Music, Affect, Labor, and Value: Late Capitalism and the (Mis)Productions of Indie Music in Chile and Brazil Shannon Garland Submited in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Shannon Garland All rights reserved Abstract Music, Affect, Labor, and Value: Late Capitalism and the (Mis)Productions of Indie Music in Chile and Brazil Shannon Garland This dissertation traces the tensions surrounding indie music production in Santiago, Chile and São Paulo, Brazil. I conducted several years of ethnographic research on locally situated, yet transnationally interpolated, musical production, circulation and listening practices in Santiago and São Paulo. I open by detailing the expansion of the indie touring market from the global north into both cities, theorizing the enlistment of affect as a neoliberal technique for producing monetary value. The next chapter considers spaces for musical association as forms of infrastructure that both emerge from and themselves help constitute musical-social networks in Santiago. I follow by showing how the history of Brazilian individuals’ engagement with particular sets of indie sounds from the global north bear upon the contemporary formation of infrastructures of social relations, musical aesthetics, and places for musical and social association. Finally, I detail how the tensions between the construction of audience, value, aesthetics and circulation arising from new production structures manifest in the politics of a new type of Brazilian institution called Fora do Eixo. Here, I inspect the logics of aesthetic valuation in building structures for music production within a complex state-private nexus of cultural funding in Brazil. As a whole, this dissertation explores the political struggles emerging as actors seek to establish new structures for participating in live shows and for playing music as both a creative practice and as an economic activity within emerging forms of communication and cultural circulation made possible by digital media. Each struggle is simultaneously interpolated by the messy articulation of transnationally-produced notions of aesthetics, authentic modes of engagement with music, and moral-ethical ways of organizing music production, circulation and remuneration as a social practice. The dissertation thus highlights the way new media and economic logics build upon and clash with historical practices of production, evaluation of aesthetics, and regimes for mediating the artistic, the economic, and the social. Table of Contents Acknowledgments iv Dedication xii Notes on Terms, Translations, and Citations xiii Introduction 1 The Historical Configuration of Indie 4 Indie in the Digital Age 11 Alternative Histories of Indie in Chile 17 Alternative Histories of Indie in Brazil 21 History, Modernity, and Aesthetics 26 Affect, Late Capitalism, and Touring in Chile and Brazil 29 Chapter 1: The Evolution and Structure of the Foreign 31 Touring Industry in Chile and Brazil Chapters 2 and 3: Social Infrastructures, Musical Infrastructures, and Space 34 Chapter 4: Fora do Eixo and the Performance of Infrastructure 37 Chapter 1 41 The Transnational Indie Touring Industry, Social Production, and Branded Mediation Fauna: Expanding Circulation by Branding the Underground 53 Squat Produções: The Fulcrum of Southern Cone Touring 65 A Promoter’s Take on Brand Thinking 74 Queremos!: Crowd-Funding and the Aesthetics of Democracy 78 Queremos! History 80 Money, Social Media, and the Feeling of Democracy 85 i Conclusion 91 Chapter 2 97 Amiguismo: Building Music Venues in Santiago through the Politics of Social Connection The Growth of Indie in Santiago in the 21st Century 102 Estudio Elefante: Space as a Value of Musical Presentation 109 Bar Loreto: Defining Atmospheres through Socio-Musical Patentes 115 Espacio Cellar: The Loss of Magic with the Gain of Money 123 Blogging and Metrics: Connecting Networks through Media Representation 127 Conclusion 132 Chapter 3 134 The Musical Infrastructures of Exchanging Musical Ideas: Eugênia and the Small Universe of the Casa do Mancha Music Talk at the Casa do Mancha, Musical Infrastructures, 140 and Musical Sociality Learning to Listen to Eugênia 151 Cariocas at Mancha’s House and Musical Sociality 154 within the São Paulo Context Conclusion 166 Chapter 4 170 Fora do Eixo: Contested Infrastructures of Valuation, Representation, and Remuneration Fora do Eixo in Historical and Political Context 174 The Impact of Fora do Eixo and Its Politics of Representation 181 Fora do Eixo History 186 Card, Cachê, and the Logics of Aesthetic Valuation 192 Aesthetics, Value, and Public Representation 201 ii The Tactics and Social Imperatives of Fora do Eixo Media Promotion 207 Grito Rock and the Political Uses of Media Promotion 216 Conclusion 219 Conclusion 223 Endnotes 235 Works Cited 236 iii Acknowledgements In many ways, this project has been developing since 2003, when I first went to Santiago, Chile as undergraduate student. At the Universidad de Chile, Rodrigo Torres allowed me