'Digital indigestion': cumbia, class and a post-digital ethos in Buenos Aires. Issue 2 (30th April 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Baker, Geoffrey
• Is Part Of: Popular music. Volume 34:Issue 2(2015)
• Page Start: 175
• Page End: 196
• Publication Date: 2015-04-30
• Subjects: Popular music -- Periodicals; 780.4205
• DOI: 10.1017/S026114301500001X
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0261-1430

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="normal"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>This article focuses on three recent manifestations of cumbia in Buenos Aires, Argentina: digital cumbia released by ZZK Records; retro cumbia orchestras; and a newer strand of digital cumbia, <italic>música turra.</italic> The first two are identified with the middle class, whereas the third emerged from the <italic>clases populares</italic> ('popular classes'). <italic>Música turra</italic> is underpinned by government policies towards digital inclusion, while middle-class incursions into the traditionally working-class sphere of cumbia, too, suggest increasing social cohesion. However, the digital fascination of <italic>música turra</italic> contrasts with an embrace of the analogue and acoustic in middle-class cumbia. These developments point to the emergence of a post-digital ethos and a shift from a digital to a post-digital divide, also running along class lines, analysed here through a Bourdieusian lens of taste and distinction. While transnational in nature, the post-digital ethos appears in Buenos Aires in a distinctive local form, articulated to growing Latin Americanism and post-neoliberalism on the part of the middle class.</p> </abstract>