Rocking in Rio
I’ve spent the past week in Rio de Janeiro, which was pretty amazing on all sorts of levels, though you’ll be delighted to hear that I was there working hard and not just on a big junket to a fabulous city with incredible beaches, breathtaking scenery, great nightlife, amazing music, wonderful food and awesome people – though those, of course, also featured.
I went for a number of reasons. The first of which was to present a keynote speech at an academic conference about independent music in what was being referred to as the “post-crisis age” – which is a fairly contentious term, but it made for an interesting context.
Micael, who organised the conference, also has a new book out about this sort of thing, including contributions from many of the presenters.
It was an opportunity to further my connections with some colleagues I’d met in Madrid earlier in the year – some academics from Spain, as well as a few who had come over to the Madrid conference from Brazil. All music industry and media academics researching and writing about really interesting stuff that doesn’t tend to get published in English.
But the main reason for me was to start making some headway into what I hope will form my major research project for the next year or two: the Fora do Eixo – a network of independent music collectives all across Brazil. It’s fascinating stuff, and nobody seems to know about it – let alone research it – in the English-speaking world… and there’s a lot to learn.
