Of Musics and Bodies: Embodying the Brazilian Favela Funk

Elena Tiis. Urban Studies MSc. Universiteit van Amsterdam.

‘Moral panics depend on the generation of diffuse normative concerns, while the successful creation of folk devils rests on their stereotypical portrayal as atypical actors against a background that is overtypical.’ (Cohen 1980: 61)

‘All across the favelas, few people listened to the music that outsiders think of as Brazilian. Everyone knows the samba, bossa nova, and Musica Popular Brasileira (MPB) hits. They’re the soundtrack of the telenovelas […]. But the mass of favela dwellers have embraced hard core rap and funk […] as their emblematic sound.’ (Neuwirth 2005: 39)

‘Parapapapapapapa/ Paparapapapapapa/ paraapapapapapa kla que bum/ parapapapapa’; the catchy, rhythmic refrain of ‘Rap das Armas’ (Rap of Weapons) song mimics the discharge of an automatic gun. The lyrics’ allusion to the everyday violence in the favelas (shantytowns/informal settlements) of Rio has given it the status of ‘proibidão’, or prohibited music, due to its alleged condoning of violence (see Yúdice). The debate whether this song condones violence or not (I believe it does not) is eclipsed by the more pertinent question of how and why it is possible for such a song to be written, performed and danced to at parties. The process by which drug violence and gun crime are prevalent enough phenomena to be sung about in the ‘public domain’ is an interesting and complex one.
Arguably, music is primarily a bodily relation. It is not merely the lyrics (if applicable) or the identity of the singer that is attractive in any given song but the things that the beat does to the human body which is a type of seduction. Hence, studying the dynamics and spatial politics of funk music in the favelas of Rio requires thinking in terms of bodies – to examine music as something which is predominately corporal and linked to bodily identity. This essay is only preliminary, little more than a few notes on the subject, and just a very small examination of the complex circumstances that intersect illegalities, criminalities as well as pleasures in the favelas. My aim is only to sketch an approach as concerns the expression of the everyday concerns of favela dwellers through music as well as acknowledge musical expressions as an important field of research.
Brazilian funk is often clearly marked a ‘lower’ status music, cheaply produced and enjoyed by predominately people from poorer, ‘blacker’ neighbourhoods (Caldeira 2000: 297; Yúdice 1994: 204). Funkeiros, or the people who enjoy this type of music, have been maligned in the popular press, especially during the early 90s (see Yúdice). My specifically body-relational reading will take on board the insights of Susan McClary who notes how the policing of music actually involves a polemic against the body which, in the case of favela funk, means that questions of racial identity in specifically Brazilian context come into play.
I will attempt analogical and relational ways of conceptualising the social dynamics of funk music, to which extent I will be using examples such as Teresa Caldeira’s book on policing and the contesting of access to city space in São Paulo and Patricia Marquez’s notions of the objectification of youth in the context of institutional responses to youth criminality in Caracas. These, as well as Tricia Rose’s highly contextualised consideration of the birth of hip hop in the context of the postindustrial city of New York, although far away geographically from my chosen context, offer some relevant theoretical import. Caldeira’s consideration of the privatisation and the shrinking of public space will be invested for the consideration of music as a type of public encounter, a type of resistance to privatising encroachments. In this context, Rose’s discussion of hip hop is interesting, because she considers that it replicates and reimagines experiences of urban life and thus symbolically appropriates urban space (1994: 71).

