This article explores the making of two branded Spotify playlists to critique the concept of 'aff... more This article explores the making of two branded Spotify playlists to critique the concept of 'affective labor.' Over the last few decades, scholars have argued that social media users and creative industries workers alike are engaged in a new type of labor, affective labor, which generates economic value for companies. The article challenges this framing. Drawing on Marxist concepts of productive and unproductive labor, in addition to feminist social reproduction theory, it details playlists made for Motorola phones and Itaú bank by paid contractors. It situates the role of these playlists, as part of advertising campaigns, within the broader circuits of capital, showing how both paid and unpaid playlisting are unproductive labor, and therefore do not produce surplus value. The playlists do, however, assist in the overall reproduction of capitalism, particularly through the commodification of labor power. The article argues that characterizing musical production involving affect, especially online, as 'affective labor' hampers our ability to understand affect within the production and reproduction of social relations within capitalism. It contends that a key political question of affect is not only the production of subjectivities, but the conversion of affectively dense, social values into commodified labor controlled by capital. Affective politics is when affects are literally put to work.
The Oxford Handbook of Economic Ethnomusicology, 2022
This chapter examines debates over the determination of wages, cachê, for indie musicians in Braz... more This chapter examines debates over the determination of wages, cachê, for indie musicians in Brazil. It focuses on the organization Fora do Eixo, which sought to expand indie band circulation and audiences for them by paying bands in its alternative currency, called card. Card allowed Fora do Eixo to employ labor without the need to draw on real money, capacitating participants in music production in smaller cities with limited nancial resources. But it also led to heated debates about what value a band's wage represents: the labor of organizing indie production, the social relationships forged in production, bands' social recognition, or the aesthetic quality of the "music itself." The chapter nds that although all these locations of value obtain when it comes to the value of music, capitalism's requirement of commodi cation prevents their simultaneous expression in the money form. The chapter thus highlights how the abstraction of value within capitalism clashes with the rich, multiple social and aesthetic values of music making. Determining the "real" location of value in music becomes an impossible, though necessary task.
This article discusses how love arose as a political ethos in São Paulo, Brazil. The meaning and ... more This article discusses how love arose as a political ethos in São Paulo, Brazil. The meaning and feeling of love emerged as middle-class artists sought to do what they love as work; activists demanded rights to the city through cultural intervention; and a hit song by an obscure rapper lamented that ‘love doesn’t exist in São Paulo’. Cultural activists tied love’s affective resonance to the mayoral campaign of politician Fernando Haddad, who likewise framed his transit policy in loving terms. The article describes how middle-class musical aesthetics stemming from the idea of ‘racial democracy’, as well as artists’ and activists’ desire to ‘do what you love’ as work, eschewed the racialised class conflict that produced an unloving city, leading to a politically impotent articulation of love. The article advances a materialist approach to affect through social reproduction theory, suggesting that the concept of affect is useful only if it takes account of the social politics that shape affective resonance, particularly the central conflict between human life and the generation of capital. It argues that affects brought forth through cultural products like music only serve political change if overtly connected to a larger programme of structural transformation which incorporates class conflict.
This article discusses the notion of amiguismo within Chilean indie music circles. Amiguismo is t... more This article discusses the notion of amiguismo within Chilean indie music circles. Amiguismo is the contention that indie music in Chile is produced through interpersonal favours, thus hamstringing the sector’s economic and artistic development. The article analyses how two indie music venues in Santiago are composed by interconnected musicians and media workers. It contends that complaints about amiguismo arise as participants seek to make their activities of musical production and circulation economically sustainable. The struggle over resources highlights the politics of sociality underlying music production, which clashes with historical understandings of art, the public sphere, and the market as a-social. The notion of amiguismo thus highlights the political dimension of musical and social life within the ideologies of capitalist modernity that deny such politics. The article argues for the importance of examining economic concerns in analyses of the formation of public culture and musical meaning, and suggests that musical study can contribute to understanding the contradictions of capitalism.
