Falina Enriquez

As a cultural and linguistic anthropologist, Falina Enriquez studies music and language as an ensemble that helps us understand how people construct the world and emplace themselves—and others—within it. She focuses on the cultural politics of music as a form of artistic practice and labor in Recife, Brazil, a city long known as a uniquely musical place. Her works builds on the premise that together, music and language shape and reflect the social order. In studying music and language together, she sheds light on how various kinds of people act in relation to socioeconomic processes like neoliberalism, precarity, and structural inequality. The insights she has developed draw from and contribute to cultural and linguistic anthropology, ethnomusicology, Brazilian studies, Latin American studies, and cultural studies.