Of (certain) bodies

Spaces and places need to be traversed by bodies – which acquires a special frisson when these spaces and places are sonic because certain symbolic contestations of space acquire an audible ‘materiality’. McClary’s work in this area is of interest: she notes that denouncements of music involve a response for a twin imagined threat – the subversion of authority and (bodily) seduction – which has recurred as a constant throughout music history (1994: 30). In an important reflexive turn for ethnomusicology, she highlights how there is something of the suspicion of music also discernible in the attempt of many popular culture scholars to marginalise the music itself (i.e. to focus on lyrics, politics, reception or culture industry) (ibid.). To this extent there are at least two reasons why music itself and its imagery needs to be figured into the cultural studies project: there is a need to, first, find ways in which to understand socially grounded rhetorical devices by means of which music creates its intersubjective effects and second, to have a sense of the shifting musical strategies and priorities which is important for the consideration of power issues (1994: 32). She contends that it is more productive to focus on music’s correspondence with bodies, because these always arrive already marked with histories which are patterned by class, gender and ethnicity – in this sense music provides for a terrain where competing notions of the body as a symbolic package vie for attention and influence (1994: 33). Indeed, in Brazil class has always operated in relation to various other determinants such as race (the poorest Brazilians tend to be darker) or violence, which disproportionally affects the poorer, younger and darker complexioned Brazilians (Moehn 2007: 187).
The effects of globalisation and culture industry play into a crucible of local concerns marked by its own conceptions about bodily identities, as opposed to the other way around. Livio Sansone, for instance, disagrees with the common position that the massification and homogenization of cultural forms are processes that develop steadily and according to the same principles whatever the country (2001: 136). He cites two misconceptions – first, the notion that music styles spread from the centre to the periphery, which portrays the globalisation of Western culture rather than how local young people reinterpret the symbols associated with global youth styles and second, an ethnomusicological bias that relates social identity to behaviour type which means that each gang/style/subculture becomes linked to a specific use of a single type of music in a very static way (2001: 137). Rather, it is a question of fusion, quotation and reflection in which funk becomes a transponder (or receiver and amplifier) of the globalisation process (2001: 138).
Funk, in this context, is a 1990s term which is used to refer to a variety of electronic musics associated with contemporary U.S-based black musics by most Brazilians (Sansone 2001: 139). Its meaning varies within Brazil – in São Paulo and the south it is basically hip hop which can be either local or imported while in Rio it is used to denominate mainly Brazilian-produced variations usually predicated on a combination of ‘two young working-class voices and a simple rhythm extracted from a cheap, pre-programmed beat box’ (ibid.), for instance that of ‘Rap das Armas’. Funk music itself is simple in terms of rhythm and it is hence dismissed by most music critics as a poor lower-class urban version of U.S. imports, yet it still reflects and redefines the divisions with the lower-class communities and frontiers between the community and the system (Sansone 2001: 139).
As McClary notes, music can be subversive because it contests assumptions about the body (1994: 33). The musical power of the disenfranchised lies more often their ability to articulate different ways of construing the body; since the historicity of musical styles is construed as the historicity of the body, it becomes pertinent to consider how our experiences of our own bodies are themselves often constituted through musical imagery (1994: 35). In favelas, the presence of funk in the alley ways forms a main part of the self-built community and does not characterise a subgroup or a style as such (Sansone 2001: 140). Furthermore, funk does not form a stable subculture, rather its circumstantial use as a divider – sometimes along ethnic lines (2001: 149) inscribes it as such. I think this leaves room for the conception of music as a type of public encounter between various types of bodies which is not strictly equalising but with the ability to efface some of the boundaries with which these bodies are customarily invested. Funk parties provide at least the possibility for the a type of benign encounter between different human bodies.
Sansone’s findings run counter to the common study tendencies he is reviewing. It is not the intrinsic quality of the music/lyrics but the position and consumption within relations of power and pleasure that transform style into an instrument of blackness or something seductive for non-blacks (2001: 155). It is important to note the resilience of territorialised musical traditions and tastes, and how different structural contexts contribute to the persistence of localisms (2001: 156); black youth musics are not necessarily based on similar cultural and structural conditions (2001: 158) and hence should not be theorised as such.

