Andrew Snyder, INET-md researcher, co-authors with Miguel Moniz (CRIA), the article “Associativism as the Condition of Musical Possibility for an Alternative Brass Band in Portugal: Innovation, Viability, and European Integration“, published in the journal Ethnomusicology.
Abstract:
Lisbon’s alternative brass band Farra Fanfarra is part of a global network of musically eclectic, countercultural brass bands. Yet, the band also emerged from the country’s filarmónica band tradition, which has been shown to play a prominent role in constructing and maintaining local and national identities. Farra Fanfarra adapted these traditional bands’ institutional model of associaçoes (associations), a legally codified form of social and nonprofit organization integral to cultural life in Portugal. Highlighting the adaptability of this organizational form, we examine Portuguese associativismo (associativism) as a cultural practice and legal framework through which communities can adapt elements of traditional culture while engaging in innovative transformations. We argue that Farra Fanfarra’s creative use of associativism furnishes the band with the conditions of musical possibility for its activities, considering the factors that widen or narrow the aperture of what is possible for the musical project. Associativism allows the band’s innovation upon filarmónica traditions and maintains its viability in a context of capitalist cultural production. It promotes the band’s mobility by supplying the institutional foundations to conduct exchanges around Europe available only to associations, providing band members with agency to creatively carry out the cultural policy objectives of European integration projects. Through these exchanges, Farra Fanfarra has become a protagonist in cultural diplomacy efforts and activist projects that musically forge intercultural encounters. We conclude that Farra Fanfarra’s adaption of locally based Portuguese associativism constitutes an emplaced cosmopolitanism that reflects how Europeans have increasingly transformed local institutions as sites for supranational, intercultural action.