RESUMO • Este artigo descreve a formação de uma escuta local que emergiu no Rio de Janeiro nos an... more RESUMO • Este artigo descreve a formação de uma escuta local que emergiu no Rio de Janeiro nos anos 1990 entre participantes da música indie a partir do fazer musical, que englobava a produção e a circulação de mídias através das quais o indie adquiriu sentido social. Podemos chamar de sociabilidade da circulação o modo pelo qual formas materiais específicas, como revistas e fitas cassete, impactam os tipos de prática social que tanto facilitam a troca de materiais musicais quanto emergem dessa troca. O artigo liga as mídias da música à interação social e, através dela, à formação de uma escuta local. Argumenta-se que o som em si participa da formação de sociabilidades e de abordagens às mídias e, portanto, tem um papel na construção do significado e do valor da música ao longo do tempo. • PALAVRAS-CHAVE • Escuta; sociabilidade; mídia; circulação; indie. • ABSTRACT • This article describes the formation of a local listening in Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s through the musicking of indie participants. This musicking included the search for and production of media through which indie circulated and gained social sensibility. I call the sociality of circulation the mode by which specific material forms, like magazines and cassette tapes, impact the types of social practice which facilitate the exchange of musical materials as well as emerge from this exchange. The article links musical media to social interaction and through this, to the formation of a local listening. It argues that sound itself participates in the formation of sociality and approaches to media, and as such, plays a role in the creation of musical meaning and value over time. •
Poderes do Som: Políticas Escutas e Identidades, 2020
“Exigimos o Amor: A Música como Articulador de Afetos Políticos.” Em Poderes do Som: Políticas Es... more “Exigimos o Amor: A Música como Articulador de Afetos Políticos.” Em Poderes do Som: Políticas Escutas e Identidades, editado por José Cláudio S. Castanheira, Dulce Mazer, Pedro Silva Marra, Marcelo Bergamin Conter, Cássio de Borba Lucas e Mario Arruda Florianópolis: Editora Insular, p 127-152. Disponível em: https://tinyurl.com/PoderesdoSom https://insular.com.br/produto/poderes-do-som-subtitulo-politicas-escutas-e-identidades/
Enfoques Interdisciplinarios Sobre Músicas Populares En Latinoamérica: Retrospectivas, Perspectivas, Críticas y Propuestas., 2013
Este artigo descreve a estrutura e modo de produção e circulação de música independente feita pel... more Este artigo descreve a estrutura e modo de produção e circulação de música independente feita pelo Fora do Eixo-- que se autodescreve como uma rede descentralizada de produção cultural e ação política que busca aproveitar das novas tecnologias da internet para mudar na raíz a produção cultural no país e influenciar as políticas públicas, tudo com fim de democratizar a produção de e acesso à cultura. Usando críticas à rede que surgem de outros produtores de música indpendente em São Paulo, o artigo mostra como um olhar sobre usos “certos” e “errados” das novas mídias se produz pelas posições estéticas históricas quanto à relação entre música independente e os meios pelos quais veio se produzindo. Busca assim refletir sobre a capacidade das novas tecnologias facilitarem a democracia artística e comunicacional.
