Music Note: Mariana Baraj and Folk Music

Matthew Wollin
June 15, 2010

On May 14, Americas Society presented a concert at the Consulate General of Argentina featuring Mariana Baraj, a singer, composer and percussionist from Argentina. Baraj works primarily with the folk repertoire of northwestern Argentina and neighboring countries. Argentina is home to a rich and tremendously varied body of music, extending far beyond the tango that generally constitutes the musical face of the country. As with much Latin American music and art, folklore is a mix of indigenous and European influences, and its most famous proponents and performers are internationally renowned figures like Atahualpa Yupanqui.
 
Mariana Baraj takes elements from these styles and fuses them in a way that speaks not only to being an artist but to being a listener, to the overall impression that emerges when you hear different kinds of music repeatedly. It’s interesting to try and classify the music she performs; the closest would probably be folk, but it feels more contemporary than classic, more pop than traditional. In the previous music note on Mary Jane Lamond, we started to talk about what exactly makes folk music folk music, and this concert offers an opportune place to continue that discussion.
 
The question of folk music is interesting because of what use of the term says about our conception of culture (among other reasons). Generally, it is used to connote music that is traditional, that is characteristic of a community or culture and that is maintained through an oral rather than a written tradition. Colloquially, the idea of “folk music” is something of an artificial construct, one that in its most extreme form brings to mind gaggles of rosy-cheeked villagers dancing jigs to fiddle music in the town square, or some other equally ridiculous and stereotyped conceit.
 
The triteness of this conception is interesting because it seems to imply that there is some sort of “pure” or “undiluted” aspect of every musical tradition. This theory quickly gets messier when we try to apply it to music that is hard to pin to a single culture, or that comes from a tradition that has been shaped by different environments and cultures.
 
Mary Jane Lamond demonstrates this to a certain extent: the Nova Scotian tradition she comes from began in Scotland but is at the same time distinct from its origins, developing along a different path strongly influenced by its location in Nova Scotia for over a century. And with Mariana Baraj, the combination of various influences in her music makes it hard to pinpoint exactly what culture she is tapping into. Is there still some undeniable core of traditional culture at the heart of her songs, or do they partake in other elements freely enough that it operates fundamentally as something new rather than a tie to the past? It’s a question that probably can’t be fully answered, but listen to an excerpt below and see what you think.




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