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Mythologizing the internal Other: rural tradition as antidote to modern civilization

Michela Coletta

in Decadent Modernity: Civilisation and 'Latinidad' in Spanish America, 1880-1920

The emergence of literary and cultural criollismo has usually been looked at in the context of early-twentieth-century nationalism. While these analyses have contributed to a better understanding of ... More

The emergence of literary and cultural criollismo has usually been looked at in the context of early-twentieth-century nationalism. While these analyses have contributed to a better understanding of the extent to which early-twentieth-century responses to immigration shaped the political debate over the following decades, they seem to underestimate the pervasiveness of civilisational constructs at the turn of the century, thus failing to fully appreciate the specific contexts in which the first coherent attempts to come to terms with ideas of the modern were made. Breaking away from previous interpretations that look at the early-twentieth-century discourse about the nation almost exclusively in terms of a reaction to the phenomenon of mass immigration, this chapter focuses on the turn-of-the-century period and shows that, both in the River Plate and in Chile, discourses of the autochthonous primarily originated in response to the hegemonic outward-looking idea of modern civilisation. The chapter analyses the shift from the idea of a barbaric past to that of rural tradition. The countryside was used to counterbalance the refined and decadent urban civilisation based on European cultural models.Less

Home in the Pampas: Alberto Gerchunoff’s Jewish Gauchos

Mónica Szurmuk

in Jews at Home: The Domestication of Identity

This chapter turns to Argentina, where Alberto Gerchunoff's Jewish Gauchos (1910) became an icon of Jewish incorporation into Argentinian society in the early twentieth century. In a series of ... More

This chapter turns to Argentina, where Alberto Gerchunoff's Jewish Gauchos (1910) became an icon of Jewish incorporation into Argentinian society in the early twentieth century. In a series of vignettes, Gerchunoff showed that in working the land Jews had returned to a biblical way of life and had finally come home. His text received attention not just for its powerful narrative of immigrant Jews making a home in Argentina but even more for the way in which it claimed Argentina as a Jewish homeland. The publication of the book opened up a symbolic space for Jewish immigrants in the lettered culture of Buenos Aires and also in the future of the country. But, as the chapter shows, later in his life Gerchunoff came to doubt his idealism about Argentina as homeland, though by that time he had become separated from his text, which had taken on a life of its own in the Argentinian imagination.Less

Darwin and the Pampas Pirates: Adventure in Search of Treasure

Charles R. Ault

in Do Elephants Have Knees? And Other Stories of Darwinian Origins

This chapter chronicles Charles Darwin's swashbuckling adventures aboard the Beagle in search of nature's secrets, riding in the company of gauchos, the pirates of the pampas. It compares Darwin to ... More

This chapter chronicles Charles Darwin's swashbuckling adventures aboard the Beagle in search of nature's secrets, riding in the company of gauchos, the pirates of the pampas. It compares Darwin to Jim Hawkins, the central character in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island. There's quite a bit of Jim Hawkins in Darwin's youthful persona, and perhaps a bit of romantic admiration for the piratical characters of the world. When imagining Darwin, instead of a Victorian gentleman, think young Jim Hawkins. Imagine Darwin being on the deck of the Beagle amidst a stormy sea. This chapter recounts Darwin's voyage aboard the Beagle, which first sailed on May 22, 1826, and again on December 27, 1831. It describes an act of piracy committed by the ship's captain Robert FitzRoy, who took several Fuegians hostage; the struggle between the military government of the Blancos and the elected government of Uruguay; and Darwin's encounter with young gauchos.Less

Literary Portrait of a Culture: Argentina

in Culture and Management in the Americas

Literature is a useful indicator of market demand. A widely accepted novel implies a collective bond between author and reader, as well as revealing of public demand. The romance genre, in ... More

Literature is a useful indicator of market demand. A widely accepted novel implies a collective bond between author and reader, as well as revealing of public demand. The romance genre, in particular, provides a venue for highlighting “mythical, allegorical, and symbolist forms” that pervade a country's literary tradition. Drawing on the meaning of a traditional myth, this chapter offers an interpretation of the leadership relevance of Martin Fierro, a fictional gaucho immortalized by José Hernández in his 1872 epic rhymed poem, “Martin Fierro.” The gaucho, the frontiersman in an unfenced, cattle-rearing Argentina, would later become an Argentine brand. The gaucho was conferred with values that became identitary values for Argentines inasmuch as they represent an Argentine archetype. This chapter also looks at Ricardo Güiraldes's Don Segundo Sombra, which became a film in 1969, a year after Martin Fierro, and argues that the gaucho does not fit well into Geert Hofstede's four-dimensional grid except at its extremes of high individualism, low power distance, high masculinity, and low aversion to uncertainty.Less

Wayne Shorter

Keith Waters

in Postbop Jazz in the 1960s: The Compositions of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea

Wayne Shorter remains one of the most significant jazz composers of the 1960s, with challenging compositions noted for their harmonic and formal ambiguity. “El Toro” (Art Blakey, Freedom Rider) uses ... More

Wayne Shorter remains one of the most significant jazz composers of the 1960s, with challenging compositions noted for their harmonic and formal ambiguity. “El Toro” (Art Blakey, Freedom Rider) uses a major third axis progression in a 16-bar form, but the melodic structure cuts against an 8 + 8-bar regularity; “Virgo” (Night Dreamer) relies on a 29-bar ABAC form with irregular phrase lengths. A comparison of “Penelope” (Etc) and “El Gaucho” (Adam’s Apple) shows that they begin with a nearly identical melody, but Shorter subjects each to radically different harmonic environments. “Pinocchio” (Miles Davis, Nefertiti) is an 18-bar composition. Its major third axis uses postbop substitution strategies that echo more-conventional progressions. “Face of the Deep” (The All-Seeing Eye) is one of Shorter’s more exploratory compositions: it links to the jazz avant-garde, and its scoring for three horns reveals an expanded vocabulary of upper structure harmonies.Less

Introduction

Marc Gidal

in Spirit Song: Afro-Brazilian Religious Music and Boundaries

This chapter introduces the setting for the book’s analysis, the multi-faith and multi-ethnic religious community in greater Porto Alegre, Brazil. The community practices three Afro-Brazilian ... More

This chapter introduces the setting for the book’s analysis, the multi-faith and multi-ethnic religious community in greater Porto Alegre, Brazil. The community practices three Afro-Brazilian religions: Batuque, Umbanda, and Quimbanda. The chapter explains the phrase “Afro-gaucho religious community” before it discusses the book’s central interpretive framework: musical boundary-work. By combining ethnomusicology and symbolic boundary theory, this framework helps to describe the Afro-gaucho religious community’s use of ritual music to cross and purify the three religions. Musical boundary-work signifies the creation, interpretation, and use of music to reinforce, bridge, or reshape boundaries for social, spiritual, political, or other purposes. The chapter also outlines the history of scholarship on Afro-Brazilian religions, their music, and their presence in southernmost Brazil, as well as symbolic boundary theory and its use in ethnomusicology. The chapter concludes with an overview of the ethnomusicological research methods used and the author’s interactions with the community.Less