Music, Affect, Labor, and Value:
Late Capitalism and the (Mis)Productions of Indie Music in Chil... more Music, Affect, Labor, and Value: Late Capitalism and the (Mis)Productions of Indie Music in Chile and Brazil
Through an ethnographic exploration of indie and independent rock-pop music in Chile and Brazil, this dissertation focuses on the political struggles emerging as actors seek to establish new structures for playing music as both a creative practice and as an economic activity in the wake of the industrial upheaval provoked by digital media. Chapter 1 considers how historical relations of musical circulation and valuation have laid the foundation for the particular mode of extending the touring routes of bands from the global north into Chile and Brazil. It details the articulation of emerging structures of economic production in the indie music touring industry with the personal biographies, listening practices, and media circulation habits of the people directly responsible for producing shows in Santiago, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. While these and related actors watch and contribute to this northern expansion into their cities, they struggle to create local structures for independent music circulation and finance which endure in time and space. Drawing on Brian Larkin’s (2008; 2013) pinpointing of infrastructures as the architectures upon which modern societies are built, Chapter 2 discusses several Santiago music venues in relation to civic topographies and the networks of musicians which circulate through them, focusing on the necessary social politics through which infrastructures for musical production arise, become the strata upon which further production can continue through time and space, and serve as the base material for producing economic gains. In chapter 3, I argue that musical sound itself forms an element of network infrastructure. I describe one set of Brazilian musicians’ practices of circulating music and media from the UK and US and connect them to the ethics of listening and social encounter at one São Paulo performance venue, detailing on a micro level the mutual constitution of aesthetic values, social practices, media infrastructures, and spaces for musical engagement as a transnational, yet very geographically weighted network of indie music. The fourth chapter details how the tensions between the construction of audience, value, aesthetics and circulation arising from digitally interpolated production structures manifest in the politics of a new type of institution called Fora do Eixo. Developed over the last decade in Brazil, within a unique political and cultural environment characterized by an embrace of digital networking tools as a means for democratizing cultural production and political participation, Fora do Eixo reveals the way these “social infrastructures” (Elyachar 2010), formed through social media platforms online, can be harnessed to build new institutions for the securing of resources. As a whole, the dissertation reveals how new logics of media and economy build upon and clash with historical practices of cultural production, modes of aesthetic valuation, and regimes for mediating the artistic, the economic, and the social.
Master's thesis. Discusses the relationship between indie websites, live performance, and tours i... more Master's thesis. Discusses the relationship between indie websites, live performance, and tours in constructing Brooklyn, New York and Santiago, Chile as places of hip indie music in the mid 2000s.
This article explores the making of two branded Spotify playlists to critique the concept of 'aff... more This article explores the making of two branded Spotify playlists to critique the concept of 'affective labor.' Over the last few decades, scholars have argued that social media users and creative industries workers alike are engaged in a new type of labor, affective labor, which generates economic value for companies. The article challenges this framing. Drawing on Marxist concepts of productive and unproductive labor, in addition to feminist social reproduction theory, it details playlists made for Motorola phones and Itaú bank by paid contractors. It situates the role of these playlists, as part of advertising campaigns, within the broader circuits of capital, showing how both paid and unpaid playlisting are unproductive labor, and therefore do not produce surplus value. The playlists do, however, assist in the overall reproduction of capitalism, particularly through the commodification of labor power. The article argues that characterizing musical production involving affect, especially online, as 'affective labor' hampers our ability to understand affect within the production and reproduction of social relations within capitalism. It contends that a key political question of affect is not only the production of subjectivities, but the conversion of affectively dense, social values into commodified labor controlled by capital. Affective politics is when affects are literally put to work.
The Oxford Handbook of Economic Ethnomusicology, 2022
This chapter examines debates over the determination of wages, cachê, for indie musicians in Braz... more This chapter examines debates over the determination of wages, cachê, for indie musicians in Brazil. It focuses on the organization Fora do Eixo, which sought to expand indie band circulation and audiences for them by paying bands in its alternative currency, called card. Card allowed Fora do Eixo to employ labor without the need to draw on real money, capacitating participants in music production in smaller cities with limited nancial resources. But it also led to heated debates about what value a band's wage represents: the labor of organizing indie production, the social relationships forged in production, bands' social recognition, or the aesthetic quality of the "music itself." The chapter nds that although all these locations of value obtain when it comes to the value of music, capitalism's requirement of commodi cation prevents their simultaneous expression in the money form. The chapter thus highlights how the abstraction of value within capitalism clashes with the rich, multiple social and aesthetic values of music making. Determining the "real" location of value in music becomes an impossible, though necessary task.
