“Pará Music” and Terruá Pará: regional identity, cultural industry and mass psychology

Abstract

Since the consolidation of radio and TV broadcasters in Pará, local media has propagated the idea of a “Pará music,” moniker often used in a series of events produced in and outside the State. By contesting such singularization, this psychosociological analysis unveils the mechanisms that mediate cultural industry and mass formation by analyzing the spectacle Terruá Pará. For this purpose, a bibliographic review was conducted, as well as a documentary research concerning part of the printed material produced for the festival’s third edition. In conclusion, although Terruá Pará appears based on an allegedly rational discourse to value regional music, it dialectically promotes irrationalities expressed in specific modes of subjectivation that, disregarding diversity, reduce its consuming public to the quality of abstract crowd.