into his graduate ethnomusicology class, and introduced me to John Blacking, Steven Feld, and Simon Frith. He helped me map musical and class divisions in Chile, lent me books on Nueva Canción, and encouraged me to keep writing out my critical observations surrounding social uses of music. In a roundabout way, Dr. Torres’ help led me to the Víctor Jara foundation, and from there, to a friendship with Vicente Hernández, who introduced me to Chilean and Spanish- language punk music, to the Chilean visual art world, and then in 2006 to the emerging indie scene treated in this dissertation. In addition to Vicente, I thank Sebastián Morales for directing me to Super45 at that time, and I thank Laurel Bernstein for her friendship, interpretation of Chilean hipsterism, and laughter, even with half a cold. No one knew such experiences would turn into a dissertation, but I am thankful for the serendipity that they did. Once in New York, Iván Daguer became my buddy for Brooklyn’s DIY shows and has been an invaluable source of information about experimental, psychedelic, and rock music from around the globe. His return to Chile just before my dissertation fieldwork also provided a sense of continuity between what often feel like entirely different lives. I also thank Christián Torres- Roje, aka Nutria, for the beautiful songs, the unstructured rehearsals, the chance to reconnect with performance in a new way, and the unplanned base playing with Nutria NN in New York gave me for connecting with more musicians and others in Santiago. iv I thank Todd P for his work in Brooklyn and his willingness to talk with me about it all. I thank Carmen Duarte for writing about bands in Brooklyn, which lead me to the Todd-P and Super45 band exchange that launched my Master’s thesis project. From there and on out, Cristián Araya has continuously overwhelmed me with stories, information, new sounds, and even new friends, like Jose Sagredo, who helped me find housing and allowed me to glimpse more of the listening-social side of musical production in Santiago. Fernando Mujica, equally, always surprises me with his enthusiasm to discuss all of his projects and to continue developing new ones. And I thank David Ponce, for interview in 2008, and also for his crucial book chronicling the early years of Chilean rock. An ardent fan who always appears at shows, David exemplifies the art of journalism. Thank you to Hixaga Ximatik for being so supportive, even from afar and before meeting me, and for introducing me to Dënver. I thank Ervo Pérez, for keeping things weird, and Álvaro Daguer for taking me to them. Álvaro has been crucial to this project in many ways, first introducing me to Alvarito Gómez, Perrosky, The Ganjas, and the rest of the Algo Records crew, then providing housing, more connections, and a mapping of newer psychedelic bands, as well as his own sounds. My dissertation fieldwork in Chile would not have been possible without the continued help of the aforementioned people, as well as many others. Ximena Rivas provided a lovely room, conversation and show-going partner, and Andrés Padilla let me crash whenever I came back into town, and fed me banana bread to boot. I Thank Roberto Parra and Pía Sotomayor, for indulging all my questions and letting me work for them for research and fun; Josefina Parodi for running Elefante and taking me on a nutty trip to Valpo, among other things; Goli Gaete for the friendship and wonderful music; Pablo Muñoz for the perspective and laughs; and Pamela Sepúlveda and Daniela Saldías for running Michita Rex, producing their own interesting music, v and being all-around good people. Same goes to Ariel Altamirano. I give thanks to Diego Sepúlveda for sharing his different ideas about the Chilean music industry. Álvaro Solar, Andrés Acevedo, Francisco Marín, Andrés Nusser, Rodrigo Santis, Carla Arias, Daniel Riveros, Mariana Montenegro, Freddy Olguín, Sebastián Amado, Camilo Salas, Ed Milla, Francisco Franetovic, Alejandro Jofre, Rodrigo Hurtado, Felipe Arriagada, Ignácio Rodríguez, Enrique Elgueta, José Manuel Cerda, Andrés Zanetta, Andrés Panes, and many entire bands, including Föllakzoid, The Holydrug Couple, WatchOut!, The Ganjas, and Casino, all of these people took time out of their busy lives to talk with me at length about their projects and the music they either make, write about, produce, or all three at once. Without such conversations this text would not exist. I feel the same gratitude for the time given by Aldo Benincasa and everyone at Loreto; by Pía Cardenas and everyone at Cellar. Marcelo Peña, Elisita Balbontín and Sebastián Román’s work as Makaroni gave multi-country perspective as well as fun, and I owe Marcelo especially for the late-night bike rides and kindness. Thank you also Eduardo Streeter and Diego Hernández for talking with me and being such good people. Finally, I thank Francisca Montes and Vicente Hernández for the hospitality and stories, María Paz for being awesome, and Gabriel Pinto for saving my life with a coat.