This article discusses how love arose as a political ethos in São Paulo, Brazil. The meaning and ... more This article discusses how love arose as a political ethos in São Paulo, Brazil. The meaning and feeling of love emerged as middle-class artists sought to do what they love as work; activists demanded rights to the city through cultural intervention; and a hit song by an obscure rapper lamented that ‘love doesn’t exist in São Paulo’. Cultural activists tied love’s affective resonance to the mayoral campaign of politician Fernando Haddad, who likewise framed his transit policy in loving terms. The article describes how middle-class musical aesthetics stemming from the idea of ‘racial democracy’, as well as artists’ and activists’ desire to ‘do what you love’ as work, eschewed the racialised class conflict that produced an unloving city, leading to a politically impotent articulation of love. The article advances a materialist approach to affect through social reproduction theory, suggesting that the concept of affect is useful only if it takes account of the social politics that shape affective resonance, particularly the central conflict between human life and the generation of capital. It argues that affects brought forth through cultural products like music only serve political change if overtly connected to a larger programme of structural transformation which incorporates class conflict.
This article discusses the notion of amiguismo within Chilean indie music circles. Amiguismo is t... more This article discusses the notion of amiguismo within Chilean indie music circles. Amiguismo is the contention that indie music in Chile is produced through interpersonal favours, thus hamstringing the sector’s economic and artistic development. The article analyses how two indie music venues in Santiago are composed by interconnected musicians and media workers. It contends that complaints about amiguismo arise as participants seek to make their activities of musical production and circulation economically sustainable. The struggle over resources highlights the politics of sociality underlying music production, which clashes with historical understandings of art, the public sphere, and the market as a-social. The notion of amiguismo thus highlights the political dimension of musical and social life within the ideologies of capitalist modernity that deny such politics. The article argues for the importance of examining economic concerns in analyses of the formation of public culture and musical meaning, and suggests that musical study can contribute to understanding the contradictions of capitalism.
RESUMO • Este artigo descreve a formação de uma escuta local que emergiu no Rio de Janeiro nos an... more RESUMO • Este artigo descreve a formação de uma escuta local que emergiu no Rio de Janeiro nos anos 1990 entre participantes da música indie a partir do fazer musical, que englobava a produção e a circulação de mídias através das quais o indie adquiriu sentido social. Podemos chamar de sociabilidade da circulação o modo pelo qual formas materiais específicas, como revistas e fitas cassete, impactam os tipos de prática social que tanto facilitam a troca de materiais musicais quanto emergem dessa troca. O artigo liga as mídias da música à interação social e, através dela, à formação de uma escuta local. Argumenta-se que o som em si participa da formação de sociabilidades e de abordagens às mídias e, portanto, tem um papel na construção do significado e do valor da música ao longo do tempo. • PALAVRAS-CHAVE • Escuta; sociabilidade; mídia; circulação; indie. • ABSTRACT • This article describes the formation of a local listening in Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s through the musicking of indie participants. This musicking included the search for and production of media through which indie circulated and gained social sensibility. I call the sociality of circulation the mode by which specific material forms, like magazines and cassette tapes, impact the types of social practice which facilitate the exchange of musical materials as well as emerge from this exchange. The article links musical media to social interaction and through this, to the formation of a local listening. It argues that sound itself participates in the formation of sociality and approaches to media, and as such, plays a role in the creation of musical meaning and value over time. •
Poderes do Som: Políticas Escutas e Identidades, 2020
“Exigimos o Amor: A Música como Articulador de Afetos Políticos.” Em Poderes do Som: Políticas Es... more “Exigimos o Amor: A Música como Articulador de Afetos Políticos.” Em Poderes do Som: Políticas Escutas e Identidades, editado por José Cláudio S. Castanheira, Dulce Mazer, Pedro Silva Marra, Marcelo Bergamin Conter, Cássio de Borba Lucas e Mario Arruda Florianópolis: Editora Insular, p 127-152. Disponível em: https://tinyurl.com/PoderesdoSom https://insular.com.br/produto/poderes-do-som-subtitulo-politicas-escutas-e-identidades/
Enfoques Interdisciplinarios Sobre Músicas Populares En Latinoamérica: Retrospectivas, Perspectivas, Críticas y Propuestas., 2013
Este artigo descreve a estrutura e modo de produção e circulação de música independente feita pel... more Este artigo descreve a estrutura e modo de produção e circulação de música independente feita pelo Fora do Eixo-- que se autodescreve como uma rede descentralizada de produção cultural e ação política que busca aproveitar das novas tecnologias da internet para mudar na raíz a produção cultural no país e influenciar as políticas públicas, tudo com fim de democratizar a produção de e acesso à cultura. Usando críticas à rede que surgem de outros produtores de música indpendente em São Paulo, o artigo mostra como um olhar sobre usos “certos” e “errados” das novas mídias se produz pelas posições estéticas históricas quanto à relação entre música independente e os meios pelos quais veio se produzindo. Busca assim refletir sobre a capacidade das novas tecnologias facilitarem a democracia artística e comunicacional.
