Abstract
The paper seeks to think critically about the conceptual bases of musical genres studies by examining the role that musical genres and rockcentrism played in the analysis of musical categorizations in Brazil. This path starts from the critical observation of the influence that the book Performing Rites: on the value of popular music, by the British Simon Frith, had on Brazilian articles about those questions. As a counterpoint to this model of approach to musical genres, it is observed that, in recent years, gender, race and geopolitics have been addressed in a dynamic way through Brazilian musical genres such as brega-funk and funk carioca in different communicational settings in the universe of traditional musical categorizations studies.
Keywords musical genre; rockcentrism; Simon Frith; musical categorization