An overview of the (older) critiques on the Fora do Eixo model (1)

Fora do Eixo, on which we reported before, is in the spotlight in Brazil and receiving a new wave of critique, on which we hope to report soon.

This is an interesting overview of the older wave of critiques, from Shannon Garland:

“Bands performing at Fora do Eixo events, however, may forfeit payment in legal tender in exchange for the opportunity for circulation and public presentation, or for card, the currency Fora do Eixo created to systematize and make exchangeable the labor of participants. This labor and remuneration ideology has been criticized by other actors involved in independent music, who are also vying for recognition and financial sustainability in a market in which few musicians manage to make a living. Critics view Fora do Eixo as both unconcerned with and lacking the aesthetic criteria on which they feel musical promotion should be based and from which cultural and economic value should arise, and view the network’s ideology of exchange of services, rather than strict remuneration, as both self-serving and detrimental to the building of an alternative “middle market” in Brazil, one in which a band’s labor would be supported by a large, paying audience.

Fora do Eixo has also been increasingly criticized for its mode of political involvement and social activism (Passa Palavra); the network now conceives of itself as a “social movement of cultures” that can challenge dominant models of society by “hacking” into extant institutions. Reconfiguring models for cultural production in the multiple artistic languages with which FdE works falls into this overall goal. While this activism and this vision factor into opposition, they are too broad to treat here.Moreover, the most enduring and stable criticisms, familiar even to those who only minimally follow debates and understand Fora do Eixo structuring,2 revolve around the network’s modes of music circulation and the artistic quality of the bands circulating through it. This criticism has arisen periodically over the last several years,3 but became especially salient in the final months of 2011, when it manifested as a series of public articulations in the form of Twitter exchanges, blog posts, Facebook debates, and more.

A YouTube parody produced in December 2011 captured much of this critical view(Hitler). The video is based on the globally popular practice of placing comic subtitles on a scene from theWorldWar II movie Downfall, originally in German, which features Hitler breaking down during a meeting with his generals toward the war’s close (Heffernan; Wortham). Subtitled in Portuguese, the clip parodies Fora do Eixo’s practices in general, and in particular, the response of Pablo Capil´e to a question posed on the final day of the 2011 FdE national conference. Asked why Fora do Eixo had such a weak presence in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, Capil´e replied that Pernambuco was “the personification of rancor,” and that Pernambucan musicians got stuck navel-gazing following the explosion of the state’s innovative, genre-mixing manguebeat artists, such as Chico Science (Pq as coisas), who gained great national and even international attention during the 1990s (Crook). In Capil´e’s view, Pernambucan artists were unable to adapt to the new cultural logic of networked sharing inaugurated by the Internet, the logic at Fora do Eixo’s core, and as such, the network had “removed its bases from” and “entered into diplomatic crisis with the state of Pernambuco” (Pq as coisas). Fora do Eixo broadcast Capil´e’s commentary through its “post-TV” online streaming project, but quickly removed the video after it generated widespread backlash, the parody included.

In the video, Hitler represents Pablo Capil´e, and the presence of the German army on the European map, which the generals are discussing, represents the presence of Fora do Eixo collectives in Brazil. The scene opens with a Nazi general turned FdE member showing Hitler-Capil´e the map with pins representing where, he says, “the kids are already down with playing for free.” “What’s even better,” he continues, “is that they are willing to play without roadies, without a producer, without a sound technician. And at the end of it, all we pay with fake money that is worthless in the real world.” After Hitler-Capil´e finds out that Fora do Eixo has “not been able to accomplish jack shit” in Pernambuco, he calmly sends all those “who think bands need structure and payment” out of the room.With just a few generals left, he flies into a rage, screaming, “[I]f a guy wants to appear, then he has to put up with whatever kind of shit, no questions. People are in rock to be fucked over . . . ” When a “general” lightly protests that “they have bills to pay,” Hitler-Capil´e retorts, “Everyone knows that musicians who want to pay bills have to play ax´e4 . . . everyone wants to travel with a producer, sound tech and they still want the festival to pay their travel costs? At this rate, future generations are going to think that you can live off music. These people want to buy strings and drumsticks every show! That is for gringo musicians! . . . [I]f they want to get paid to play, let them write a project for the incentive law. As if I am the local government to pay for shows!” By the end of the scene, Hitler-Capil´e is spent and frustrated that he has “done so much shit to raise money for festivals” and “make bands circulate” all for these “conceited” and “rancorous” Pernambucans who do not buy into FdE structure and ideology. “They are ingrates,” he laments. “We provide the space, the sound gear, and two big cans of beer . . . it’s fucked up.”

This video highlights the most typical criticisms of Fora do Eixo by those who do not favor it: network members’ bent to occupy space around Brazil and become a principal force in independent music production; their prickly reactions to criticism; their use of public funds (incentive laws) to finance festivals and other actions; the poor technical support they provide to musicians; and the incentive to play for free—for “fake money,” that is, card; or in exchange for as little as “two big cans of beer.” In more indirect terms, the video touches on the question of how to build a sustainable market for music that has not been mass within the radically altered technological environment inwhich the symbolic value that arises from the high circulation of mediated representations of musicians and their music correlates weakly to the economic value musicians can reap.

Both Fora do Eixo and its critics in Brazilian independent rock/pop share the desire to establish a measure of stability in structures of musical production and circulation across the country. And Fora do Eixo has by and large achieved this, building production teams and performance spaces in dozens of small cities with hitherto scant activity. But Fora do Eixo’s means of doing so, including its tactics to attain media visibility and its modes of finance, undermine the historical ideology and ethos of independent music production and circulation, one in which a structure of circulation is (or should be) constructed through informal networks of social associations, themselves created dialogically through individual interest in shared musical exchanges and experiences. The manner in which Fora do Eixo appropriates social media platforms to try to gain visibility and its systematization of band circulation subverts this ethos, in that FdE’s very organization ultimately prioritizes the network’s own structure of circulation over the aesthetic objects to be distributed or the recognition of musicians. This inverts the relation between aesthetic value and the modes of musical circulation upon which the ideology and practice of DIY rock music have been built. The backlash it has generated, moreover, reveals the way in which historical orientations toward the circulation of aesthetic objects inform current readings of “proper” and “improper” uses of new media.”

Source: Article: “The Space, the Gear, and Two Big Cans of Beer”. Shannon Garland. Journal of Popular Music Studies, Volume 24, Issue 4, Pages 509–531

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