Of (certain) contexts

More nuanced (academic) understandings of youth cultures have been present since the 80s and 90s. They stress the complex intersections of music and specific location (Shuker 2008: 195), emphasising the concept of a scene which is ‘a specific kind of urban cultural context and practice of spatial coding’ (Stahl in Shuker 2008: 199). The state has regulatory power which shapes local music scenes due to policy on the level of international community (market access and copyrights), nation state (e.g. broadcast rights, content quotas, censorship) as well as regional and local governmental levels (which affect venue access and the policing of public spaces) (2008: 205). More often than not, governmental attitudes tend to reflect conservative views of culture, justifying non-intervention in commercial sphere which exists in tension with the concern to regulate a medium when it is associated with a threat to social order (2008: 207).
George Yúdice offers a more militant reading of favela funk as a type of music which – although occupying the same physical space as samba – questions the fantasy of access to social space for the underprivileged (1994: 197) and the more convivial image that those in power wish to propagate of Brazil. To him, Brazilian funk is a challenge to the ownership of the city space by the middle classes, a claim to it that seeks to establish new forms of identity (ibid.). Ademir Lemos’s ‘Rap do Arrastão’, for instance, deals with everyday violence in the favelas – poor youth have little rights to speak of, and they are subject to police harassment and social and geographical segregation. The multiple spaces of new megacities are not traversable by everyone and the poor tend to be prisoners in their own neighbourhoods (Santos in Yúdice 1994: 204). Yúdice contends that ‘funkeiro culture’ has ‘resisted the terms of participation’ which grant cultural representation but no access to goods and services like in the case of other subaltern cultural forms, as such the political significance of funk must be construed otherwise (1994: 208). I think this point stands best if allied with and moderated by McClary’s notion that music itself, especially as it intersects with the body and destabilizes accepted norms of subjectivity is where musical politics resides which is why, even if yoked to an explicitly political agenda, music often proves anomalous (1994: 32-33). Cultural audibility does not automatically imply social power yet it can participate in an attempt to change social formations (1994: 34).
The very meaning of songs is imbricated in a certain type of reading, and these are nothing if not multiple. Meaning is ultimately dependent and produced due to the associations listeners attach to a work of art and the period in which these renditions are situated (Shuker 2008: 101). The same popular culture ‘texts’ can be heard in varying ways and for different purposes, and they can be misconstrued (104). As Stanley Cohen (who first coiled the term ‘moral panic’ in conjunction with studying media reports of disturbances relating to Mods and Rockers in England in the 1970s) notes, mass communication of stereotypes depends on the symbolic power of words and images by which neutral words can be made to symbolise complex ideas and emotions (1980: 40). This is why some songs enter lists of prohibited music. Most importantly, this is where music intersects most potently with the reality of bodies. How music and special types of lyrics intersect with human actors become a point of concern for many. As such it is surprising that the effects and the interpretations of this perplexing physicality of music are often elided in academic discussion and writing about music.
To this extent, I will backtrack a little, and bring writing on the contextualised dimension of music into play. Tricia Rose’s consideration of hip hop’s origins in the postindustrial conditions of New York City in the late 1970s is an important analogy for how music and its accompanying culture emerge from an intersection of lack and desire in the postindustrial city, managing the contradictions of social alienation and hope. Speaking of New York, she writes that since the 1970s global forces have had a direct and sustained impact on urban job opportunity structures and exacerbated racial and gendered forms of discrimination, aided by the diminishing funds allocated to social services (1994: 73-74). Shifts in economic conditions, access to housing, demographics and communication networks crucial to the formation of the conditions which nurtured the cultural hybrids and socio-political tenor of hip hop (1994: 73). Such a description offers a clear parallel to the situation in Rio although it acquires an unmistakeably local tenor; economic restructuring according to the neoliberal model since the late 1970s has further marginalised the marginalised in Brazil as well as the U.S. but the structure, extent and culture of the favelas forms its own special case. Rose notes that societal ‘transformation [is the] basis for digital imaginations all over the world’ (1994: 71) to which extent hip hop makes urban terrain work on behalf of the dispossessed (1994: 72). Funk acts in largely similar ways, offering a type of access to the city for people whom it is usually (more or less overtly) denied.