Music, Affect, Labor, and Value:
Late Capitalism and the (Mis)Productions of Indie Music in Chil... more Music, Affect, Labor, and Value: Late Capitalism and the (Mis)Productions of Indie Music in Chile and Brazil
Through an ethnographic exploration of indie and independent rock-pop music in Chile and Brazil, this dissertation focuses on the political struggles emerging as actors seek to establish new structures for playing music as both a creative practice and as an economic activity in the wake of the industrial upheaval provoked by digital media. Chapter 1 considers how historical relations of musical circulation and valuation have laid the foundation for the particular mode of extending the touring routes of bands from the global north into Chile and Brazil. It details the articulation of emerging structures of economic production in the indie music touring industry with the personal biographies, listening practices, and media circulation habits of the people directly responsible for producing shows in Santiago, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. While these and related actors watch and contribute to this northern expansion into their cities, they struggle to create local structures for independent music circulation and finance which endure in time and space. Drawing on Brian Larkin’s (2008; 2013) pinpointing of infrastructures as the architectures upon which modern societies are built, Chapter 2 discusses several Santiago music venues in relation to civic topographies and the networks of musicians which circulate through them, focusing on the necessary social politics through which infrastructures for musical production arise, become the strata upon which further production can continue through time and space, and serve as the base material for producing economic gains. In chapter 3, I argue that musical sound itself forms an element of network infrastructure. I describe one set of Brazilian musicians’ practices of circulating music and media from the UK and US and connect them to the ethics of listening and social encounter at one São Paulo performance venue, detailing on a micro level the mutual constitution of aesthetic values, social practices, media infrastructures, and spaces for musical engagement as a transnational, yet very geographically weighted network of indie music. The fourth chapter details how the tensions between the construction of audience, value, aesthetics and circulation arising from digitally interpolated production structures manifest in the politics of a new type of institution called Fora do Eixo. Developed over the last decade in Brazil, within a unique political and cultural environment characterized by an embrace of digital networking tools as a means for democratizing cultural production and political participation, Fora do Eixo reveals the way these “social infrastructures” (Elyachar 2010), formed through social media platforms online, can be harnessed to build new institutions for the securing of resources. As a whole, the dissertation reveals how new logics of media and economy build upon and clash with historical practices of cultural production, modes of aesthetic valuation, and regimes for mediating the artistic, the economic, and the social.
Master's thesis. Discusses the relationship between indie websites, live performance, and tours i... more Master's thesis. Discusses the relationship between indie websites, live performance, and tours in constructing Brooklyn, New York and Santiago, Chile as places of hip indie music in the mid 2000s.
