Narrativizing Cities, Localizing Urban Memories: The (Re)Construction of Place Through Urban Cueca in Santiago de Chile (1990-2010)

Abstract

This article describes the importance of the Chilean urban cueca as a source of Santiago de Chile's urban memory. The main argument explains how cueca lyrics transmit a sense of place that brings back a memory of friendship and fraternity, and also how these friendship songs are narratives of urban landscapes strongly connected with old memories and performed maps, that is, musical performance pathways of the past 50 years in the city. Interviews and nonparticipant observations are taken from two periods of fieldwork in Santiago de Chile between 2008 and 2009. Theoretically based on the concept of music scene, Edward Soja's idea of vivid space and Jose Bengoa's analysis of the lost community, the article concludes that memories form a counterdiscourse that criticizes the notion of progress or the Chilean way to global capitalism, turning upside down the created imaginary of a modern and developed city.