The controversies in which musicians, producers and publics are involved with in what concerns forró, its parties, dances and music

Author(s)

Daniela do Amaral Alfonsi

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2008-03-14

Examining board members

Jose Guilherme Cantor Magnani; Fernando Antonio Pinheiro Filho; Luiz Henrique de Toledo

• Advisor: Jose Guilherme Cantor Magnani

Abstract

This dissertation presents the controversies in which musicians, producers and publics are involved with in what concerns forró, its parties, dances and music. In view of the denominations given to the styles of forró as a musical genre (such as electronic forró, pé-deserra and universitário), this work aims at exposing the meanings comprised by those words in different contexts, by different actors in the dispute over the definition and authentication of how to play the forró. More than to distinguish a specific kind of music making, those assortments of forró help form tastes, opinions and organize forró parties in São Paulo, the site focused on on the research. The parties occur in several neighborhoods of the metropolis and embrace different social classes and circuits. The classifications attributed to the forró also help to delimit the meanings of these social classes in different contexts and connect what is made in the Southeast of the country to what is produced in the Northeast, place know as the point of origin of forró. Thus, this dissertation asks how and why there is, from the point of view of the social distinction, an association among a popular musical genre, a source of leisure and the hierarchy of the spaces where forró parties take place. The main objective of this research, therefore, is, from the confluence of these three elements (music, dance and party) and from the distinct representations of the forró\'s origin, understand how the social production of difference that separates musicians, producers, publics and any other appraisers in various places and social circuits is made. (AU)