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ABSTRACT
Plesch examines changing attitudes towards the gaucho as a musician in nineteenth-century Argentina through literary, musical and iconographic sources. She proposes the existence of a discursive formation gaucho, whose archive comprises travellers' writings, official reports, memoirs, visual arts, literature and music. Despised and persecuted throughout most of the nineteenth century, the gaucho was considered by Argentine elites as the epitome of ‘barbarism’, and his music was consistently described in derogatory terms. This attitude would be dramatically reversed towards the end of the century, when he was promoted to the role of national character and his cultural universe used as a source for the construction of a distinctive Argentine high culture that included the visual arts, literature and music. Plesch analyses the dominant discourse on the gaucho from colonial times to the publication of Martín Fierro (1872) and identifies four strategies of Othering at work: debasement, homogeneity, timelessness and Orientalism. They constitute, in the symbolic realm, the counterpart to the larger strategy of domination of the gaucho. In the second part of the article she examines the use of the gaucho and his world in the aesthetic production of Argentine cultural nationalism, isolating three key features: use, nostalgia and distancing. These are connected to the xenophobia unleashed by mass immigration and the modernization of the country, and the consequent need for elites to create a distinctive type of Argentine identity. The antithetical representations of the gaucho and his music, Plesch concludes, can only be understood in relation to the changing needs and political agendas of hegemonic society.
Notes
1 This binary is one of Argentina's guiding fictions, first established by Domingo F. Sarmiento in his Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie (Santiago: Imprenta del progreso 1845). For an authoritative version in English, see Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism: The First Complete English Translation, trans. from the Spanish by Kathleen Ross (Berkeley: University of California Press 2003).
2 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge; and, The Discourse on Language, trans. from the French by A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books 1972), 37ff.
3 This point is developed at length in Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1983), 19–38.
4 This point is developed at length in Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1983), 53–62.
5 This point is developed at length in Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1983), ch. 5 passim.
6 Travellers' writings circulated in Argentina at the time of their publication and exerted a significant influence on local intellectuals. See Adolfo Prieto, Los viajeros ingleses y la emergencia de la literatura argentina, 1820–1850 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1996).
7 A useful summary can be found in Juan Carlos Garavaglia and Jorge D. Gelman, ‘Rural history of the Rio de la Plata, 1600–1850: results of a historiographical renaissance’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 30, no. 3, 1995, 75–105.
8 Carlos Mayo, ‘Sobre peones, vagos y malentretenidos: el dilema de la economía rural rioplatense durante la época colonial’, Anuario del IEHS (Instituto de Estudios Histórico-Sociales), vol. 2, 1987, 23–32 (29); Ricardo D. Salvatore, Wandering Paysanos: State Order and Subaltern Experience in Buenos Aires during the Rosas Era (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2003).
9 There seems to be almost total agreement on this point. See, for instance, Richard W. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1983); Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, Historia social del gaucho (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de Ame'rica Latina 1982); and John Lynch, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel De Rosas, 1829–1852 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1981), esp. ch. 3, ‘Patrón and peon’, 92–125.
10 Homi K. Bhabha, ‘The Other question’, Screen, vol. 24, no. 6, 1983, 18–36.
11 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press 2003) 19.
12 Sarmiento, Facundo, 93.
13 ‘… una fisonomía en que no podía distinguirse dónde acababa la bestia y comenzaba el hombre’: José Mármol, Amalia [1851] (Buenos Aires: Editorial Porrúa 1971), 421. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the Spanish are by the author.
14 Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary, ed. Richard Darwin Keynes (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 1988), 100.
15 ‘Se hacen de una guitarrita, que aprenden á tocar muy mal y á cantar desentonadamente varias coplas, que estropean, y muchas que sacan de su cabeza, que regularmente ruedan sobre amores’: Concolorcorvo [i.e. Alonso Carrió de la Vandera], El Lazarillo de ciegos caminantes desde Buenos Aires hasta Lima, 1773 (Buenos Aires: Solar 1942), 33.
16 ‘… al son de la mal encordada y destemplada guitarrilla cantan y echan unos á otros sus coplas, que más parecen pullas. … Los principios de sus cantos son regularmente concertados, respecto de su modo bárbaro y grosero, porque llevan sus coplas estudiadas’: Concolorcorvo [i.e. Alonso Carrió de la Vandera], El Lazarillo de ciegos caminantes desde Buenos Aires hasta Lima, 1773 (Buenos Aires: Solar 1942), 170–1.
17 Thomas J. Hutchinson, Buenos Ayres and Argentine Gleanings: With Extracts from a Diary of Salado Exploration in 1862 and 1863 (London: Stanford 1865), 123.
18 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1966).
19 John Miers, Travels in Chile and La Plata, 2 vols (London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy 1826), I, 29.
