The first thing that hit the 65,000 people inside Mexico City’s Estadio GNP was not the music but the rain. It arrived in sheets, turning the open-air venue into a slick of ponchos and improvised plastic capes, while lightning flickered overhead. On stage, Eduin Caz, the vocalist of Grupo Firme, addressed the crowd with a shout that cut through the storm: the concert had nearly been cancelled because of the lightning, but “se canceló pura verga” – roughly, the hell it was cancelled. The crowd roared, and the band launched into a set that would stretch past three hours, fuelled by shots of liquor and a repertoire that moved from heartbreak anthems to a notorious narcocorrido.

That narcocorrido, “Se fue la pantera”, recounts the killing of a presumed Sinaloa cartel operative in 2014, describing a hail of bullets and a family left to mourn. In recent months, Grupo Firme had declined to perform such songs in certain Mexican states where authorities have banned them, but on this night, under a sky of rain and lightning, the prohibition was ignored. The audience sang every word. Later, Caz paused for an unscripted speech, telling the crowd that the band had weathered highs and lows and that Mexicans should support one another. The stadium, by then, was a single, swaying mass of wet denim and cowboy hats.

As the concert ended, a different kind of transaction was taking place at the exits. Police in Mexico City detained a woman, identified as Gabriela ‘N’, who was allegedly targeting distracted concertgoers, stealing mobile phones and wallets. According to local reports, she was caught in the act of taking a man’s wallet. The incident was not isolated. That same night, across the Atlantic, four people were arrested in Timon, in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, suspected of stealing more than ten mobile phones during a traditional cultural festival, the Encontro de Folguedos. Police recovered 15 handsets, along with a car and a motorcycle used by the group. In both cities, the phone had become a trophy for pickpockets working the edges of a crowd.

Seven thousand kilometres away, in Prato, Italy, the mobile phone was playing a different role. On the same evening, a drone was spotted hovering near the high-security section of the La Dogaia prison. Staff intervened, and a subsequent search of the exercise yard uncovered a hidden package containing five smartphones, all with functioning SIM cards. The Prato prosecutor’s office described the episode as part of a “continuing emergency” of illegality inside the facility. For inmates, a phone is a portal to the outside, a tool to conduct business or maintain ties; for authorities, it is a persistent breach of the perimeter.

Viewed together, the events of that single night sketch a portrait of the mobile phone as a strangely magnetic object. In a stadium, it was a device to record the rain-soaked euphoria, and a target for thieves. In a prison, it was contraband, delivered by a drone to a hidden corner of a yard. In a Brazilian festival, it was loot. In Prato, the package lay in the exercise yard, its five handsets still functional, waiting to connect someone inside to a world that, for a few hours, had been singing in the rain.