Objectifying a sound world: places, people and objects in the music production ritual

Abstract

This article systematizes and updates the main reflections of my doctoral thesis on music production processes, in the context of recording studios. In view of the institutional configuration of the Brazilian phonographic field, taking into account Anglo-American matrices, I analyze those environments, the professional categories that work in them and the equipment in circulation, as elements of an objectifying ritual of this sound world. I use as methodological resources bibliographic and documentary sources, as well as interviews and multi-situated ethnographic experience, conducted especially between 2017 and 2018, among the middle classes of the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, southeastern Brazil. By problematizing the topics mentioned within the theoretical framework of sound studies, in dialogue with an anthropology of objects and ritual, I present a scene from the Space Blues studio to argue that the phenomenon in question spreads and materializes in networks that intertwine, gaining specific local contours. I expect thus to bring subsidies to the material culture, labor relations and ethnomusicology fields, among others disciplines.