El mensaje de Arme: planteamiento ético estético de una banda de rock otomí

This article takes up a case study around the local category of music with message. The rock group Arme –“la tortilla” in the Otomi language—deals with community, musical and family aspects in order to address the problems of violence and drug addiction in the town of Chitejé de Garabato, Querétaro, where they are from. In the first instance, the group’s artistic proposal is based on producing original music and lyrics, rather than covers of urban rock and punk bands, as is common among other local groups. Although none of the members speaks the Otomi language, they take a unique path regarding the musical tastes of young people, highlighting the knowledge of their grandparents, the use of the indigenous language, and respect and a sense of belonging to the land and the community. From a methodological standpoint rooted at once in ethnography and cultural studies, I focus on enunciative markings as sociomusical values to account for identity processes. The category music with message facilitates the evaluation of musical phenomena that deal with indigenous cultural claims.