Gaucho musical regionalism

This article focuses on the processes of musical creation and circulation of popular music within a regional revivalist movement in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The movement emerged in the 1970s, anchored in a secular ritual form: the festivals and song competitions of música nativista gaúcha (gaucho nativist music). Taking an ethnographic perspective, it examines the ways in which participants ‐ songwriters, composers, music critics, audience members ‐ discuss the major changes and trends in the movement, and looks at how a cluster of signs ‐ aural, verbal, visual ‐associated with pampa pastoralism and the historical figure of the gaucho‐peon are deployed by participants in their attempts to forge a regional identity suitable to the negotiation of a socio‐musical position beyond local cultural boundaries.