Música serve para isso: Polyphony, humor and irreverence in the Off scene of São Paulo music in the late 1980s

Abstract

Our proposal will be to carry out an analysis of the alternative music scene in São Paulo at the end of the 1980s, based on the work of the groups Os Mulheres Negras, Luni and Nouvelle Cuisine. To make this possible, we chose – in addition to analyzing the musical compositions of these bands – to map the writings of the São Paulo press at the time, mediated by a series of interviews given by members of the groups. Thus, from these materials, we will seek to show how these bands can be inserted in a border zone, in an in-between place, in an amalgam of ill-defined contours, which comes to question traditional conceptions about musical genres and allows us to think about music and history of music from the border, of humor, of polyphony and of irreverence. 

Keywords: São Paulo music, polyphony, humor