« Singing with the heart: sincerity as economic skill in World music in France »

Résumé En

This chapter examines the notion of “sincerity,” as well as the expressions “singing and speaking from the heart” as they are used by artists or cultural actors in the French context of world music where artists circulate between public institutions, communities, and music industries. The author confronts this notion with that of authenticity often used in the context of the diffusion of world music. The author moves away from an analysis in terms of instrumentalization of musical traditions by the music market to develop a more refined analysis of capitalism in terms of layers and an articulation between capitalist and pericapitalist zones. The chapter then explores the notions of disinterestedness and agape in economic anthropology and the possibility of rethinking a theory of action that accounts for a diversity of subjectivities and economic skills mobilized by musicians to resolve the difficulty of having to interact with different networks and different regimes of justifications.