Buenos Aires Carnaval Murgas and Corsos

Active, Music
March 11, 2011 12:23 pm

This year was an important one for Carnaval in Argentina. In 1976, the Argentine military dictatorship, the same one responsible for the country’s devastating Dirty War during which thousands disappeared, eliminated the nationwide Monday and Tuesday Carnaval holidays. La Presidenta Cristina Kirchner re-instituted them as public holidays at the end of 2010 to take effect this year, so March 7 and 8 were days off. Party!

Below is a clip of the Palermo corso, complete with murga, that took place on March 7, 2011.

Now, to explain the related tensions and complicated side of the all the dancing, drumming, singing and celebrating, I bring in Elena Pinsky’s expertise once more.

While murga as an art exists as a form of popular expression, and of parody and celebration (à la most celebrations of Carnaval in the world), the reality of murga, as with so many other things, is that it is a vehicle for exploring other social and political tensions in the city. Because murga in Buenos Aires is not highly institutionalized the way it is in New Orleans or in Brazil (nor is it as popular, in the English sense of the word, among porteños), there are some interesting class implications about murga, best highlighted by the fact that murgas do not form in the [upper class] Recoleta or Puerto Madero [neighborhoods], though Palermo does have a few. The navigation of murgas in the city is rife with drama — groups that think that murgas should be organized by some entity and groups that don’t, and the relationship between the murga community and the government is tenuous.

Additional information and resources Elena recommends:

One group of organized murgas

More background

Soy Murguero

City of Buenos Aires Carnaval site

Plus: The first TKGO Buenos Aires Carnaval post

-Karina, again with the contributions of Elena Pinsky. Additional thanks/credit to my friend’s novio, Maxi, and this Expanish blog post for the history.

Related posts:

Comments

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments

This article was written by on Friday, March 11, 2011 at 12:23 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Tags:

2 Comments

Leave a Reply


The Best Travel Instagrammers

March 15, 2013 0 comments

Here it is… We’ve been Instagramming since April 2011, and we’ve developed pretty strong feelings about our favorite traveling Instagrammers. We like to call this the “starter pack”—follow away! Our requirements for inclusion in this list are simple. You won’t find an overload of tasteless food photography or the same image over and over again, but you will see each of these Instagrammers has a definitive photographic style and a passion for people, landmarks and culture. Each is listed with [...]

Continue Reading →

Carnival in Trinidad Party Report

February 22, 2013 0 comments
Carnival in Trinidad Party Report

As promised, my coverage of Carnival in Trinidad continues. Below is my “Just Back From” post I penned for Fodor’s Travel that details the Carnival highlights, from whining, liming and feting to everything in between. Also, you can learn what exactly those Trinidadian English terms mean in the Fodor’s post linked here: Just Back From: Carnival in Trinidad I talked a bit about high-energy, have-to-move-your-body, soca music in the post. In the video below you can hear more of the [...]

Continue Reading →

A Traditional Turkish Breakfast

March 10, 2013 0 comments
A Traditional Turkish Breakfast

To the granola bar-eaters in the subway, the Starbucks scone-chompers on the sidewalks, the gym-baggers with your smoothies… it’s time to take a lesson from the Turks in happy breakfasting.  Breakfast, or Kahvalti, is a big deal in Turkey. Even the most basic of restaurant breakfasts come with a pile of plates: Fresh tomatoes, eggs, fresh jam, butter, multiple types of cheeses, olives, cacik (yogurt/dill spread), and kaymak (a very special kind of clotted cream). And those are just the essentials. [...]

Continue Reading →

Luise Kimme: Inside the Late Artist’s Tobago Studio

April 24, 2013 0 comments
Luise Kimme: Inside the Late Artist’s Tobago Studio

Sculpture artist Luise Kimme was born in Germany, trained and worked around the world and settled in Tobago in 1979. Tobago, the smaller sister of the two-island nation Trinidad and Tobago, also was where she passed away last Friday following a brief illness. I had the privilege of visiting Kimme’s sculpture garden, home and studio while in Trinidad and Tobago for Carnival this past February. Kimme was sassy, eccentric and endearing the way only artists can be and her work, [...]

Continue Reading →