sér vales

sér vales is a Lisbon-based Galician ethnomusicologist. They hold a BA in Journalism (2016) and a BA in Art History (2021) from the University of Santiago de Compostela, and a Masters in Ethnomusicology (2025) from NOVA FCSH, with a thesis on the (non-)utopian potentialities of queer raving’s ethics, aesthetics and politics. sér is a PhD candidate at INET-md, with a project for studying the queering of Galician traditional music and its national signifiers funded by a FCT grant. In 2023-24 she worked as a research collaborator at CESEM (NOVA FCSH), within the project “Thematic History of Music in Portugal and Brazil”. They are a member of the Galician Network for Queer Studies (RGEQ).

Her research interests include the current resignification of oral tradition-based music, as well as queer nightlife and community pleasure (and political) organising, and the role of electronic dance music in the aesthetic transformation of contemporary culture.

Doctoral Project

Title Queering the musical nation: sexual dissidence and aesthetic subversion in traditional-inspired music in Galicia

Supervisor Marco Roque de Freitas

Co-supervisor Iñigo Sánchez-Fuarros (Incipit/CSIC)

Abstract

This project aims to reflect on the queering of Galician traditional music—including its national signifiers and representations—through the interactions between oral tradition and contemporary popular music. From a transdisciplinary approach (encompassing ethnomusicology, queer studies and nation-building scholarship), I intend to assess the negotiation of identities related to oral-tradition musical practices in Galicia through a queer lens. The ethnographic and musicological study of contemporary examples associated with these expressions may contribute to a problematisation of the dominant discourses on Galician traditional music and its association with normative identitary values. The focus on this topic is justified by the growing number of initiatives exploring queer aesthetics in tradition-inspired Galician music, such as the main research site (Festival Agrocuir da Ulloa), which incorporates most of the practices and strategies that this research addresses.

Keywords: ethnomusicology; queer studies; nation-building; oral tradition; popular music.

Funding: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (2024.01898.BD)