Black Skin, White Music: Afroporteño Musicians and Composers in Europe in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

As nineteenth-century Argentine local elites struggled to transform the country into a "white republic," Afro-descendant populations in Buenos Aires embraced peculiar strategies of social mobility. This entailed grappling with the hegemonic values of society while dismissing, at least publicly, their ancestral cultural practices. In this context, there emerged a particular distinction between two types of Afro-descendants: negro che and negro usted. This division can be understood as a straightforward but radical reshuffling of values and as an instance of adaptation to modern society. However, from the perspective of postcolonial theory, this process also appears as a possible strategy of camouflage and self-representation based on external references. The symbolic appropriation of discourses and practices of progress and power may have indeed allowed the introduction of an element of "instability in imitation." This paper analyzes this strategy in the lives of two afro-portenos (2) artists, Zenon Rolon (1856-1902) and Manuel Posadas (1860-1916), who travelled to Europe (Florence and Brussels, respectively) to improve their musical knowledge. Given the absence of scholarly studies on the lives of these artists and the difficulties of conducting research in multiple archives, sources are basically limited to existing contemporary afroporteno periodicals. For afroportenos, their printed press constituted an invaluable vehicle for the dissemination of news and ideas at a time when the promise of modernity was to place Argentina at the vanguard of all nations. Both Rolon and Posadas appeared often in these publications to account for their experiences in Europe, while their peers critically assessed their work, in both favorable and unfavorable ways. This article is divided into four parts. First, I will describe the sociopolitical context of mid-nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. Next, I will situate afroportenos in such a context, drawing on their hierarchical social stratification. Third, I will place the artists' own narratives in counterpoint to those published by their critics in the same afroporteno periodicals. Last, I will make use of postcolonial theory to analyze afroporteno social stratification as a mimetic strategy that destabilized dominant discourses by introducing a simulacrum of identity aspiring to fulfill an authorized version of Otherness. The underlying hypothesis is that Rolon and Posadas's self-praised success granted both the status of "artist" in Eurocentric terms, while their black lineage placed a wedge of instability within the dominant local narrative. If, on the one hand, this narrative advocated the univocal consolidation of whiteness as the essence and marker of Argentine identity, on the other hand, it also bolstered and prided on the great success of the two artists. Buenos Aires in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century In order to understand the social and political context inhabited by Rolon and Posadas, it is important to offer an overview of the country's situation, especially regarding Buenos Aires during the second half of the nineteenth century. This is due to a variety of factors, as the mid-nineteenth century marked a before and after in the development and consolidation of the nation state. The Battle of Caseros (February 3, 1852) ended the rule of Juan Manuel de Rosas and placed its victor, Justo Jose de Urquiza, in charge of leading the Argentine Confederation until 1860. In addition, since the eighteenth century, British economic influence had increased as a result of illegal smuggling in Colonia del Sacramento and, after the May Revolution of 1810, through the lawful commerce of goods manufactured by the expanding Industrial Revolution. The arrival of the railroad favored the export of raw materials (beef, leather, wool, and grains) through the port of Buenos Aires. This process translated into a weakening of Argentina's smaller regional economies (Garavaglia 2007). …