MUSICISTS AS WORKERS AND MUSIC AS WORK IN BRAZIL

2023-04-14

MUSICIANS AS WORKERS AND MUSIC AS LABOR IN BRAZIL

Considering musical practice as a labor activity entails various challenges. The musical sphere, or at least its fraction linked to the ideal of "pure" or "disinterested" art, emerged in Western modernity based on references that not only differ from economic logic but often position themselves as its antithesis. Ideals of creative freedom, enjoyment, contemplation, talent, individuality, and insubordination—closely tied to artistic endeavors in the modern world—oppose some of the more relevant pillars that symbolically uphold capitalist society's work, such as asceticism, individual effort, and hierarchy.

 

In Brazil, almost eight decades after the Consolidation of Labor Laws under Getúlio Vargas's government, 78.7% of musicians practiced their occupation without access to formal labor relations in 2019, according to PNAD. However, numerous examples of correlations between the world of work and the world of music work in the country are revealed, in the past and present, when adopting the perspective of recognizing musicians as workers and their broad range of activities as work. To name just a few examples: the transformation of the Musical Center of Rio de Janeiro into a union in 1941 under the circumstances of the aforementioned "labor laws"; demands for the establishment of collective disputes for musicians in Rio Grande do Sul in the 1950s and 1960s; challenges to sustain the livelihood of the category during the Covid-19 pandemic and the creation of a specific law to alleviate the labor difficulties faced by those in the artistic sector during that period: the Aldir Blanc Law; contemporary work through self-management subordinated to platformization or under an entrepreneurship discourse, masking processes of labor informality and increasing worker responsibility for the inherent risks of their profession.

 

Research in the field of Music and other knowledge areas that analyze the labor scenario of musicians is still scarce. Therefore, recognizing them as workers whose multiple formative and work trajectories involve struggles and strategies for better working conditions, income, and recognition is crucial in a labor context of complex configuration historically marked by instability and devaluation.

Considering the above, we invite researchers in the field of Music and other knowledge areas to submit articles for this dossier. This publication aims to stimulate the production and dissemination of research addressing music as work and musicians as workers in Brazil, from a historical or contemporary perspective, and the debate on the different conceptual categories used to address this theme.

Suggestions for potential contributions to the dossier include:

  • Formative trajectories and their correlations with the work trajectories of musicians.
  • Being a musician and being a music worker.
  • The history of work in music and/or the class entities of musicians: unions, associations, orders, cooperatives, and other worker collectives.
  • Music as work and/or musicians as workers in relation to legislation.
  • Contemporary configurations of musical work/work with music.
  • Conditions, work relationships, and income in musical work/work with music.
  • Music education and the debate on work and being a music worker in university.
  • Psychodynamics of musical work/work with music.
  • Entrepreneurship in music, precarity, and informality in the face of contemporary capitalism.
  • Musicians, streaming, and unpaid work.
  • Music teachers as music workers.
  • Professional categories that make up music workers and their work realities.
  • Street musicians and/or street vendors.
  • Musicians as multitasking workers.
  • Covid-19 and its consequences on music workers.
  • Musicians and class consciousness.
  • Musicians, gender, race, class, age, and work.
  • Morality in musical work: musicians as workers versus devaluation, invisibility, hobby, or idleness.
  • Music, musicians, material and immaterial work.
  • Musicians and the meanings of musical work/work with music.