Brazilian State of Mato Grosso do Sul's urban popular music is a terrain of conflict at several levels: nature/culture, agrarian élites/urban bourgeoisie, Latin-Americanism/national security, local/global. Using the ethnographic method, through participant observation, interviews, and song analysis, the relationships between popular music and dominant ideologies were studied since 1960 up to the present in Campo Grande - city that centralizes the decisions of that State. Between the concern in derepressing the voices silenced by the agrarian élites in its search for capitalist modernization, and the co-option promoted by the needs of powerful groups, however, this music's political possibilities were multiform. In spite of its contradictions, it participated with an active and anti-hegemonic role - not as a mere reflex of economic activity - of the destabilization of cattle ranchers' political power, historically kept in Mato Grosso do Sul
ethnomusicology of Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil); Brazilian regional music; poststructuralism and music