Mara Favoretto

Tango and Cumbia villera: Origins, Encounters, and Tensions

After the economic, social, and political crisis in Argentina in the 1990s, a new musical subgenre emerged: the polemical cumbia villera. While traditionally Argentine tango represented the displaced, oppressed “other” and challenged hegemonic discourses of nationhood, a comparable representation and process appears to be occurring with cumbia villera. This article draws a parallel between the origins of tango in the nineteenth century and cumbia villera in the 1990s, analyzing the impact cumbia villera has had on Argentine culture and questioning its place in the national panorama in light of the country’s bicentennial celebrations.

A Tale of Two Waves: Latin American Migration to Australia

Latin American migrants have had an increasing presence in Australia since the 1960s and constitute a sizeable community today. Yet, despite their growing size and contributions in the Australian context, our knowledge about this migrant group (or collection of migrant groups) is still limited. The publications that do exist explore some important themes, such as the country origins and migration experiences of Latin Americans in Australia, the adaptation processes of Latin American people to life in their new country, and the formation and consolidation of diaspora(s) of peoples from this region. However, research in this area is still sparse.

Toward a Hybrid Latin American-Australian Music Scene

It is no news that popular music plays a fundamental role in the negotiation of identities. Many academic studies have provided evidence in this regard (Bennett 1986; Frith 1996; Garcia Canclini 1995; Grossberg 1989). Popular music provides a bridge for integrating ethnic and dominant cultures; it is a vehicle for crossing social and cultural boundaries in the process of developing a multicultural identity. In this sense, it is not only a reflexive tool but also a potentially constitutive factor in the patterning of cultural values and social interaction (Waterman 1991, 66–67), providing society with a framework for intercultural engagement in a variety of ways (Bendrups & Johnson 2011, 85). This is particularly relevant in the context of increasing cultural diversity that is resulting from greater volume and rapidity of global flows of people and cultures. This is changing the dynamics of most urban settings around the world, including in contemporary Australia.