The embodiment of gozo: Aesthetic, emotion and politics in the indigenous song-dances of the Argentine Chaco

Abstract

In this chapter, we analyze the music and dances of the Toba or Qom, one of the main indigenous groups of the Argentine Chaco. Starting from a collaborative and interdisciplinary research among anthropology, musicology and dance studies, we propose to analyze music and dance as both performative processes and aesthetic objects. We focus on the comparative analysis between two Toba performance genres with circular choreographic designs: the Nmi, an old song-dance of the youth, associated to sexual innuendo and mating pleasures, and the Rueda, a new Evangelical ritual dance performed mainly by young men and women, with the music of Coritos. Since the Christian conversion at the beginning of the 20th century, the Nmi was gradually abandoned and only in the 1990s, the Rueda began to be performed in these indigenous churches. For some Tobas the Rueda is a kind of "praise" that encourages the participation of the youngsters in the churches and their social control by adults; but for others, it is frowned upon due to its links with the old Nmi and shamanism. The Evangelical discourse created a strong dichotomy between the "world" of the "ancient indigenous culture" associated to dance and drinking in festivities and shamanism, and the "new" Evangelical life without these "sins." Thus, this has led to a strong opposition between the "old" Nmi song-dance performed by the non-Evangelical ancestors, and the "new" spiritual dances like the Rueda. Our hypothesis states that despite the power of this ideological dichotomy in the current Toba Christian discourse and the conflicts that have promoted among the adult and young people, the sensorial-emotional ways of experiencing these song-dances are not so different and these ways are closely related to their similar musical and choreographic structures. In this sense, we analyze how these dances are the main ways to embody the "gozo" (bliss), a compelling ritual experience associated with "enjoyment," "pleasure," "health" and "power." Furthermore, we also examine the micro-politics of these performances and their paradoxical regimes of control and resistance of the bodies. Thus, our second hypothesis states that through the Rueda dance the young performers tried to confront and transform their hegemonic power relations with the elderly and adult leaders of the churches; and in this way, this dance became a dynamic field of disputes where processes of legitimation, empowerment and contention took place