Abstract

ALABARCES, Pablo  and  SILBA, Malvina. "All negroes, hands up": Gender, ethnicity and class in the Argentinian cumbia. Cultura representaciones soc [online]. 2014, vol.8, n.16, pp.52-74. ISSN 2007-8110.

Since its origin as ethnic music in Colombia at the end of the 19th century- and a combination of indigenous and Afro-Americans features, in the same way as other "tropical genres are concerned - the cumbia has spread throughout a good part of Latin America through the mediation of cultural industries, marking in each local case, different variants and meanings. Nevertheless, in all of them an overall meaning prevails: it is systematically music of the poor: the popular classes. In the case of Argentina, from its arrival in the middle of the sixties, this popularization involved its connection to other folkloric local products - as in case of the chamamé, or modern, or the quartet; but fundamentally, the popularization of the cumbia led to its consecration as the most popular genre, in the double sense of its consumption and its class meaning. The cumbia in Argentina, without a shadow of doubt, is the music of the popular classes - although the ways in which the middle classes consume it allows both the understanding of the phenomena of cultural plebeyización'that has taken place over the last two decades. This text aims to discuss these ways, indicating how the study of the cumbia brings into play simultaneously problems of class, genre and ethnicity, possibly as no other cultural product in contemporary Argentina.

Keywords : cumbia; popular music; social class; genre.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )