Wind on the Breakwater: Air and Water in Uruguayan Popular Music

Abstract

The article proposes an analysis of the presence of air in music and popular musical theatre in Uruguay, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. It is interesting to establish how the metaphors and allegories of the air meet the physical and symbolic water of the bay of Montevideo, a city that was the natural port par excellence of the South Atlantic during the Colonial period and that is still a meeting point of traditions. From Steven Connor’s proposal in Matter of Air (2010), the symbolic presence of air is addressed; elements of the anthropology of emotions and analysis from the rhetoric of the different types of art are integrated. The paper analyzes, in the case of songs, the lyrics and their relationship with music, especially those features linked to the literary content (characteristics of the vocal emission, instrumentation and arrangements), and, in the case of the murga, a genre of carnival musical theater, the link between literature, music, choreography, costumes, scenery and makeup. A more in-depth analysis is made for the show El planeador de la escollera Sarandí, produced by the murga, Curtidores de hongos, during the 2005 carnival of Montevideo, in which literary text and costumes complement each other in the production of meaning, and for two songs performed by Eduardo Darnauchans, a relevant figure of Uruguayan popular music. Also included is a brief presentation of other songs that metaphorically elaborate the visual and sound landscape of the city, with air as the thematic center.