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“Aboriginal Dances Were Always in Rings“: Music and Dance as a Sign of Identity in the Argentine Chaco

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Silvia Citro  and
Adriana Cerletti
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Extract

In Argentina, aboriginal music and dance—as part of what UNESCO has called “intangible cultural heritage“—has been overlooked for a long time. During the construction of Argentina as a nation, especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European-derived societies and cultures were the privileged models in our country. In that period, the national government sponsored the wave of European immigration and, at the same time, the military persecution of aboriginal peoples and their forced assimilation to “Western Christian civilization.” One of the consequences of this history, mostly in the cultural imagination of the urban middle classes, was the pervasive thought that “Argentinians are descendants of the ships”—a popular saying referring to the ships that brought “our grandparents from Europe,” mainly from Spain and Italy.

Abstract in spanish

Abstract in Spanish

“Las danzas aborígenes siempre fueron en ronda “: Música y danza como signo de identidad en el Chaco argentino

En este artículo analizamos los cantos-danzas circulares, uno de los géneros performativos dominantes en los rituales aborígenes del Chaco argentino, focalizando en la comparación entre los Tobas y Mocovíes. Examinaremos las estructuras estéticas y los procesos performativos de estas expresiones, incluyendo el rol de nuestra investigación. A partir de la discusión sobre el potencial icónico e indexical de la música y la danza, mostraremos cómo estas expresiones evocan algunos aspectos de su mundo cosmológico y de su experiencia de communitas, y cómo se han convertido en un signo legitimante de una unificada e idealizada “identidad aborigen,” en el caso Mocoví, y en un controvertido y disputado signo identitario, en el caso Toba.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 41 , 2009 , pp. 138 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by the International Council for Traditional Music

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