Criteria of Distinction in Jujuy Folklore: Uses of the Category “Festivalero”

Abstract

Our research on Jujuy musical folklore follows Giddens’s notion of “double hermeneutics” (1987), which assigns scientific thought the task of interpreting what has already been interpreted by social actors. In this sense, productive research on the field of folklore involves determining the categories through which subjects judge their performers, whether ensembles or soloists; establishing their origin; observing whether these categories show regularities among their users, such as socioeconomic status, belonging or not belonging to the folkloric field, gender, and so on; and, last but not least, determining whether the use of a given category in some sense has a correlate in the subject’s social action.

In this particular paper, we address the problems surrounding the concept of “festivalero”, a term commonly used in the field of musical folklore, although not always to refer to the same reality. On the basis of this analysis, we seek to emphasize the importance, for the understanding of social phenomena, of considering the sociocultural conditions in which the category “festivalero”, applied to any musical performer, acquires different meanings in the discourses of different social sectors.

We believe that, in this way, we will be able to grasp more adequately the meanings that the category “festivalero” adopts in each case within the field of Jujuy folklore in the discourses of agents belonging to different social sectors.