Analog Matters: Labels, Cassettes, and Alternative Economies in Argentina’s Independent Music Scenes

Author

Maria Agustina Checa, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

9-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Music

Advisor

Eliot Bates

Committee Members

Antoni Pizà

David Font-Navarrete

Eduardo Herrera

Subject Categories

Art and Materials Conservation | Audio Arts and Acoustics | Digital Humanities | Ethnomusicology | Interdisciplinary Arts and Media | Latin American Languages and Societies | Other Film and Media Studies

Keywords

cassettes, Argentina, material culture, value, media, labels

Abstract

This dissertation is a multi-sited ethnographic study of current cassette production and circulation in Argentina. It analyzes the work of independent labels that record music available online onto cassette tapes, incorporating a variety of music styles. I examine practices of production, circulation, and exchange, and the alternative economies performed around cassettes, with particular attention to the materialities constituting these processes. Through cassettes, I conceptualize and trace "relational value," a notion to understand objects with different kinds of social agencies valued for their abilities to generate connections. Relational value is a theoretical construct that emerges from the ground-up approach to studying value that I apply in this study, which allows me to conceptualize the generative aspects of the connections facilitated by cassettes. This work discloses how cassettes, and the practices of valuation around them, constitute social worlds, add significance to them, and generate social relations around music.

Comments

Online component: https://magnetismosonico.org/

Recommended Citation

Checa, Maria Agustina, "Analog Matters: Labels, Cassettes, and Alternative Economies in Argentina’s Independent Music Scenes" (2022). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5197