History of folkloric music in Argentina

[7] Among the first musical instruments found in South America are the primitive flute and the churinga, the latter of great diffusion in Australia and especially present in the Patagonian cultures, one of the similarities considered by the anthropologist Antonio Méndes Correia to sustain his hypothesis about the Australian origin of the American man and his entrance through the southern end of the continent.

[46] In the following decades the relaciones would be combined with the "aro-aro", characteristic of the cueca, a shout uttered by those attending the dance or by the musicians, with the virtue of instantly suspending the music, to give way to a moment of toast or humorous relations.

In the second half of the 19th century, chamamé appeared in the Northeast (it acquired this name in the 1930s), as a result of the fusion of the music of German, Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish immigrants (mainly polka and shottis) with the rhythms of the indigenous Guaraní culture and Afro-Rioplatense traditions.

[54] Since the end of the 19th century, an effort to recover folklore as national music had already begun, driven by compilers such as Ernesto Padilla, Andrés Chazarreta and Juan Alfonso Carrizo, or composer-singers such as Saúl Salinas, father of the "tonada cuyana".

"On October 1, 1937 the San Juan-born Buenaventura Luna (Sentencias del Tata Viejo) and his group La Tropilla de Huachi Pampa (Entre San Juan y Mendoza), which included the Tormo-Canales Duo (Antonio Tormo and Diego Canales) made their debut on Radio El Mundo of Buenos Aires, paving the way for the mass broadcasting of folkloric music;[60] the success led the radio station to air in 1939 the folkloric program The Muleteers' Fireside (in Spanish: El fogón de los arrieros).

In 1942, Los Hermanos Ábalos achieved nationwide fame when they appeared performing their Carnavalito in the film La Guerra Gaucha, directed by Lucas Demare, with a script by the tango singer Homero Manzi —of Santiago del Estero origin— and Ulyses Petit de Murat.

[67] In 1949, Buenaventura Luna put on the air on Radio Belgrano a program called El canto perdido, with the aim of making a "barbarian anthology" of the "lost songs in the Argentine traditions", with interpretations of the group Los Manseros de Tulum.

[73] In 1950, the singer from Mendoza Antonio Tormo released, on a 78 rpm single record, the song "El rancho 'e la Cambicha", by Mario Millán Medina, the driving force behind the double rasguido.

[77][78] Polo Giménez himself, in his book De este lado del recuerdo, relates that moment as follows: "Still the word "folklore" was a bit taboo, because it was synonymous with wine, farras, drunkenness of low class people.

In 1965, Tomás Tutú Campos, undoubtedly one of the incomparable voices of folklore, founder of two of the most splendid groups of the time, Las Voces de Huayra with Jorge Cafrune among others, and Los Cantores del Alba.

In the littoral music of this period, musicians who had been performing since the 1940s achieved success, such as Tránsito Cocomarola ("Puente Pexoa", "Kilómetro 11") —in whose homage Chamamé Day is celebrated—[85] and Tarragó Ros ("La guampada" and "A Curuzú") —known as the King of Chamamé—,[86] and new figures were also added to that list, such as the remarkable voice of Ramona Galarza ("Merceditas",[87] "Pescador y guitarrero", "Virgencita de Caacupé", "Trasnochados espineles") —called the Bride of Paraná—.

[96] From there emerged a much more open way of understanding folkloric music and, above all, a series of songs and children's characters that shaped several generations, with classics such as Manuelita, La vaca estuda in baguala style, El reino del revés in carnavalito form, among many others.

Almost simultaneously, a group of musicians based in Mendoza, led by Mercedes Sosa, Armando Tejada Gómez and Oscar Matus, launched the Movimiento del Nuevo Cancionero, vindicating figures of Argentine folklore who had remained marginalized, such as Atahualpa Yupanqui and Buenaventura Luna, the need to end the tango-folklore confrontation, and the proposal to design a "national" and Latin American songbook, open to all styles, but at the same time avoiding purely commercial music.

Some of the many artists who expressly adhered to the Nuevo Cancionero movement include César Isella, Hamlet Lima Quintana (Zamba para no morir), Ramón Ayala (El mensú), Los Andariegos, Quinteto Tiempo (Quien te amaba ya se va), Las Voces Blancas (Pastor de nubes), Horacio Guarany (Si se calla el cantor, Si el vino viene), the songwriting duo of Cuchi Leguizamón and Manuel J. Castilla (Balderrama, La Pomeña), Hermanos Núñez (Chacarera del 55), Ariel Petrocelli (Cuando tenga la tierra), Daniel Toro (Zamba para olvidarte), Chito Zeballos (Zamba de los mineros), and others.

