Sugar mill’s folklore in Tucumán: social criticism and popular

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to build a corpus of folk-songs connected to the sugar mill industry developed since the arrival of the railway system, in 1876, in the province of Tucumán, in the North West of Argentina. This matrix will be related to other studies on Argentine folklore, and to the historical moment of each composition. To do this, we will first refer to popular music before industrialization, to focus then on the social lyrics authored by Atahualpa Yupanqui, whose main character is the sugar cane peeler. Then, the analysis follows other authors, highlighting the topics and particularities of their songs, as well as the social and political conditions implied by them, making references to important authors, like José Ignacio “Chango” Rodríguez, Rolando “Chivo” Valladares, Pepe and Gerardo Núñez, Luis “Pato Gentilini”, José Augusto Moreno, Lucho Diaz, Alma García, Chichi Costello, Néstor “Poli” Soria –among others- and to the famous singer Mercedes Sosa.