The "alternative independent scene of the city of São Paulo": a research about the contemporary musical groups

• Grant number: 24/10141-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: November 01, 2024
• End date: October 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Marcia Cristina Consolim
• Grantee: Victor Alves de Abreu
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project seeks to study various self-styled "independent" musical groups in the city of São Paulo. The empirical cross-section for this research will be the "contemporary alternative independent scene in the city of São Paulo", from the 2010s onwards, with "scene" being understood as an observable part of a constituted field. It is understood in this research that this group is made up of two distinct groups in the "independent" scene, although both are defined by their distance from commercial or mainstream music. The project's main hypothesis is that, on the one hand, the individuals and/or groups with the greatest volume of global capital, who occupy the dominant positions in the field, defend an "aesthetic/creative" position of independence from the mainstream; on the other hand, the dominated individuals, with a smaller volume of accumulated capital, understand "independence" as an "economic/material" attitude, in other words, free from the impositions of the commercial market in the name of entrepreneurship in the job market. To this end, both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used, that is, ethnography, semi-structured interviews, but also the application of a survey and "Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA)".