The Militant Song Movement in Latin America: Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina ed. by Pablo Vila (review)

The Militant Song Movement in Latin America offers a reconsideration of the emotional, musical, and cultural dimensions of political song in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay from the 1950s to the 1970s. Editor Pablo Vila proposes the notion of militant song in order to deconstruct standard narratives about “protest,” which he suggests are an inaccurate representation of the way music functioned in politics during this period (3). The militant framework is not explicitly addressed in every chapter, but it applies to each in that they all reconceptualize existing narratives about Latin American political song, using tools such as analysis of gender, sonic characteristics, performance histories, close readings of song texts, and more general histories.

The book is organized by country, offering a broad historical chapter as well as case studies for Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, a country less frequently discussed with regard to political song of this period. The authors hail from a variety of different disciplines, presenting a wide array of perspectives on the topic. In general, the chapters are geared toward situating and redefining the movement, particularly through a deeper understanding of its social significance.

Vila’s notion of militant song has to do with breaking away from US-derived notions of political activism. He argues that the term protest is derived from political paradigms in the United States during the Vietnam War era geared toward protesting against oppressive forces. In Latin America, he argues, artists used music differently, often denouncing a political situation or offering personal testimonials (4). Vila’s chapter on Atahualpa Yupanquí, cowritten with Carlos Molinero, deconstructs the notion of protest even further, which remains an important current throughout the book.

Coupled with this notion of militancy is the book’s attention to gender, a particularly underexplored dimension of this genre. Illa Carillo Rodríguez’s chapter looks at the ways in which gender paradigms in Argentina contributed to the construction of the ideal militant figure on which much of the movement was centered (229). Thus, the notion of militant song is not just about reconsidering “protest” but also about considering political song as a gendered space, in which feminized versions of Che Guevara’s hombre nuevo and masculinized female figures, like Eva Perón, can both be negotiated. Brief mention of important female contributors to the genre is made both in Rodríguez’s chapter and in the introduction, but for the most part, the analysis focuses on how gendered ideals are created and manipulated within musical and political discourses. Rodríguez’s work is much needed and opens many possibilities for future explorations into gender and Latin American political song.

Other chapters in the book focus on addressing the genre’s sonic elements, its political and performance histories, and intertextual analyses of its song texts. While several of these chapters include partial transcriptions of interviews, it would have been nice to see a slightly stronger emphasis on ethnography. In particular, I would have liked to see more about the movement’s significance for listeners today—briefly addressed in the introduction—rather than quite so much focus on historical narrative.

Overall, the book is well researched, extremely detailed, and moves toward offering a more nuanced consideration of Latin American political song. It offers perspectives from scholars in a variety of fields and provides much-needed groundwork for further explorations into the social dimensions of the genre. As with any edited volume, readers will find some chapters more useful than others, but the volume offers many important contributions to the study of political song in Latin America.