The feminine and the masculine in the milongas of Rio de la Plata of 1910: stereotypes and disputes

This paper analyzes the representational character of the Rio de la Plata milonga around the Centennial, taking as axis the moment in which this genre displaces the cifra as a form of accompaniment in the payadas. Typical gaucho´s hobby, the payada, used to take place as a contest in which two criollos are in competition, improvising verses on a guitar base; This rivalry, according to the creole literature, could nevertheless conclude a duel of knives. The article will investigate the gender rhetoric present in both forms of accompaniment and collected in the musical discourses of the traditional bibliography. Following the proposal of McClary (1991), we will try to clarify what would be the musical qualities perceived as masculine and what would be perceived as feminine to notice how the underlying stereotypes of this binomial operated. We will also trace the idiosyncrasy of this alterity to understand the possible causes that explain the overwhelming success of the milonga, conceived as feminine, in a strongly heteropatriarchal context that laid the foundations of the nascent Nation-state of Argentina.