PERMANENT SEMINAR OF THE RESEARCH GROUP ON ETHNOMUSICOLOGY AND STUDIES IN POPULAR MUSIC
25.02.2026 | 14h30-16h30 | NOVA FCSH, Av. de Berna, Tower A (Lisbon) | Room A106 | Online
Free entrance, in presence and online:
Teams Room
Meeting ID: 320 445 588 385 39
Pass: At2yZ25P
The Role of Brass Bands in Chilean Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century
Ricardo Álvarez | Instituto de Música, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
This lecture presents findings from an ongoing research project on brass bands and social movements in Chile, examining how collective sound, performance, and street-based musical practices have articulated forms of political agency during the twenty-first century. After outlining the historical emergence of activist brass bands within Chilean urban cultures, the talk introduces four case studies developed in recent publications.
These include the Carnival Mil Tambores in Valparaíso as a landmark of citizen-led artistic activism; the professional trajectories of La Bandalismo and Banda Conmoción, which have redefined brass bands as vehicles of popular resistance; the role of brass ensembles in commemorations marking the fiftieth anniversary of the 1973 coup, where sound and performance functioned as spaces of collective memory and repair; and the embodied coalition between Guerrilla Marika and La Banda Exuberante, whose queer-Andean street interventions challenge normative regimes of gender, sexuality, and class. Together, these cases reveal how brass-based practices transform public space into a site of memory, activism, and creativity.
Ricardo Álvarez | Holds a PhD and an MA in Music from the University of York (UK), where he was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Humanities Research Centre (2016–2017). He has presented his research at international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. He is currently Senior Lecturer at the Instituto de Música of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (Chile) and is developing a three-year research project funded by the Chilean government on the participation of the brass bands of Valparaíso and Santiago in social movements in Chile during the last decade.