❝ If you live in certain parts of New York, this is all too familiar. It is the sound of bachata, dembow and merengue típico infiltrating every city crevice on the weekends until the cops try to shut the music down, and an after-hours game of cat and mouse commences. It is a secret world of pleasure and protest, made blaringly public. ❞

+

❝ Carlos is a musicólogo; enthusiasts like him own cars with customized sound systems, and at meets and shows, they are like D.J.s and live engineers, selecting songs and mixing levels for maximum effect. Some prefer clean sound: high-quality audio that allows them to hear the texture of drum kicks and the metal scrapes of the güira in merengue típico. Others simply go for volume, the kind that suffocates their challengers and makes your eyeballs vibrate out of their sockets. “If you don’t feel like it’s strangling you, then it’s no good,” Carlos said with a chuckle. ❞ *

When a Minivan Becomes a Music Machine