Of (certain types of) violence

For the purpose of examining the criminality and insecurity that the most explicit lyrics relate,
Caldeira’s studies are informative. She notes that official crime statistics overrepresent upper-class victims and underrepresent working class victims, which is why they reflect conditions other than crime (2000: 112). They are a good indication of the Brazilian conception of individual rights and an embedded disregard for them (2000: 115). This has the effect of making structural reasons opaque: wrongly individualising perpetrators and, then again, wrongly grouping people into manageable, homogenised units when this is for the purposes of construing this group negatively. Poverty and criminality correlate because they are a process of the reproduction of the victimization and criminalisation of the poor (2000: 137) – the correspondence is not essential in any way. Most importantly, Caldeira focuses on discourses of violence and notes that violent acts have their significatory as well as their symbolic dimension. The talk of crime organises the structure of meaning and counteracts the disruption caused by the experiences of violence (2000: 28), making them comprehensible. Violence, a part from being something physical perpetrated on the body of someone, is involved with ways of talking, thinking and feeling.
Furthermore, if the fear of crime and crime are supplying the language with which to talk and think about many destabilising processes, also a much more segregated city space is taking place (2000: 40) – with the retreat of the elites behind walls the spaces for public encounters between different social groups are shrinking (2000: 297). Different social groups experience transformed public spaces in contradictory ways: middle-class as well as working-class young people connect to the global youth through symbols and trends but they physically occupy different spaces in Brazil (ibid.). Working-class youth cannot avoid public spaces, as such their styles and experiences are structured differently – themes such as police abuse and disrespect are more alien to middle-class existence (ibid; Yúdice 1994: 204).
This circumscribed public encounter between people of different class and identity is well interrogated by Caldeira’s concept of ‘unbounded body’ (a body that is considered permeable, or open to intervention and manipulation by authority) (2000: 368). It draws attention to the ways in which institutional and repressive apparatuses of the state operate on bodies. Caldeira contends that the circumstantial creation of unbounded bodies derives from analogical ways and terms of thinking as when the issue is capital punishment and the beating/disciplining of children. Both are considered pedagogic, making an example and setting limits; pain is used as an instrument of authority that induces submission and compliance in the disciplining of ‘weak’ people (2000: 365-66). As a side note which however corroborates this effect, it seems beneficial to briefly detail Patricia Marquez’s study of street children who are in state care in Caracas, Venezuela. She notes how state institutions develop constructions of deviancy that are isolated from the reality of the environment (the life on the streets, abusive familial relations, material lack) the children are responding to (1999: 112) to which extent this, coupled with serious disinvestment into providing care for street children, results in the reification (or objectification) of children as a series of antisocial acts (1999: 138). The state assumes tutelage of young persons using negative constructions of crime/youth/mental/social health as a result of which the social, cultural, economic and political contexts of acts are ignored and the transgressors get labelled with psychosocial clichés (1999: 139-44).
The point of bringing such an example into play is how it highlights how institutional effects are actually power games on the bodies of the dominated which, in the Brazilian context, Caldeira contends are a facet of Brazilian ‘disjunctive democracy’ (a democracy which deligimates civil citizenship and civil rights in many respects) which is not the same cultural and political logic which creates bounded individuals in the tradition of citizenship (2000: 372) which means that egalitarian legal protection of citizens and the right to decent living conditions have actually become even less accessible for many citizens (Moehn 2007: 186). Music, in its innocuous way, is involved in a conflict of valuations taking place in public spheres, which couples with power structures and institutional forces as well as issues of class and racial stratification. Marquez’s study of the institutional responses to youth crime in Venezuela exposes how young people are reified as ‘minors’ (1999: 129) and dismantled as a series of antisocial acts in stead of being apprehended as beings acting in a social, cultural, economic and political contexts (1999: 138-139). This has the effect of wrongly individualising young people (young bodies) when they commit crimes and wrongly making them part of a group when one can be identified, e.g. ‘all funkeiros are the same’.

Conclusion
‘In the postindustrial urban context of dwindling low-income housing, a trickle of meaningless jobs for young people, mounting police brutality and increasingly demonic depictions of young inner-city residents, hip hop style is black urban renewal.’ (Rose 1994: 85)

During the course of this essay, I have tried to chart some of the ways in which bodies (as complex systems which unite symbolic meanings invested in race, culture, citizenship and authority structures) interact in city spaces through the medium of different types of musics. The deeply embodied dimension of music attains its most radical dimension in discourse. If theories position the physicality of music in opposition to political substance, they have the effect of reinscribing the polemics against the body that characterises attempts at policing music (McClary 1994: 33). To combat this, it is necessary to embody music, or to trace its effects on different kinds of bodies. Music is as well an issue of space. At issue is the contestation of cultural meaning and access to physical urban realm for which music often acts as proxy.
I have involved three different examinations of three different cities – Rose of New York, Caldeira’s of São Paulo, and Marquez of Caracas – in order to highlight some theoretically important analogies and aspects of studying contested musics. Although these examinations are based on different contexts, some of their notions are appropriate and illuminate my chosen context. Nevertheless, it is still important to keep in touch with the specific local flavour of funk, and its embeddedness in the local context of Rio for which many more on-the-ground studies should be conducted (e.g. Moehn 2007). Funk, exactly because it is not exactly artistically grand or in any way specifically inventive (it does not develop the impressive Brazilian tradition of percussion for instance) or even politically conscious, manages to create a ‘space’ for many underprivileged young people. In this way, funk music can be seen as a way of contesting and appropriating (symbolic) access to city space – even if it only offers access by proxy.

