Incorporating the Other: Italians in Argentina?s Folclore

LEONARDO J. WAISMAN

Italian Migration and Urban Music Culture in South America

Waxmann

Lugar: Münster; Año: 2015; p. 85 - 98

From Antonio Pigafetta of Vicenza, who in 1522 wrote the first description of native songs and dances of Patagonia, to Soledad Pastorutti, the girl wonder of massive folk festivals in the 1990s, Italians and their offspring have had enormous impact on the constitution, reproduction and conceptualization of Argentine folclore. Ariel Petrocelli, Luis Landriscina, César Isella, Los Visconti, Hedgar di Fulvio are but a few names that come to mind among the hundreds of ?tanos? (Argentine slang for Italians) whose music, lyrics and performances have been influential in the shaping of the repertoire. Additionally, the subject of the gringo (another slang synonym) comes up regularly in lyrics of zambas, chamamés, chacareras and other genres. As it has developed at least since the 1930s, folclore is best understood as a field in Bourdieu?s sense: an urban arena where players (composers, professional and amateur performers, institutions, audiences) contend for power, define the rules of the practice and exclude outsiders. In the field of folclore and its antecedents, the Italian has undergone a remarkable process of transformation. Initially viewed as the outsider whose invasion of Argentina disrupted all the traditional Hispanic and Creole values, he has come to be represented as the hard-working immigrant who helped ?build our homeland? and who became one with the Argentine people. This transmutation can be seen in the strategies of legitimation adopted by musicians at different times as well as in the evolution of the treatment of the image of the gringo in lyrics. Of course, the change in the status of Italians is closely related to hegemonic political views in the field; therefore it has not developed as a linear process. It has been, instead, the center of a hotly disputed and never quite finished battle between ?conservatives? and ?progressives? in the field. This paper examines and illustrates this complex process by means of a few representative examples (musicians, poets, and songs).