Between two monsters: Uruguayan indie culture and the Montevidean cool circuit
Indie music resists easy definition. By the time an ethnographer finishes fieldwork and transcribes interviews, the scene has evolved into something new. Few scholars—whether ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, or researchers of global indie scenes—capture these shifting dynamics. Lears's dissertation stands apart: spanning nearly a decade (July 2002 to January 2011), it reads like a film rather than a static snapshot. The research follows Uruguayan indie cultural producers through major economic, political, and digital transformations. Bookended by the aftershocks of Argentina's 2001 banking crisis and the start of José Mujica's presidency, the study offers an intimate view of two upheavals: Latin America's left turn and the rise of ubiquitous digital media.
Introducing the circuito cool montevideano
Lears describes her ethnographic subjects as "the people who like color in a gray city" (p. 2). This diverse group includes indie musicians, visual artists, and audiovisual and design professionals based in Montevideo, Uruguay's capital. Born roughly during the civic-military dictatorship (1973–1985), they represent the first generation of Uruguayan artists who grew up with digital media. Most identify as white and middle class—consistent with Anglophone indie demographics and, as Lears shows, with much of Uruguay. These artists form the tightly knit circuito cool montevideano, where everyone knows everyone. This close-knit structure presents both opportunities and obstacles for making, performing, and producing art. Most of the cultural producers in Lears's study are connected to Contrapedal Records, Uruguay's sole indie record label. Lears draws on ethnomusicology, visual culture studies, Latin American studies, performance studies, media studies, and political science. Her theoretical frameworks weave together popular music theory (Simon Frith), subcultural studies (Dick Hebdige and the CCCS), post-subcultural approaches (David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl), indie anthropology (Wendy Fonarow and Matthew Bannister), Benedict Anderson's concept of nations, and Pierre Bourdieu's field theory.
Lears tackles core indie concepts—aesthetics, D.I.Y. production, authenticity, connoisseurship, and subcultural capital—situating them within the circuito cool montevideano, Uruguay's national market, and the transforming global music industry powered by digital media.
National identity and musical heritage
Chapter 1 traces the social, economic, cultural, political, and historical processes that shaped twenty-first-century Uruguayan national identity. Key dichotomies emerge: folk versus elite cultures, rural Blancos versus urban Colorados, European immigration versus African and indigenous erasure, Bakhtinian "barbaric" versus "civilized" carnival practices, and revolution versus "revolution." These tensions weave into national soundscapes and clarify what "the popular" means in Uruguay. From these processes, recurring national tropes arise: Uruguay's identity as white on a mestizo continent, a national inferiority complex, cultural mimetism, the co-optation of youth counterculture, and campaigns to repeal the Ley de Caducidad. Lears connects tango, carnival, and rural folk musics as national-popular emblems, then examines waves of Uruguayan rock, canto popular, candombe, murga, and fusion scenes—grounding readers in the oppositional dimensions of popular music, the nationalization of rock, and their consequences for contemporary cultural production.
Knowledge, power, and digital shifts
Chapter 2 focuses on power dynamics in indie music and visual production. Digital media have transformed musical knowledge—both episteme (classificatory knowledge) and techne (practical skills, p. 135). Lears remaps Sarah Thornton's subcultural capital onto class within the circuito cool montevideano, showing that "knowledge of mass-mediated popular culture can be very much linked to anxiety surrounding social difference and inequality" (p. 147). After analyzing how the internet and digital piracy democratize knowledge, she explores collaboration's social capital and music's visuality. Uruguayan D.I.Y. production has a unique feature: broad access to technical knowledge—through formal training or self-taught paths in design, film, and audio—enables collaborative creativity and better aesthetic results, even with limited budgets. Yet such visible emotional labor can create tension: polished visuals may suggest elitism, high economic expenditure, and inauthenticity.
Authenticity under the spotlight
Chapter 3 examines authenticity in performance through three case studies: Dani Umpi, Vieja Historia, and Closet. Lears's sharp observations reveal how visual performance indexes complex relationships among sexuality, class, and commerce. Live performance professionalization in Uruguay echoes themes from the prior chapter: "band members must be 'rich kids' if they consciously choose ostentatious display over the social obligation to appear modest and humble at all times, even on stage" (p. 218). Bands like Closet, despite limited resources, deliberately cultivate celebrity personas to deliver an experience for their audience. But such artifice can alienate spectators in a scene where traditional social conventions demand authenticity onstage.
Music video and belonging
Chapter 4 analyzes representations of body, place, and time in music videos from the Montevidean indie scene. These productions reveal how shifts in audiovisual production and consumption illuminate historical, economic, and cultural ruptures—especially the dictatorship, the banking crisis, and digital media. Lears dialogues with David Harvey's concept of "time-space compression" and introduces her own term, "spatiotemporal coordinates of belonging," to explain how Montevidean cultural producers subjectively position themselves through these signifying practices.
Industries, policies, and branding
Chapter 5 explores contemporary cultural production alongside changes in national cultural industries and policies. Lears focuses on tensions from a mismatch between supply and demand of Uruguayan cultural exports, especially in audiovisual and music sectors. Recent transformations have enabled more sophisticated production—professionalization of the audiovisual sector, growth in international clientele, and public-private investment in the music industry. A central question emerges: What does "Uruguayan" mean as a brand? "Proponents of national cultural branding stress pluralism over antiquated, monolithic notions of 'tradition' or 'identity'" (p. 325).
The final chapter begins with detailed analysis of the Frente Amplio's cultural policy "Uruguay Cultural." Lears applies George Yúdice's concepts of "the expediency of culture" and "the privatization of culture" to contemporary Uruguayan production and exploitation. She examines perceptions and realities of large versus small domestic markets. Digital technology's changing conditions (dialoguing with Chris Anderson's "Long Tail") bring both challenges and opportunities for international digital entrepreneurship. Lears ties together branding strategies—national cultural brands, bands as brands, branded citizens, and branded opposition (against the Ley de Caducidad)—into a broad overview of competing positions in the global marketplace alongside new strategies for social justice in Uruguay.
Dichotomies and contributions
As the title Between Two Monsters suggests, Uruguayan cultural producers face many dichotomies. The experience of being trapped between two monsters resonates globally, part of a long geopolitical history defining much of the third world. Lears avoids simplified good-versus-evil narratives. The study's adaptability is one of its core strengths, offering insights for independent artistic communities in metropolitan centers across Latin America. This ethnography will serve researchers and educators across every field that informed Lears's scholarship. She moves deftly from broad context—Uruguay, Latin America, the Global South, and global networks—down to a single neighborhood, band, or musician, bringing life and meaning to complex global flows.