The Cachet of Cachê

Abstract

This chapter examines debates over the determination of wages, cachê, for indie musicians in Brazil. It focuses on the organization Fora do Eixo, which sought to expand indie band circulation and audiences for them by paying bands in its alternative currency, called card. Card allowed Fora do Eixo to employ labor without the need to draw on real money, capacitating participants in music production in smaller cities with limited financial resources. But it also led to heated debates about what value a band’s wage represents: the labor of organizing indie production, the social relationships forged in production, bands’ social recognition, or the aesthetic quality of the “music itself.” The chapter finds that although all these locations of value obtain when it comes to the value of music, capitalism’s requirement of commodification prevents their simultaneous expression in the money form. The chapter thus highlights how the abstraction of value within capitalism clashes with the rich, multiple social and aesthetic values of music making. Determining the “real” location of value in music becomes an impossible, though necessary task.