Beteween Manzana Loca and Greenwich Village: The Rise of Countercultural Rock in Buenos Aires

Abstract

The article studies the evolution of countercultural rock during the sixties through the circulation of ideas, cultural goods and people between Buenos Aires and New York. A set of trips by artists and intellectuals, and the creation of an original slang are considered the starting point to discusss how a part of youth took as their own the counter-cultural aesthetics,  practices and ideology. This youth interpreted counter-cultural rock as a new specific urban and musical culture that would replace tango. Moreover, this article examines the expectations that the countercultural rock aroused among different social actors interested by the juvenile question. It is argued that in an ideological context hegemonized by a nationalist and revolutionary sensitivity, the expansion of rock towards placed in tension opposite images of the United States that helped to nationalize the interpretation of rock culture.