Lagos, who had already expressed his renovating vision in songs such as the chacarera La oncena (1956), would record in 1969 the album Así nos gusta (1969), with the participation of Astor Piazzolla, which would strongly influence the new musical tendencies of folklore.

Probably one of the high points of that stage was Canción con todos (1969), composed by César Isella and Armando Tejada Gómez and sung by Mercedes Sosa, which has virtually become the Hymn of Latin America.

Among them, exchanges with the so-called national rock, such as those made by the band Arco Iris, led by Gustavo Santaolalla, especially in his album Sudamérica o el regreso a la Aurora (1972), Roque Narvaja (Chimango, 1975), León Gieco and Víctor Heredia.

In 1969 he composed the music for Canción con todos, with lyrics by poet Armando Tejada Gómez, declared "Anthem of Latin America" by Unesco in 1990, later Tejada Gómez would be one of the most persecuted singer-songwriters of the self-styled Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (National Reorganization Process), In 1972 and 1973, the films Argentinísima and Argentinísima II, by Fernando Ayala and Héctor Olivera, musical-folkloric documentaries, were released, filmed in natural sceneries all over the country, with the participation of the main artists of Argentine folklore.

In September 1974, the government of President María Estela Martínez de Perón kidnapped and destroyed the master and discs of the Misa para el Tercer Mundo, performed by the Grupo Vocal Argentino Nuevo, with music by Roberto Lar and texts by the priest Carlos Mugica, the latter murdered a few months earlier by the terrorist organization Triple A.

There are serious suspicions that it was an assassination ordered by the military government and executed by the then lieutenant Carlos Villanueva,[118][119] whom two survivors of the clandestine detention center La Perla have pointed out as the person who said that "he had to be killed to prevent other singers from doing the same".

[124] Also in 1978 the Argentine-Mexican group Sanampay was created in Mexico, directed by Naldo Labrín and originally integrated by Eduardo Bejarano, Delfor Sombra, Caíto Díaz, Hebe Rosell and Jorge González.

"In 1983 the Cuarteto Vocal Zupay and the actor Pepe Soriano released the album El inglés, a musical composition by Oscar Cardozo Ocampo and Rubén Verna, corresponding to the play by Juan Carlos Gené, revived after returning from exile, set in the first English invasion of Buenos Aires in 1806.

The recovery of democracy in 1983 allowed the diffusion of a new generation of folklorists, such as Peteco Carabajal (Como pájaros en el aire), Teresa Parodi (Pedro canoero), Antonio Tarragó Ros (María va, Cachito campeón de Corrientes), Suna Rocha (Me voy quedando), Raúl Carnota (Grito santiagueño), Chango Spasiuk, the Grupo Huancara, the Chacarerata Santiagueña (founded by Juan Carlos Gramajo), Rubén Patagonia, Los Santiagueños (formed by Peteco Carabajal, Jacinto Piedra and Juan Saavedra), Jorge Marziali (Los obreros de Morón) and the "cantor-cuentista" Mario Bofill ("Cantalicio vendió su acordeón", "Viva la Pepa"), who reached an enormous popularity in the littoral music.

The importance of this measure for the diffusion of folkloric music has been summarized by the organizers of the event as follows:[130] "This fact, which is a direct consequence of the cultural thinking deriving from the return of our nation's democracy, has been repeated consecutively since that year, achieving in almost every opportunity the highest corresponding rating in the programming of the four television channels of the Federal Capital.

[131] Simultaneously, Chango Farías Gómez, recently returned from exile, formed the group Músicos Populares Argentinos (MPA), with Peteco Carabajal, Jacinto Piedra, Verónica Condomí and Rubén Izaurralde, "that transformed the folkloric repertoire in the 1980s, with original arrangements and the incorporation of electric instruments.

[133] In 1986 the trio Vitale-Baraj-González (formed by Lito Vitale, Bernardo Baraj and Lucho González), linked to rock, performed at the Cosquín Festival, winning the Consagración Award, with a revolutionary version of Merceditas, which became the group's emblem.

In littoral music, trombonist Abelito Larrosa Cuevas and guitarist Mateo Villalba recorded the album Juntata linda en el litoral, with the participation of accordionist Isaco Abitbol in two tracks.

In 1993 the rock group Divididos released a folk-rock version of the traditional song El arriero, by Atahualpa Yupanqui, which was very well received by young audiences and generated a passionate debate about the limits of folklore.

[147] Both artists performed Rezo por vos, Inconsciente colectivo, De mí and García's rock version of the Argentine national anthem and received a standing ovation, making up one of the historic nights of the festival.

[148] In 1998, the writer, musician and radio host Alejandro Dolina released as a double album his work Lo que me costó el amor de Laura, edited by Querencia, defined by the author as a creole operetta, and which is built on tango and folklore rhythms.