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Disponível em:
https://tinyurl.com/PoderesdoSom
https://insular.com.br/produto/poderes-do-som-subtitulo-politicas-escutas-e-identidades/
Late Capitalism and the (Mis)Productions of Indie Music in Chile and Brazil
Through an ethnographic exploration of indie and independent rock-pop music in Chile and Brazil, this dissertation focuses on the political struggles emerging as actors seek to establish new structures for playing music as both a creative practice and as an economic activity in the wake of the industrial upheaval provoked by digital media. Chapter 1 considers how historical relations of musical circulation and valuation have laid the foundation for the particular mode of extending the touring routes of bands from the global north into Chile and Brazil. It details the articulation of emerging structures of economic production in the indie music touring industry with the personal biographies, listening practices, and media circulation habits of the people directly responsible for producing shows in Santiago, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. While these and related actors watch and contribute to this northern expansion into their cities, they struggle to create local structures for independent music circulation and finance which endure in time and space. Drawing on Brian Larkin’s (2008; 2013) pinpointing of infrastructures as the architectures upon which modern societies are built, Chapter 2 discusses several Santiago music venues in relation to civic topographies and the networks of musicians which circulate through them, focusing on the necessary social politics through which infrastructures for musical production arise, become the strata upon which further production can continue through time and space, and serve as the base material for producing economic gains. In chapter 3, I argue that musical sound itself forms an element of network infrastructure. I describe one set of Brazilian musicians’ practices of circulating music and media from the UK and US and connect them to the ethics of listening and social encounter at one São Paulo performance venue, detailing on a micro level the mutual constitution of aesthetic values, social practices, media infrastructures, and spaces for musical engagement as a transnational, yet very geographically weighted network of indie music. The fourth chapter details how the tensions between the construction of audience, value, aesthetics and circulation arising from digitally interpolated production structures manifest in the politics of a new type of institution called Fora do Eixo. Developed over the last decade in Brazil, within a unique political and cultural environment characterized by an embrace of digital networking tools as a means for democratizing cultural production and political participation, Fora do Eixo reveals the way these “social infrastructures” (Elyachar 2010), formed through social media platforms online, can be harnessed to build new institutions for the securing of resources. As a whole, the dissertation reveals how new logics of media and economy build upon and clash with historical practices of cultural production, modes of aesthetic valuation, and regimes for mediating the artistic, the economic, and the social.
Disponível em:
https://tinyurl.com/PoderesdoSom
https://insular.com.br/produto/poderes-do-som-subtitulo-politicas-escutas-e-identidades/
Late Capitalism and the (Mis)Productions of Indie Music in Chile and Brazil
Through an ethnographic exploration of indie and independent rock-pop music in Chile and Brazil, this dissertation focuses on the political struggles emerging as actors seek to establish new structures for playing music as both a creative practice and as an economic activity in the wake of the industrial upheaval provoked by digital media. Chapter 1 considers how historical relations of musical circulation and valuation have laid the foundation for the particular mode of extending the touring routes of bands from the global north into Chile and Brazil. It details the articulation of emerging structures of economic production in the indie music touring industry with the personal biographies, listening practices, and media circulation habits of the people directly responsible for producing shows in Santiago, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. While these and related actors watch and contribute to this northern expansion into their cities, they struggle to create local structures for independent music circulation and finance which endure in time and space. Drawing on Brian Larkin’s (2008; 2013) pinpointing of infrastructures as the architectures upon which modern societies are built, Chapter 2 discusses several Santiago music venues in relation to civic topographies and the networks of musicians which circulate through them, focusing on the necessary social politics through which infrastructures for musical production arise, become the strata upon which further production can continue through time and space, and serve as the base material for producing economic gains. In chapter 3, I argue that musical sound itself forms an element of network infrastructure. I describe one set of Brazilian musicians’ practices of circulating music and media from the UK and US and connect them to the ethics of listening and social encounter at one São Paulo performance venue, detailing on a micro level the mutual constitution of aesthetic values, social practices, media infrastructures, and spaces for musical engagement as a transnational, yet very geographically weighted network of indie music. The fourth chapter details how the tensions between the construction of audience, value, aesthetics and circulation arising from digitally interpolated production structures manifest in the politics of a new type of institution called Fora do Eixo. Developed over the last decade in Brazil, within a unique political and cultural environment characterized by an embrace of digital networking tools as a means for democratizing cultural production and political participation, Fora do Eixo reveals the way these “social infrastructures” (Elyachar 2010), formed through social media platforms online, can be harnessed to build new institutions for the securing of resources. As a whole, the dissertation reveals how new logics of media and economy build upon and clash with historical practices of cultural production, modes of aesthetic valuation, and regimes for mediating the artistic, the economic, and the social.