Ritual Transgression and Grotesque Realism in 1990s Rock Music: An Ethnographer among the Bersuit

Abstract

I did my first ethnographic research with the rock band Bersuit Vergarabat, between 1995 and 1997, in Buenos Aires. At that time, Bersuit was a new band still in the underground rock circuit composed of male musicians in their thirties. Most of their fans were 15 to 25 years old, and mostly middle-class males Heading toward poverty because of the consequences of neoliberal economic policies. Thus the “underground color” mentioned in the song quoted in the epigraph, song that also talks about “keen on marginality,” and “representing just a few.”