Michael Jackson—‘Billie Jean’

• Main Author: Martyn Wemyss
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Suomen Antropologinen Seura (Finnish Anthropological Society) 2019-02-01
• Series: Suomen Antropologi
• Online Access: https://journal.fi/suomenantropologi/article/view/78147/40219

In the first few months of my fieldwork in Bolivia the death of Michael Jackson prompted a shift in the soundtrack to daily life: for a brief window his music was everywhere. In the weeks that followed, I witnessed two Michael Jackson impersonators perform, one outside a church and one outside a school in the days that followed. Here I set the encounters with these two Michaels within the sonic world I had previously experienced, and frame them as ‘stagings’: momentary performances where cosmopolitan figures and frames are brought into local performances. I recount other such stagings and suggest that Michael Jackson’s death made him available to be danced in different contexts in which the new Bolivian modernity is produced.