Experience Sights, Sounds Of Ybor City's Past In Immersive Art Project

TAMPA, FL — Ybor Speaks, a new public art project commissioned by the City of Tampa Arts & Cultural Affairs Division, is offering a unique window into the immigrant experience in Ybor City, from the boom town of the 1890s through the creative revival of the 1980s.

The project is an immersive on-site and online sound experience.

The Ybor Speaks soundscape provides an in-person aural adventure of trolleys, footsteps and horses. While passing through Centennial Park, people will hear different languages that were spoken decades ago, including Spanish, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Yiddish, English and Vietnamese.

The soundscape plays at the top of each hour from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Saturday and during special events. Each soundscape lasts approximately 20 minutes and is followed by music. It repeats again at the top of the hour.

The online component provides a series of YouTube videos that dig deeper into Ybor’s history.

Original scripted stories by Sheila Cowley feature local talent from the Spanish Lyric Theatre, University of South Florida School of Theatre and Dance, and Tampa Bay stage and screen actors.

Additionally, excerpts and memories from books by notable authors such as Gary Mormino, Ph.D., Ferdie Pacheco, Jack Espinosa, Scott Deitche and Tony Pizzo, and Wallace Reyes, Ph.D., are voiced by local actors.

Local playwright Sheila Cowley and sound designer and foley artist Matt Cowley were commissioned to create immersive soundscapes that take the listener back in time through the decades. Through their storytelling, sounds and languages represented, the Cowleys evoke the cultural richness, diversity and struggles of generations that call Ybor City home.

Ybor City is rich in culture and history. It was founded in the 1880s by Vicente Martinez-Ybor and other cigar manufacturers. Thousands of immigrants braved long distances to find a home in Ybor, mainly from Cuba, Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe. For the next 50 years, workers in Ybor City's cigar factories rolled hundreds of millions of cigars each year.