Bibliography:
Caldeira, T. R. R. (2000) City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo. University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles & London.
Cohen, S. (1980) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. Martin Robertson: Oxford.
Marquez, P. (1999) ‘Guerra Contra el Hampa: Control through Media, Law and the State’. The Street is My Home: Youth and Violence in Caracas. Stanford University Press: Stanford.
McClary, S. (1994) ‘Same As It Ever Was: Youth Culture and Music’. In Ross, A. & Rose, T., Microphone Fiends: youth music and youth culture. Routledge: London & New York.
Moehn, F. (2007) ‘Music, Citizenship, and Violence in Postdictatorship Brazil’. Latin American Music Review. Vol. 28, Number 2.
Neuwirth, R. (2005) Shadow Cities: A billion squatters, a new urban world. Routledge: London & New York.
Rose, T. (1994) ‘A Style Nobody Can Deal With: Politics, Style and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop’. In Ross, A. & Rose, T., Microphone Fiends: youth music and youth culture. Routledge: London & New York.
Sansone, L. (2001) ‘The Localization of Global Funk in Bahia and in Rio’. In (eds.) Perrone, C.A & Dunn, C., Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization. University Press of Florida: Gainesville.
Shuker, R. (2008) Understanding Popular Music Culture. Third ed. Routledge: London & New York.
Yúdice, G. (1994) ‘The Funkification of Rio’. In Ross, A. & Rose, T., Microphone Fiends: youth music and youth culture. Routledge: London & New York.

Sung by MCs Junior and Leonardo in the 1990s and publicised especially with the appearance of the MCs Cidinho and Doca version on the soundtrack of Tropa de Elite (2007) film.

GRRRNDZERO webgune, online magazine eta kontzertu antolatzaile taldeko Julien Bessek Noise & Capitalism liburuaren pasarte batzuk frantseserara itzuli ditu bere borondatez. Itzultzen dabilen edonork dakien bezala, lan kozkorra hartu du Julienek, eta ezin diogu eskertu bertzerik egin.
Bere baimenarekin itzulitako idatziak gehitzen ditugu ondotik.

L’essai Noise & Capitalism, publié par un collectif de musicien-ne-s issu-e-s des musiques expérimentales, improvisées ou bâtardement rassemblées sous le terme générique de “noise”, est un pavé de 200 pages traîtant du potentiel de subversion & d’émancipation de ces musiques dans le contexte néo-libéral actuel, contexte qui se nourrit de plus en plus de l’art, de la créativité individuelle et des contre-cultures pour donner un nouveau visage au capitalisme. La lecture de Noise & Capitalism peut être laborieuse, étant donné qu’il n’ a été publié qu’ en anglais et que le ton y est globalement académique, voici donc quelques passages traduits.

NOISE & CAPITALISM………………………………………..(extraits traduits)

“The Foundry n’est pas un vieux pub de l’East End mais il occupe un emplacement privilégié depuis lequel observer la transformation radicale de l’est de Londres depuis 15 ans. Parfait exemple de la réorientation de la force économique, depuis la production industrielle du Siècle des Lumières vers le tournant post-moderne de l’industrie du loisir/plaisir, le quartier désormais mondialement célèbre où se trouve The Foundry, Shoreditch, est passé d’une zone industrielle, quartier général & ligne de front du National Front, à un endroit branché pour clubs, DJs et groupes. Au sein de The Foundry, une ancienne usine, sont représentés à peu près tous les styles de musique underground par le biais de concerts, festivals, sound-systems, soirées “open mic” et même le rendez-vous régulier de la noise et de l’improvisation, Oligarch Shit Transfusion.

