info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis
Sounds of Revival. Popular Resistance through the Practice of the Chilean Cueca
Autor
Batlle Lathrop, María B.
Institución
Resumen
The cueca, national dance of Chile, involves various styles that correspond to different social identities. The official version most commonly receives the name of cueca huasa, in association with rural imaginaries that respond to elites’ landowning nostalgia. This thesis examines the revival process of the historically unofficial variant of the Chilean cueca—urban-popular cueca—which has been unfolding since the early 1990s, coincidently with the return to democracy. Understanding that the post-dictatorship period in Chile still exhibits considerable remnants of tacit authoritarianism and manifest inequity, my main argument is that during the past three decades the practice of urban-popular cueca has represented a space for popular resistance. Notions of el pueblo and the fiesta popular are crucial to grasping the cultural specificity of this revival process and this cueca as a site of resistance. Through ethnographic methods, I analyse three dimensions within which I understand such resistance to operate. First, a political one, which entails notions of folklore and national identity, examining how the cueca has moved away from such hegemonic identifications in a process of de-folklorisation. Secondly, a social dimension involving the vindication of a popular identity that is central to this revival 'cueca' style, and which is grounded on the figure of the roto and the practice of canto a la rueda. And thirdly, a gender dimension concerning the (re)construction of a contemporary urban cantora archetype as an essential part of the process of women’s entrance into the male-dominated world of urban-popular cueca. Moreover, reflexive research methods involving my own experience of music learning and social interactions in the field have helped me interrogate my positionality within the cueca scene and its historical processes. Finally, through music analysis, I build a stylistic history of the genre that further illustrates these political, sociocultural and gender dynamics and tensions.