An ethnography of musical spaces or: what instruments stores allow to think?

Abstract

In this article, I propose analysing some of the possible trajectories and ways of circulation concerning the social life of musical instruments, passing by its life as merchandise in different regimes conducted by music shops, as well as the specific technicalities and conducts related to those spaces. For that purpose, I mobilize some references from both anthropology of music and museology to presente spaces, technical and relational stages connected to the processes of exhibition and commercialization of musical instruments. I argue that, by paying enough attention to exhibition and commercialization processes engendered in a mu-sic shops, we allow ourselves to see them as nodal points connecting extense politics of value, auten-ticity and sonority showing themselves through technicalities concerning the spacial and volumetric organization of those spaces.