20 ‘… guitarra, que aunque sucia no suele faltar’: Francisco Javier Muñiz, Escritos científicos (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Rosso [c. 1845]), quoted in Horacio Jorge Becco and Carlos Dellepiane Cálcena, El Gaucho: Documentación—Iconografía (Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra 1978), 107.
21 Mary Louise Pratt, ‘Scratches on the face of the country: or, what Mr Barrows saw in the land of the Bushmen’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no.1, 1985, 119–43 (120).
22 Peter Campbell Scarlett, South America and the Pacific: Comprising a Journey across the Pampas and the Andes, from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso, Lima, and Panama, 2 vols (London: Colburn 1838), I, 89.
23 Peter Campbell Scarlett, South America and the Pacific: Comprising a Journey across the Pampas and the Andes, from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso, Lima, and Panama, 2 vols (London: Colburn 1838), I, 89.
24 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge 1992), 64.
25 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press 1983), 80ff.
26 Robert Proctor, Narrative of a Journey across the Cordillera of the Andes, and of a Residence in Lima, and Other Parts of Peru, in the Years 1823 and 1824 (London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. 1825), 11.
27 Campbell Scarlett, South America and the Pacific, I, 154.
28 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books 1978).
29 Robert Dennis Tomasek (ed.), Latin American Politics: Studies of the Contemporary Scene, 2nd edn (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books 1970), 250.
30 Sarmiento, Facundo, 50.
31 Sarmiento, Facundo, 57.
32 Sarmiento, Facundo, 76.
33 ‘No es fuera de propósito recordar aquí las semejanzas notables que representan los argentinos con los árabes. En Argel, en Orán, en Mascara y en los aduares del desierto vi siempre a los árabes reunidos en cafés … apiñados en derredor del cantor, generalmente dos, que se acompañan de la vihuela a dúo, recitando canciones nacionales, plañideras como nuestros tristes’:(Garden City, NY: Anchor Books 1970), 70n1.
34 Miers, Travels in Chile and La Plata, I, 45.
35 Miers, Travels in Chile and La Plata, I, 57.
36 Santiago Calzadilla, Las beldades de mi tiempo [1891] (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina 1982), 99.
37 José Hernández, The Gaucho Martín Fierro, bilingual edition, English translation by C. E. Ward, ed. Frank G. Carrino and Alberto J. Carlos (Albany: State University of New York Press 1967), 2.
38 Martiniano Leguizamón, ‘De mi tierra’, in Martiniano Leguizamón, Alma nativa (Buenos Aires: Arnoldo Moen 1906), 163ff.
39 ‘… recorrió el diapasón de la guitarra en un bordoneo maestro’: Eduardo Gutiérrez, Una amistad hasta la muerte [1886?] (Buenos Aires: Lumen 1952), 73.
40 Leopoldo Lugones, El payador [1916] (Buenos Aires: Centurión 1961), 49.
41 ‘Nuestras mejores prendas familiares, como ser el extremado amor al hijo; el fondo contradictorio y romántico de nuestro carácter; la sensibilidad musical … la fidelidad de nuestras mujeres; la importancia que damos al valor … constituyen rasgos peculiares del tipo gaucho’: (Buenos Aires: Centurión 1961), 79.
42 ‘… la técnica nos la dió Francia, y la inspiración, los payadores de Juárez’: Alberto Williams, ‘Orígenes del arte musical argentino’, in Alberto Williams, Obras completas, vol. 4 (Buenos Aires: La Quena 1951), 19.
43 Gino Germani, Política y sociedad en una época de transición: de la sociedad tradicional a la sociedad de masas (Buenos Aires: Paidós 1962).
44 The process began with the revolution of 25 May 1810, but formal independence from Spain was only declared six years later, on 9 July 1816.
45 See José C. Chiaramonte, ‘Formas de identidad en el Río de la Plata luego de 1810’, Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana, 3rd series, no. 1, 1989, 71–92; and Oscar Oszlak, La formación del Estado argentino: orden, progreso y organización nacional (Buenos Aires: Ariel 2004).
46 In describing Argentina, Sarmiento stated that ‘immensity is the universal characteristic of the country’: Facundo, 2; while Alberdi famouly remarked that ‘to govern is to populate’: Juan Bautista Alberdi, Bases y puntos de partida para la organización política de la República Argentina (Buenos Aires: La Cultura Argentina 1915), 14. See also Tulio Halperi'n Donghi, Una nación para el desierto argentino (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de Ame'rica Latina 1982).
47 Ley no. 817, 19 October 1876. See also Juan A. Alsina, La inmigración en el primer siglo de la independencia (Buenos Aires: F. A. Alsina 1910), 164ff.
48 Figures cited in Roberto Cortés Conde, ‘The growth of the Argentine economy, c. 1870–1914’, in Leslie Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986), 327–58 (335).
49 Adolfo Prieto, El discurso criollista en la formación de la Argentina moderna (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana 1988), 16–18.
