Description
This paper explores two modalities of aesthetic reception of Hispanism, as a Mediterranean cultural current arrived and renewed since the Spanish conquest, in two musical fields in the region of Cuyo (Argentinian central-western) in the first half of the 20th century. Differences can be observed in the appropriation of poetry, the Castilian language and the European musical heritage, which arrived from the peninsula, in the academic and popular spheres.
To demonstrate this, we turn to the poetic-musical production of two musicians whose repertoires circulated in different social areas. On the one hand, the folk songbook of oral tradition in the voice of the poet and musician Eusebio Dojorti [nicknamed Buenaventura Luna]. Born in the rural hinterland of the region, he was the ‘gaucho decidor’ of popular customs, myths and experiences. On the other hand, the choral, orchestral and solo compositions created by the composer, pianist and choir conductor Inocencio Aguado Aguirre, a Spanish immigrant who settled in Cuyo in 1912.
From the perspective of Postcolonial Studies —which maintains the theoretical conceptions of the subaltern subject and the idea of Europe as a ‘silent’ referent of any historical construction (Chacrabarty, 1999)— the duality and ambiguities that lead to the clarification of the historical subjects that appear in this local history of music are raised. Ambivalent subjects, for the popular oral culture and for the enlightened academic culture of the region, who question and discuss politically the totalising representativeness of Argentine cultural nationalism from a situated and anti-elitist perspective; but, on the other hand, they assimilate casteism as an integral element of their ideological autonomy in the case of Inocencio Aguado and of their Cuyo identity in the case of Buenaventura Luna.
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