Music Between Work and Leisure: The Case of a Collective from Fortaleza, Brazil

Abstract

Lado B is a collective of musicians from Fortaleza, Brazil, that holds monthly festivals in a public cultural center. Aiming at some self-sufficiency, Lado B organizes its festivals according to a kind of adiabatic circuit, which works as follows: at a given festival, each member of the collective is in charge of a function that is necessary for the realization of that particular event. At each new festival, each member of the group performs a task different from the role played at the previous festival; that is to say, members alternate themselves in the many roles as the festivals go on, until each individual has gone through each duty at a given festival. Once everyone has done everything, the cycle restarts. Music is not the main activity of any of those artists, so they all need to keep a day job. This situation creates a divergence on Lado B: while some see the collective as a second job, others face it as a leisure activity. In other words, one segment creates a relation of continuity between life and art, submitting music to the logic of routine, and the other faction establishes a rupture between life and art, as if culture was the ordinary world upside down. Based on interviews with members of Lado B, I ask: is music a job or a leisure activity? I intend to inscribe this question within the broader debate about the relationship between life and art, everyday life and culture, routine and spirit, asceticism and pleasure, functionalism and rebellion, pragmatism and madness. Thus, in a broad sense, I question: what is the relation between life and art? Are they irreconcilable or interdependent? Equal or opposed? Do they struggle against or reinforce each other?