Chapter 16 - Music as Sonic Literature

Summary

This chapter makes a case for integrating some musical narratives – both verbal and audiovisual – into the field of Argentine literature. After considering the case of Luis Alberto Spinetta’s 1973 “Cantata de puentes amarillos,” a song generally valued as a poetic achievement, it highlights the historical role of five iconic music works: the Himno Nacional, the national anthem written in 1813 by Vicente López and Blas Parera, which inaugurated a state ritual based on the alleged epic value of personal sacrifice; “Mi Noche Triste,” a tango recorded by Carlos Gardel in 1917, which describes a beloved woman’s absence from the perspective of a suffering male narrator, thus nourishing a topos of gender relations in popular culture; Estancia, a classical ballet composed by Alberto Ginastera in 1941, which displays the nationalist myth of Argentina’s rural authenticity; “Manuelita la Tortuga,” a children’s song by María Elena Walsh, the story of a female turtle who travels to Paris in order to be made beautiful; and Charly García’s “No bombardeen Buenos Aires,” a rock song that in June 1982 proposed a critical view of the Malvinas/Falklands War, contributing to the negative memory of the dictatorship of 1976–83.