WHO GETS TO MAKE A LIVING IN A CULTURAL CAPITAL? MUSIC WORKERS, MUSICAL URBANITY, AND SAO PAULO'S CITY OF MUSIC LEGISLATION.

AuthorGough, Daniel J.

This article highlights one of the paradoxes of musical life in Sao Paulo, Brazil: the city is a center of musical production and cultural life, but it is also a place in which music workers find steady careers difficult to assemble. Moreover, state and state-related financing comprises a significant part of the local music economy, meaning that music workers' claims to steady work are closely tied to the states role in funding the arts. The question of regular financial support for music workers, however, is a relatively minor one in broader conversations about state funding for the arts. It figures among a series of local, national, and global debates about the definition of culture within state funding regimes, whether there is a right to culture, how culture is an economic resource, and, of particular importance to the question in Sao Paulo, the spatial enactment of cultural rights--particularly the concentration and distribution of such resources. Academics, cultural institutions, certain grassroots movements, and the press tend to focus on these latter issues, meaning that efforts to address job stability enjoy limited visibility.

Such debates about spatial distribution, access, and state arts support point to a larger question about labor conditions and cultural production in a city like Sao Paulo--namely, is urbanity a resource for cultural production? And, if so, should the state be charged with regulating and distributing the trappings of musical urbanity (e.g., musical institutions, income, diverse audiences) in relation to Sao Paulo's music workers? By musical urbanity, I refer to the ways that authors have identified music as a constituent part of urban lives. In addition to the symbolic aspects of music that form cultural identities,' these distinctively urban qualities of musical sociability include music's relationship to the materiality of urban spaces, (2) music as an everyday activity, (3) the concentration of musical institutions and state administrative practices surrounding music making in cities, (4) and music as an urban economic activity (5) characterized by both specialized labor and the lessened importance of stylistic categories. (6)

In order to consider how music workers, grassroots organizers, bureaucrats, and politicians understand music as part of urban life, this essay examines a municipal legislative proposal in Sao Paulo--PL 376/2016, commonly known as Sao Paulo Cidade da Musica, or Sao Paulo City of Music. For the cohort of music workers and cultural administrators advocating the legislation, the City of Music Law is an aspirational blueprint for state interventions in cultural production. At the heart of this advocacy is the concentration of music workers and musical economies in the city. Sao Paulo is an attractive place for music workers, given the concentration of imagined career opportunities and associated media infrastructure located in the city, and performers, engineers, and producers move to Sao Paulo from throughout Brazil as a way of furthering their careers. Nonetheless, the concentrated state funding mechanisms for culture that make the city an attractive place to pursue a career in music have not addressed the ways in which individuals find and engage in steady work. The City of Music proposal engages many of the aspects of the resources that Sao Paulo's urban concentrations offer to music workers: the importance of musical institutions, the sustainability of individual music careers, the development of musical infrastructures, and the role of music in everyday life.

The City of Music proposal is an arts development law (lei de fomento), a municipal cultural policy instrument that typically includes provisions for infrastructure building and funding for otherwise noncommercially viable productions within a specific arts cohort. Arts development laws emerged in Brazil as a grassroots cultural policy mechanism in the twenty-first century. Cultural workers and artist collectives crafted such laws as a response and corrective to cultural tax incentive laws, most emblematically the 1991 Rouanet Law--a federal tax credit program aimed at boosting private support for the arts in the wake of the country's then-recent re-democratization. In Sao Paulo, arts development laws support theater (2002), dance (2005), circus (2016), and cultural practices on the city's peripheries (2016). Sao Paulo's theater law was Brazil's first such municipal law, which emerged from a social movement of actors and theater companies in the city responding to Rouanet Law funding for commercial theatrical productions (a recurring issue for arts tax incentives, addressed later in this article). Insofar as Sao Paulo's arts development law for theater has supported production companies that create less commercial and more aesthetically challenging work, culture workers in theater and other arts regard it as a successful model of state funding of the arts invested in the sustainability of artistic groups over time. (7) For this reason, culture workers in Sao Paulo (and cities throughout Brazil) have subsequently worked to pass such laws.

A coalition of musicians, culture producers, and politicians developed and advocated for the City of Music Law during most of the administration of Workers' Party Mayor Fernando Haddad (2013-2016), and have continued their advocacy through the 2020 local elections. By focusing on a consistent funding stream for the creation and dissemination of music in Sao Paulo, the City of Music proposal addresses a gap that exists in music policy not only in Sao Paulo but also throughout the country. In post-dictatorship Brazil, the "alibis for funding" (8) for cultural practices have simultaneously focused on expanding access to cultural production to broad segments of society, incentivizing private support for the arts, and (less frequently) fostering economic development. Moreover, state and state-related spending (disproportionately concentrated in Sao Paulo) has become an essential dimension in the livelihoods of the city's music workers. In practice, this means that music workers both depend on state-directed financial practices and negotiate barriers to access that include bureaucratic practices, competing program goals, economic vicissitudes, and a process that favors one-off projects in order to access such funding.

In the context of Sao Paulo's music economy, the City of Music Law would have represented a somewhat modest sum of money--a planned R$15 million in 2017--compared to the R$152 million that the Commercial Social Service of Sao Paulo (SESC-SP) budgeted for music and the R$101 million of federal cultural tax incentives (Rouanet Law) allocated to music projects in the State of Sao Paulo in the same year. (9) Nonetheless, the City of Music Law would be novel in it centers music workers, making musicians, producers, and independent music venues the target beneficiaries of this spending, rather than a general audience (in the case of the SESC-SP) or private enterprises (in the case of Rouanet Law).

Although the City of Music Law was proposed in the same 2016 legislative session during which the City Council passed arts development laws for circus and cultural practices on the city's peripheries, it was not brought up for a vote. Advocates had hoped to secure passage at the end of 2016, during the lame duck session of a comparatively sympathetic municipal administration. Subsequently, Mayors Joao Doria (2017-2018) and Bruno Covas (2018-present) have overseen large cuts in municipal cultural funding, including the programs established by arts development laws. Nonetheless, the City of Music proposal continues to figure prominently in grassroots advocacy and leftleaning political platforms. A new City Council, elected in late 2020 and seated in early 2021, includes more representation from left and far-left parties that may be more sympathetic to the concerns of the music and arts workers. Regardless, the state's role in regulating and distributing the benefits of musical urbanity (institutional support, income, access to diverse audiences) remains a salient issue for those who make their livelihoods in this space.

SURVIVING ON ART IN SAO PAULO

The 2008 frevo (10) "O retrato do artista quando pede" (The Portrait of a Begging Artist) illustrates some of the principal issues confronting music workers attempting to assemble careers in Sao Paulo. Kiko Dinucci and Douglas Germano authored and recorded the song, which is included on the duo's self-titled album Duo Moviola. The song levels several critiques at cultural finance from the...

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