Troubling Gender: Youth and Cumbia in Argentina's Music Scene - Softcover

Vila, Pablo; Seman, Pablo; Martin, Eloisa; Carozzi, Maria Julia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1439902674 ISBN 13: 9781439902677

Publisher: Temple University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Cumbia villeraoliterally, cumbia from the shantytownsois a musical genre quite popular with Argentine youth who frequent urban dance halls. Its songs are known for their highly sexualized lyricsoabout girls dancing provocatively or experiencing erotic pleasure. The songs exhibit the tensions at play in the different ways people relate to this musical genre. In Troubling Gender, noted sociologists Pablo Vila and Pablo Seman scrutinize the music's lyrics and the singers' and dancers' performances. At the same time, the authors conduct in depth-interviews to examine the ways males construct and appropriate cumbia's lyrics, and how females identify, appropriate, and playfully and critically manipulate the same misogynistic songs. Addressing the relationship between this form of music and the wider social, political, and economic changes that influence the lives of urban youth, Troubling Gender argues that the music both reflects and influences the ways in which women's and men's roles are changing in Argentine society.

About this title

About the Author:

Pablo Vila is Professor of Sociology at Temple University. His speciality is the study of processes of social and cultural identification. He researches those processes at two locales, the U.S.-Mexico border and Argentine popular music. He is the author of seven books, including Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Pablo Seman is a researcher at CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas) in Argentina and El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico. He specializes in mass culture, popular music, and the interpenetration of popular literature and religious tradition. His most recent books are Bajo Continuo: Exploraciones descentradas sobre cultura popular y masiva and (with Daniel Miguez) Entre santos cumbias y piquetes. Eloisa Martin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. She is the editor ofCurrent Sociology and has published extensively on popular culture and popular religion in a number of international journals. Maria Julia Carozzi is tenured Professor of Anthropology in the Institute of Higher Social Studies at the National University of San Martin (Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martin) and tenured researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research in Argentina (CONICET [Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas]). She is the coeditor (with Cesar Ceriani Cernadas) of Ciencias sociales y religion en America Latina: Perspectivas en debate.

Review:

"Troubling Gender offers a nuanced interpretation of the envelope-pushing sexuality associated with cumbia villera, demonstrating how its young musicians and fans are imagining and performing their identities within an unstable socioeconomic context. This is an important book with a great deal to contribute to the literature on both gender relations and Latin American popular music and dance cultures, as well as to discussions of the impact of media and economic inequalities on young people's lives." -Deborah Pacini Hernandez, author of Oye Como Va! Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music (Temple) "Troubling Genderis a groundbreaking book on the relationship between gender struggle in the context of changing opportunities for men and women and the representation of violence in the cumbia villera genre. This focus enables Vila and Seman to track quite expertly the transformation of social conflicts relating to work, urban life, and gender relations into the cultural field. The authors offer not only a rich sociological reflection on the negotiation of female autonomy in the context of popular music but also an interesting analysis of the lyrics of the genre. Troubling Gender also pays attention to the context within which the songs are played and emitted, something usually left aside in the sociology and anthropology of music." -George Yudice, author of The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era "After the Mexicanization of Colombian cumbia, now the Argentines are dancing to cumbia and making it their own! Troubling Gender combines a dynamic discursive and social analysis of the explicit sexual content of the lyrics of cumbia villera with a rich, ethnographic discussion of how the young men and women dancers (dis)identify with the lyrics while enjoying the danceable rhythms. The authors' examination of the gender and sexual dynamics that this music triggers among its fans reminds us that the gender wars in Latin America are not over, despite the increasing presence of sex in media and the public space." -Frances Aparicio, author of Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures

About this edition

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1439902674
• ISBN 13: 9781439902677
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 230