The Costs of the Gig Economy: Musical Entrepreneurs and the Cultural Politics of Inequality in Northeastern Brazil

Recife, Brazil's institutions have restructured subsidies to encourage musicians to become more entrepreneurial, but Falina Enriquez shows how this reinforces racial and class-based inequalities. She also links the artists situation to that of cultural and creative workers around the world, as musical sponsorship in Recife and the contemporary gig economy uphold governmental and corporate ideologies that produce social stratification.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 01 September 2022
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

In Recife, Brazil, institutions have restructured subsidies to encourage musicians to become more entrepreneurial. Falina Enriquez delves into how contemporary and traditional musicians in this renowned musical city have navigated these heightened neoliberal cultural policies and economic uncertainties. Through extensive fieldwork, Enriquez reveals how mandating artists to adopt "neutral" market solutions perpetuates and exacerbates overlapping racial and class-based inequalities. Working-class musicians, lacking the social and financial resources of their middle-class peers, struggle to uphold institutional goals of connecting Recife's cultural roots to global markets and consumers. Enriquez also draws parallels between the artists' situation and that of cultural and creative workers worldwide. As she demonstrates, musical sponsorship in Recife and the contemporary gig economy elsewhere employ processes that, rather than being neutral, uphold governmental and corporate ideologies that perpetuate social stratification.

Rich and vibrant, The Costs of the Gig Economy presents a rare English-language portrait of the evolving musical culture in Recife.

Dimension: 229 x 152 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780252086687