them politically and economically. The political resonances of these sounds challenge reductive narratives that frame supporters as merely passive consumers of a mass-mediated spectacle. Ultimately, they foreground how subalterns navigate relations of power under late capitalism, both in football and beyond.

+ The Sounds of Aguante: Politics of Fandom in South American Football is published by Wesleyan University Press

Luis Achondo is Assistant Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Brown University. His work has been published in the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Twentieth-Century Music, Ethnomusicology Forum, Soccer and Society, Journal of Society for American Music, Journal of Musicological Research and Resonancias