Cependant, alors qu’à Shoreditch s’effectuait cette transition, le mouvement de ses résidents s’est accéléré, passant d’artistes et de squatteurs vivant dans d’anciens entrepôts décrépis aux architectes, créateurs et graphistes. Aujourd’hui, les habitants y résidant sont une super-élite d’employés municipaux et quelques artistes stars ayant capitalisé sur la hausse rapide des valeurs immobilières. Il se trouve que les promoteurs avaient étudié la gentrification de Chelsea, et envoyé des artistes garder la place au chaud en attendant que l’endroit devienne suffisamment “cool” et que les prix de l’immobilier commencent à grimper. Leurs services n’étant plus nécessaires, les contrats de courte durée des artistes prirent fin et ils furent chassés de la zone, ainsi que toute personne n’ayant pas été capable de racheter au prix fort leur habitation. Pour les “esprits créatifs” qui avaient donné à l’endroit son cachet culturel et peuplé son réseau de bars et de cafés qui deviendraient bientôt la destination des chasseurs urbains de plaisirs branchés, le marché semblait injuste, comme si on les avait dépouillé de quelque chose sans rien en retour. Si Shoreditch est devenu une métaphore de la manière dont le capitalisme utilise la créativité à ses fins, The Foundry pourrait être un rappel que d’autres possibilités éxistent. Cependant, cet endroit sale et politisé coexiste avec la douce transformation du quartier en terrain de jeu pour les citoyens socialement ascendants de la ville-monde.”

“Howard Slater affirme que le capital a transformé les relations de production afin d’imposer jusque dans nos propres sens son système de valorisation, la production de valeur étant passée de l’usine à l’”usine sans murs”; il parle de:

“La manière dont nos corps, nos membranes sensorielles, sont devenus non seulement le lieu sur-stimulé des messages de l’industrie médiatique et de la séduction subliminale, mais également des terrains cruciaux de la maintenance continue de nous-mêmes comme “points de circulation”.“

“Si Slater a raison, un endroit comme The Foundry pourrait être considéré comme un point-clé de la lutte dans laquelle les artistes et musiciens expérimentent dans des conditions hostiles et se confrontent à l’industrie médiatique, à la soi-disante industrie “créative” et à leurs tentatives d’emprisonner, déformer et automatiser nos propres sens de perception et d’affectivité.”

Anthony Iles in “Introduction”

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“A quel moment pensez-vous que la vraie innovation, la vraie expérimentation survient? Probablement quand les gens sont dans une situation d’insécurité nouvelle pour eux et qu’ils sont un peu indécis et effrayés. Ce sont les moments où les gens doivent repousser leurs limites. Les gens innovent lorsqu’ils sortent de leur confort familier.”

“La musique improvisée a le potentiel de subvertir les formes classiques de production musicale, mais c’est à ses musiciens de s’y introduire afin de les déconstruire. Ouvrir de nouveaux champs de possibilités signifie devenir fragile jusqu’à détruire les peurs qui nous retiennent.”

“Nous ne parlons pas ici de changer les conditions de travail de la majorité des gens, mais d’avoir conscience que la culture, la créativité et la communication sont en train de devenir les outils de “l’usine sans murs”. Nous devons être suspicieux des manières dont les pratiques culturelles peuvent être exploitées par le capital. Pour cette raison, nous devons constamment questionner nos intentions, nos façons de faire et leurs relations aux conditions dans lesquelles nous agissons, afin d’éviter la récupération par un système qui produira des murs idéologiques autour de nous. Etre opposé à ces conditions signifie danger et insécurité.”

Mattin in “Going Fragile”

Pour lire la suite des extraits ou télécharger le livre dans son intégralité, cliquer sur “lire la suite”.

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“La naissance de la noise peut uniquement être expliquée dans le contexte de l’effondrement de la ville industrielle. La noise est un genre profondément métropolitain (même dans sa forme écologique) qui s’est d’abord fait entendre dans le paysage urbain & industriel ravagé et le climat culturel réactionnaire des années Thatcher-Reagan et, peut-être de moindre manière, durant l’ère de Yasuhiro Nakasone. Coïncidant avec la désindustrialisation en Occident et au Japon , une partie essentielle du processus de globalisation se développa: l’émergence d’un réseau global d’information et de gigantesques multinationales. La saturation par les biens de consommation et la simultanéité de l’information tissèrent un réseau beaucoup affiné et précis que tout ce qu’on pouvait imaginer à l’ère industrielle.”

