Tango Renovación

On the Uses of Music History in Post-Crisis Argentina

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3980002
AutoresMorgan James Luker (autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen28
Número1
Páginas68-93
Fecha de publicación2007-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLatin American Music Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0163-0350 • E-ISSN: 1536-0199
EditorialProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/lat.2007.0019
OpenAlexW1485678586
IdiomaES
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas22

Long celebrated as a "national" genre in Argentina, tango has not been massively popular there since the late 1950s. Beginning in the late 1990s, however, a renewed interest in the genre began to develop among many Argentines, and tango has since risen to again occupy a prominent position within the wider domain of the country's cultural life. The reemergence of tango was punctuated by the devastating Argentine economic crisis of December 2001, which generated severe economic hardship and raised fundamental questions about self and society in Argentina. In this context, the collective work of a growing milieu of contemporary Argentine tango artists, audiences, and critics has amounted to what has been called a "renovación" ("renovation" or "renewal") of tango. As a musical practice, renovation consists of drawing upon genre conventions, stylistic details, and musical repertoires from previous periods of tango history and incorporating that material into current practices. It is a complex domain of music making in which the past is sonically brought to bear on the present, which, in turn, is heard as a commentary on the past. The paper is arranged in a series of three case studies, each of which is focused on a particular strategy of renovation corresponding to the work of several contemporary tango artists and groups. By contextualizing these cases, I show how similar musical strategies and aesthetic concerns underlie what might sound like radically divergent musical styles and artistic projects. The ultimate goal is to develop a sense of how, in this particular context, musical style and history are used as a means of negotiating political-economic ruptures and demonstrate how these musical practices are connected to larger transformations in the cultural and political topography of contemporary Latin America

Art · Brazilian cultural history and politics · Diverse Musicological Studies · History · Music History and Culture