“It’s annoying us” and people “can’t sleep anymore,” Anita Baker, the mayor of Porirua, a town of 60,000 people, told AFP on Thursday.
Sound battles have been trending in New Zealand for several years. The goal of each participant is to saturate the sound of others with their own sound, spit out by hyper-powerful audio systems.
“They love Celine Dion,” Ms. Baker says. Porirua residents can no longer hear his hits like “My Heart Will Go On” and “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” loudly, especially as the battles sometimes last until 2am, according to the mayor.
At random, during the week or on weekends, participants park with their engines running, blaring music and changing locations frequently to avoid the police.
“This is happening in our city center, which is in a basin, and so the noise spreads like a drum to all the suburbs,” Ms. Baker explains.
According to the elected official, the fighting began in November 2022 as local rugby fans celebrated Samoa’s performance at the Rugby League World Cup, where the Pacific nation reached the final.
Ms Baker has already received numerous complaints from frustrated residents and an online petition is now circulating to put an end to the cacophony.
The mayor says she is determined to find a solution with the police: “We don’t want people to flee our city because of the noise.”