“A sa création, la musique noise était influencée par diverses constatations, culturelles comme politiques, en rapport avec son regard sur la société post-industrielle. En termes de musique, les premières performances noise confrontaient ce qu’elles percevaient comme la destruction du rock par une industrie culturelle reflétant la production de masse et ce qu’Attali appelle la répétition. A leurs yeux, la standardisation industrielle au sein de l’industrie du disque en particulier incarnait l’émergence de modèles uniques et totalitaires. L’impulsion initiale derrière la noise reposait sur la constatation qu’étant donné que la production industrielle imposait les critères de la répétition au sein de la musique de masse, toute forme culturelle de répétition existant sur le marché des commodités obéirait à la logique implacable de l’industrialisation. Les musiciens de noise créèrent donc une musique non-répétable, en dehors du nexus commercial.”

Csaba Toth in “Noise Theory”

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“Bien entendu, il est peu probable (mais pas impossible) que quelqu’un décide d’écouter ou de jouer de la musique improvisée uniquement en réalisant la valeur politique de cette musique. Et c’est une source de déception permanente de voir beaucoup de gens que je connais et considère comme politiquement intelligents être toujours incapables de s’identifier au radicalisme qui réside dans le processus d’improvisation libre. Pour beaucoup de radicaux de gauche, ce genre de musique demeure incompréhensible, ceci étant principalement dû au fait que les improvisateurs créent une musique dépourvue de tonalité conventionnelle et de rythmes familiers, volontairement désinteréssée de tout appel commercial et démagogique. Alors que pour beaucoup d’auditeurs, n’importe quel ersatz de folk-rock merdique ou même de “world music”, tant qu’il contient un message politisé ou une vague allusion à un évènement politique historique, fait l’affaire. Et cela continue de fonctionner pour eux malgré le fait qu’ils soient conscients des compromis avec le capitalisme que la plupart des musiques populaires sont obligées de faire pour exister. Il semblerait qu’il ne vient pas à l’esprit de beaucoup d’idéologues de gauche que le changement dans les relations sociales devra avoir lieu dans toutes les formes d’activités humaines, musique inclue. Pendant ce temps, nombreux musiciens puisant leur inspiration dans l’improvisation s’aperçoivent que certaines facettes de leur créativité sont potentiellement exploitables par le secteur en plein essor du marché des loisirs appelé “art”. Tout ceci est très décourageant pour ceux qui pensent que la musique libre improvisée peut être d’une certaine manière un véhicule ou un modèle pour le genre de société, autre que capitaliste néo-libérale, dans laquelle nous préfèrerions vivre.”

“Malgré tout, avant de sombrer dans la désillusion, examinons ce qui se passe avec cette appropriation capitaliste, bien que mineure, de l’improvisation libre. Pendant des années j’ai pensé que certains des sons incroyablement discordants et la bousculade des normes auraient résisté au marketing. Alors que pour moi-même et d’autres c’est cet “autre” sonore que nous trouvons attractif, j’ai l’habitude des réactions aux musiques expérimentales et improvisées de la part de gens qui ne les considèrent pas du tout comme de la musique! Ce qui se passe aujourd’hui c’est que dans certains contextes, la dissonance et la déconstruction sont devenues des expériences tolérables. Peut-être est-ce ce à quoi Cardew faisait référence lorsque durant les années 60 & 70 il observait la bourgeoisie endimanchée lors de, par exemple, la Biennale de Venise ou les performances de la Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Ils écoutaient attentivement et applaudissaient poliment la musique de John Cage & co. “La bourgeoisie a appris à prendre ses médicaments“, déclara-t-il. Qu’est-ce que l’avant-garde doit faire pour choquer aujourd’hui? Rien du tout. Comme Chris Cutler le suggère avec une conviction éclairée: l’avant-garde est morte. Beaucoup de publics ont appris à applaudir poliment à presque n’importe quelle occasion, tant qu’ils sont persuadés que leur approbation témoigne de leur bon goût; et il y a de toute façon toujours le verre ou le dîner d’après-concert à apprécier.”

