ABSTRACT
Marcos Valle released his first album in 1963. It was based on bossa nova, but from his earliest recording it seemed he had been looking for a chance to add something similar to the African American notion of groove to his music. When his ‘Summer Samba’ song became a worldwide hit three years later, he started to spend long periods in the United States, where soul and funk captured his attention. By 1970 he was recording and playing funk, and he never distanced himself from it completely. During the early 1980s he was a key figure in the Rio Boogie Funk movement—where synthesizers and drum machines were already present—and two decades later he flirted with house and techno music in some of the tracks that he recorded for London label Far Out Recordings. I am a popular electronic music researcher. The term “popular electronic music” encompasses electronic dance music, experimental non-classical electronic music and DJ culture. It raises issues of production and performance with electronic music devices. My research interest in the subject ranges from history, language, musicology to live and studio practices, ethnomusicological and sociological aspects. As one of the first Brazilian popular electronic music scholars, I am particularly interested in how it arrived in Brazil and how it interacts with more established music and culture. I am also a fan of Marcos Valle. In 2006 I embarked on a study of my favorite artist for a Masters degree at Minas Gerais State Federal University. I was what Henry Jenkins calls an “aca-fan”: in his own words, “a hybrid creature which is part fan and part academic.” 1 Analyzing Valle’s work from that perspective raised a number of wider questions: What are the implications of carrying out research on one’s favorite artist? How does the fan inside deal with the researcher, and vice versa? Would a researcher come to the same conclusions if he or she was not a fan? In what follows I will consider methodological strategies while recounting my own experience as a postgraduate researcher.
