How do Outsider Styles Become Legitimated? The Introduction of Bossa Nova in the Jazz Field

Abstract

This paper explores the emergence and enactment of new musical styles from the perspective of critics. As the field absorbs a new style, the critics assess whether it belongs or not to the established tradition. In parallel, as musicians produce art works following the new style, critics classify and rate them. This signaling activity helps us to understand how the legitimacy process takes place vis-à-vis the production of new records. For that purpose, we explore the introduction of Bossa Nova in the Jazz field. Our results show that as this process evolved, records that combined Bossa Nova elements with Jazz were more likely to penetrate the core of the community. Conversely, musicians who played pure Bossa Nova were kept in the periphery. Finally, the assessment of “what is Bossa Nova” moved back and forth from positive statements (BN “is” Brazilian Music, inter alia) to negative statements (e.g. BN “is not” Jazz, inter alia). This swing between positive and negative statements accompanied distinctive inflection points in the institutionalization of Bossa Nova.