- Title: ARGENTINA: Music from Buenos Aires' shantytowns is motor for new satirical opera
- Date: 13th February 2009
- Summary: VARIOUS OF SHOW (7 SHOTS)
- Embargoed: 28th February 2009 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Argentina
- Country: Argentina
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz
- Reuters ID: LVA5VP0E4JHPNYYQAO9NNR2J2UQY
- Story Text: The rhythms of Buenos Aires' poor quarters are infiltrating the city's comfortable class with a satirical opera set to the infectious beat of cumbia villera.
Born in the massive slums encircling Buenos Aires' relatively wealthy core, Argentina's cumbia mashes tropical rhythms with hip hop-esque lyrics honing in on the harsh realities of life in the shantytowns.
Once relegated to tin roofed shacks and neighborhood dance clubs, the increasingly popular music is the engine for 'Mueva la Patria' ('Shake the Homeland'), a comic opera parodying Argentine history.
Speaking before a recent showing at an up-scale theater in the southern San Telmo neighborhood, co-creator Pablo Machetti called the opera a kind of people's history of Argentina.
"It seemed interesting to us to talk about our history but saying it in this way. It's like the revenge of the poor people who impose this rhythm on the rich," he said.
Marchetti is no stranger to attacking the status quo. He is the editor of Barcelona, a satirical paper similar to The Onion that uses fake news to expose social injustices and political corruption.
In the opera cumbia, he and Barcelona colleagues found another way to unload their mordant humor on Argentina, rhythmically lampooning nearly 200 years of Argentine history.
Underneath all the singing and dancing is a strong criticism of classism, racism and xenophobia in Argentina, as well as an irreverent look at the horrors of history.
"With rhythm and dance we can talk about these things that are taboo -- the genocide of the Indians during the campaign of desert at the end of the 19th century, the last dictatorship. These issues are not for dancing.
They produce a contrast with this danceable cumbia rhythm," he said.
Just as the music of the lower classes wins out, the opera's hero gets his revenge as well, coming out of the shantytown to win over a girl from the better side of the tracks.
Unlike most operas, people came out of the theater dancing.
But for spectator Pablo Jakovich, it was the historical inventory that gave the opera high marks.
"It's excellent, a magnificent retelling, ruthless and cruel," he said.
And its another step forcumbia and its practitioners in gaining universal acceptance in Argentine society, paving the way for a future that is not quite as ruthless and cruel as the past. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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