Events
GIEEMP Seminar | Vigo capital Lisboa: the decentralization of the Galician popular music as an example of dissensus
PERMANENT SEMINAR OF THE RESEARCH GROUP ON ETHNOMUSICOLOGY AND STUDIES IN POPULAR MUSIC
25.09.2024 | 3.30 pm | Departamento de Comunicação e Arte, Universidade de Aveiro | Room 40.2.16 | Zoom
Free entrance, both online and in presence.
Zoom Room
Meeting ID: 925 6800 4123
Password: 190597
Vigo capital Lisboa: the decentralization of the Galician popular music as an example of dissensus
Alicia Pajón Fernández | Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) and Universidad Internacional de Valencia (VIU)
The musical scenes in Galicia during the transition to democracy (1968-1986) were inevitably shaped by the mainstream industry and media, as well as by an inescapable Spanish centralist mindset that imposed a vision of Galicia from an external perspective. This centralist influence stemmed from a period of rapid and significant political change, during which a new hegemonic discourse centered on national reconciliation was established. Although the discourse of consensus became dominant, it did not encompass all voices, bodies, or identities. Nationalisms outside the Spanish identity often felt marginalized by this arrangement, seeing it as an extension of the centralism inherited from the dictatorship.
As a result, even today, music in Galicia is often discussed as merely an echo of what happened in Madrid. Of course, influences from the rest of the country were present, but this is not the whole story. Many Galician artists were looking elsewhere, with Portugal being a primary source of inspiration. These exchanges occurred across different genres both before and after the dictator's death. From the singer-songwriters Bibiano and Benedicto, whose personal and professional relationships with Luís Cília and Zeca Afonso were significant, to the band Os Resentidos traveling to Lisbon to record their album Vigo Capital Lisboa (1984), these connections are evident.
Perhaps, following Rancière, we can consider the way in which looking toward other horizons becomes a critical element that, in moments of consensus, functions as a destabilizing counterweight to the narrative of agreement that is constructed as the only possible reality (Rancière, 2019). With this in mind, this seminar will explore popular music in Galicia during the seventies and eighties, shifting the focus of the discourse slightly towards the Atlantic.
Alicia Pajón Fernández | PhD in Art History and Musicology from the University of Oviedo (Spain) (2023). She is a member of the Research Group on Contemporary Music in Spain and Latin America Diapente XXI and as a result of her research she has published several book chapters and articles in journals such as Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana or Inclusiones. In addition, she has participated in several conferences in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Greece and the United Kingdom and was a visiting scholar at Princeton University (USA). She is a lecturer at the universities of La Rioja and Valencia International University (VIU) and an external collaborator at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR). She has also been a music critic for the newspaper La Nueva España. Since 2023 she has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Society of Ethnomusicology (SIBE).
