Troubling Gender: Youth and Cumbia in Argentina's Music Scene

Abstract

The plurality of positions implicated in the reception of cumbia villera, with its enormous variation, complexity and possible articulations, came to belie any pretension of describing its lyrics as they may sound to us, the analysts just one, and the least pertinent and contextualized possibility of reception. We could say that girls that reject, accept, or negotiate in different ways the positionings cumbia villeras lyrics offer them would be exercising in a particular way the productive pleasure. That kind of productive pleasure produces, among other things, a gap between the content of the lyrics and the dancing performances in the dance halls.