Abstract

QUINA, Guillermo Martín. Hegemony and Ignorance of Social Classes: The Independent Music Production in the City of Buenos Aires. Trab. soc. [online]. 2013, n.21, pp.279-294. ISSN 1514-6871.

The so called independent music constitutes a phenomenon in which understanding, according to its actors, thinking on social classes would be useless given the absence of big corporations. Recent approaches on cultural and music production phenomena made from the social sciences paid little attention to concrete production conditions through which they exist, even less to the presence of social classes in it. Recognizing the importance that cultural productions assume in current capitalist accumulation processes and through the independent music production in the city of Buenos Aires, we look for both the presence of social classes and the symbolic and material conditions for its reproduction. In order to do that we have chosen a mainly qualitative approach based on ethnographic interviews with different actors and field observation at both public and private live musical events. Empirical evidence let us recognize both the presence of sellers and buyers of labour power as material condition and a strongly tendency to ignore the importance of such distinction by its diverse actors as symbolic condition of independent music production. We conclude in the pertinence of the concept of hegemony to the comprehension of this apparent contradiction and in the necessity of rethinking in cultural production through the class relations they involve. This is because far from being external to the capitalist dynamic of cultural industries, independent music is completely integrated to it.

Keywords : Independent music; Hegemony; Social classes; Buenos Aires.