The Political and Militant Actions of Rock Musicians and Artists Groups in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. An Ethnographic Perspective of the 2019 Election Campaign

Abstract

Based on the various links that the State and organized rock musicians have established in recent years, in this article I intend to analyze the collective and political action taken by self-managed artists and musicians of rock from the city of Avellaneda (located in the south of the Buenos Aires suburbs, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina), during the electoral campaign of the year 2019. I emphasize, on the one hand, the militancy and political actions that different groups assumed, in coordination with municipal management, in order to influence the electoral result and, on the other hand, in the positions that the musicians and artists themselves took in this regard. I take an ethnographic approach, which takes up contributions from perspectives that privilege field experience as a source of knowledge. Field work, participant observation and in-depth interviews with artists and municipal workers have been the techniques chosen to carry out this work. With this article I hope to contribute to the analysis and reflection on the new links that emerge between independent and/or self-managed artists and the State (focusing, particularly, on the consensus and tensions that these articulations entail), and on the intersection between cultural/artistic activity, collective militancy and work in and from the State.