It’s All Because of Drinking

• In Event: Popular Music

Abstract

Studies of "the music industry" usually thematize product circulation and technological mediation. Live performance, however, remains central to the
business. In many cases it is increasingly so, as piracy and digital streaming undermine the profits associated with recorded sound, prodding musicians and promoters to invest in other revenue streams. This calls for renewed attention to the financial exigencies of live performances: accounts of the way that musical workers generate revenue by fostering and then fulfilling listener expectations - expectations that, in turn, are grounded in broader assumptions about music's
affective capacities.
This paper examines the interplay of profit, affect, and sound in one indigenous music scene. It focuses on Peruvian chimaycha, a Quechua-language genre that has become a successful urban popular music in the highland city of Ayacucho.
Part of a broader Andean tradition whereby song is tied to romantic and social precarity, chimaycha has been used to socialize experiences of grief and fear. Contemporary performances, however, are organized along twin arcs of emotional expression and alcohol consumption. Listeners seek to intensify their affective identification with the sounds they hear, by consuming beer and submitting to its disinhibiting properties; meanwhile, musicians and promoters manage the gradual
distribution of affective engagement so as to maximize beer sales, their generators of revenue. By situating these performative and organizational dynamics in the socioeconomic changes that are transforming contemporary indigenous life, I show
how this corner of the music business both obeys and structures listeners' experiences of ongoing social change.

Author

• Joshua Tucker, Brown University