Edwin Prévost in “Free Improvisation in Music and Capitalism: Resisting Authority and the Cults of Scientism and Celebrity”

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“Le courage de la jeunesse la rend capable de regarder les choses en face. Sa folie est d’imaginer que personne ne l’a fait avant elle. L’avantage de la noise comme style pré-établi est qu’il met au premier plan un aspect de la musique qui trouble la société bien pensante depuis au moins Beethoven. En gros, le refus de la musique de jouer le simple rôle obéissant de décoration ou de divertissement: la musique authentique est un rapport à la vérité, le contraire d’une simple soirée agréable.”

“La production de commodités entraine de la compétition entre différents capitaux, dont le résultat est l’innovation technique permanente. L’obsolescence culturelle est le corrélaire spirituel de cette guerre de tous contre tous. La révolte oedipienne doit se résumer aux limites étroites des préférences de style, afin que les jeunes trouvent une “identité” en consommant quelque chose de différent que leurs parents. Comme d’habitude avec la logique des commodités, il est difficile pour la morale d’analyser ce processus. Est-ce bien ou mal? Aucune idée! C’est contradictoire, c’est en train de se produire, c’est inévitable: on vit dans ce bordel, que doit-on y faire?”

Ben Watson in “Noise as Permanent Revolution”

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“Ces transformations du capitalisme ont été très largement abordées par Luc Boltanski et Eve Chiapello dans leur livre Le Nouvel Esprit du Capitalisme. Les deux chercheurs distinguent dans leurs travaux deux sortes de critiques accompagnant l’histoire du capitalisme. Ils nomment la première “critique sociale”, caractérisée par la lutte pour l’égalité, contre l’exploitation et l’individualisme et la seconde “critique artistique”, sensée dénoncer l’oppression et la domination par la standardisation et la commodification.” (note de gz : Par “commodification”, les sciences sociales de langue anglaise entendent la transformation des relations sociales en marchandises )

“La critique artistique exigeait davantage de liberté et d’autonomie individuelle et refusait le contrôle par la hiérarchisation et les tâches planifiées. Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme lui donna satisfaction en abandonnant le Fordisme et en ré-arrangeant l’organisation du travail en s’adaptant à ces demandes. La nouvelle organisation fut accompagnée d’une nouvelle forme de précarité. Le sociologue Pierre-Michel Menger le résume en ces mots:

“Donc l’ironie est que les arts, qui ont développé une forte opposition à la domination du marché, apparaissent comme les précurseurs de l’expérimentation vers la flexibilité, en fait l’hyper-flexibilité“.

Eve Chiapello explique:

“La prévoyance et la rationalité, d’après les consultants en management, ne sont plus les seules clefs du succès. En fait, il faut “diriger par le chaos”, innover constament, être flexible, intuitif, avoir un fort “quotient émotionnel”. Les entreprises sont trop bureaucratiques, trop hiérarchisées, elles aliènent la force de travail, elles doivent “apprendre à danser“…

“Les entreprises au sein desquelles ces impératifs se manifestent prennent la forme de structures organiques qui permettent les relations interpersonnelles en les rendant horizontales. Elles s’inscrivent dans une logique de processus et cherchent à encourager une implication grandissante de chacun de leurs employés. Les singularités peuvent interagir plus facilement et de là le profit escompté se trouve dans la créativité favorisée par la rencontre de ces différences. Ces transformations ont tendance à établir un lien entre le monde économique et ce qui pourrait constituer les spécificités du monde artistique. Elles contribuent à rendre leur opposition moins évidente:

“La séparation entre les deux mondes n’est plus si sûre, les frontières sont plus vagues, rendant possibles des transferts de logiques, de personnes et une hybridation réciproque“.

Matthieu Saladin in “Point of Resistance and Criticism in Free Improvisation: Remarks on a Musical Practice and Some Economic Transformation”

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“Ce n’est pas nouveau, mais nos propres propensions affectives ont été rendues productives. (…)

Jonathan Beller:

“Le commerce n’est pas seulement le mouvement de l’argent et des objets, c’est le mouvement du capital à travers notre système sensoriel.”

Nos sens travaillent.”

Howard Slater in “Prisoners of the Earth Come Out!”

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“La propriété  intellectuelle, c’est de la merde” – Billy Bao

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