50 See Cortés Conde, ‘The growth of the Argentine economy’, esp. 329–34; and Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith, Modern Latin America, 2nd edn (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 1989), 71–3.
51 Carl E. Solberg, Immigration and Nationalism, Argentina and Chile, 1890–1914 (Austin: University of Texas Press 1970), 108ff.; Roberto P. Korzeniewicz, ‘The labour movement and the state in Argentina, 1887–1907’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 8, no. 1, 1989, 25–45; and Roberto P. Korzeniewicz, ‘Labor unrest in Argentina, 1887–1907’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 24, no. 3, 1989, 71–98.
52 James R. Scobie, Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb, 1870–1910 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 1974), 208ff., esp. Table 14 (273).
53 Jeane Delaney, ‘Making sense of modernity: changing attitudes toward the immigrant and the gaucho in turn-of-the-century Argentina’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 38, no. 3, 1996, 434–59.
54 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, ch. 5 passim.
55 ‘Todos los gauchos tocan la guitarra y cantan con una incalculable fuerza de pasión porque su alma está habituada a “retratar lo que siente”’: Gutiérrez, Una amistad hasta la muerte, 64.
56 Josefina Ludmer, El ge'nero gauchesco: un tratado sobre la patria (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1988). An English translation by Molly Weigel is available as The Gaucho Genre: A Treatise on the Motherland (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2002).
57 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 1991), 66.
58 Leonard Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer Books 1980); Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1983); V. Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1991); Raymond Monelle, The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2006).
59 Melanie Plesch, ‘La música en la construcción de la identidad cultural argentina’, Revista Argentina de Musicología, vol. 1, no. 1, 1996, 57–68; Melanie Plesch, ‘La lógica sonora de la generación del ochenta: Una aproximación a la retórica del nacionalismo musical argentino’, in Los caminos de la música: Europa y Argentina (Jujuy: Universidad Nacional de Jujuy 2008), 55–110; Melanie Plesch, ‘Topic theory and the rhetorical efficacy of musical nationalisms: the Argentine case’, paper presented at the ‘International Conference on Music Semiotics in Memory of Raymond Monelle’, University of Edinburgh, 26–8 October 2012.
60 Melanie Plesch, ‘The topos of the guitar in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Argentina’, Musical Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 3–4, 2009, 242–78 (243).
61 Ricardo Gutiérrez, Lázaro (Buenos Aires: Bernard 1923), 102.
62 Francisco Aníbal Riu, ‘Triste’, Caras y Caretas, no. 506, 13 June 1908. I am indebted to David T. Agg for his help with the translation of the second stanza.
63 Carlos Vega, ‘Las canciones folklóricas argentinas’, in Gran Manual del Folklore. Suplemento extraordinario de la Revista Folklore (Buenos Aires: Honegger 1965), 193–321.
64 See Footnotenote 32.
65 The triste is closely related to another folk song, the estilo, and Vega believed them to be of one family.
66 A small number of tristes arranged for piano and guitar were published before Aguirre's work. They are not discussed here due to space limitations. A full discussion can be found in my ‘Una pena estrordinaria: the topos of the triste in Argentine musical nationalism’, paper presented at the Royal Musical Association 49th Annual Conference, London, 19–21 September 2013.
67 Julián Aguirre, Aires Nacionales Argentinos. Primer Cuaderno: Cinco Tristes, op. 17 (Buenos Aires: Ricordi c. 1930).
68 Julián Aguirre, Aires Nacionales Argentinos. Segundo Cuaderno: Cinco Canciones, op. 36 (Buenos Aires: Ricordi c. 1930).
69 Carlos López Buchardo, ‘Campera’, from Escenas Argentinas, Poema Sinfónico Para Orquesta (Buenos Aires Ricordi Americana 1927).
70 Said, Orientalism, 208.
71 Edward E. Sampson, Celebrating the Other: A Dialogic Account of Human Nature (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1993), 155.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Melanie Plesch
Melanie Plesch is an Argentine musicologist currently based in Australia. Her work focuses on the intersections of music, politics and society, with particular emphasis on the relationship between music and the construction of national identities in Argentina. She is currently Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Melbourne. Before relocating to Australia in 2005 she was Associate Professor at the University of Buenos Aires and at the Catholic University of Argentina. She is the author of Boletín Musical 1837 (Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Buenos Aires 2006), El Discurso sobre música de Fernando Cruz Cordero (Secretaría de Cultura de la Nación 2006), and co-editor, with Silvina Mansilla, of Nuevos estudios sobre música argentina (Editorial de la Universidad Católica Argentina 2009). She is the editor of Analizar, interpretar, hacer música: de las Cantigas de Santa María a la organología. Escritos in memoriam Gerardo V. Huseby (Gourmet Musical Ediciones 2013). Her study of the guitar as a musical topos in Argentina has been published in the Musical Quarterly. She is currently working on two book projects: one on the musical rhetoric of Argentine nationalism and another on representations of tango dancing in mainstream film. Email: [email protected].