What are the main music preferences of young people in Argentina? How do these preferences fit into Argentinean society, culture, and politics? The essays in this volume show how issues of religion, class, ethnicity, and gender are constructed and negotiated through a variety of musical practices. Rock, cumbia, and romantic music are all examined as elaborations of gender, sexual, class, and ethnic identities for young people, whose socio-musical lives go beyond the traditional stereotypes of Argentina, tango, and passion.

This book analyzes the music that young portenas/os (the inhabitants of Buenos Aires, Argentina) actually listen to nowadays, which, contrary to well-entrenched stereotypes, is not tango but rock nacional, cumbiaand romantic music. Chapters examine the music and what the Argentinean youth use it to say about themselves.