Amateurs and professionals: a view from the emergent musical worlds

Abstract

In this article, we explore the transformation of the distinction between amateur and professional musical practices from the emergent musical worlds. With this purpose, we briefly expose the results of an ethnographic research, carried out between 2009 and 2016 with music labels in the city of La Plata and the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. We describe and analyze at the same time changes in musical practices and their ways of conceptualization in the specialized literature. We affirm a local and singular notion of the distinction between amateurism and professionalism, relative to each musical configuration. From this perspective, we describe and compare emergent modes of the profession among young musicians.