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Abstract

Abstract The chapter focuses on musical performances of “home” with the aim of destabilizing and challenging this elusive category. Drawing on interviews and analysis of musical performances at the Taller Latino Americano, Birdland, and other venues across the city, it considers the various ways in which Argentinian and Chilean musicians reconstruct home as an emotional and sonic category, reacting to fluctuating demands to express or suppress their sense of national identity and ethnic belonging in their music. It examines the musical use of cultural markers such as the zamba, the cueca, the nueva canción, and the legacy of Violeta Parra alongside rejections of such icons as simplistic and essentializing. Finally, it argues that in a time of mass migration and frequent territorial displacements, musicians create emotional attachments to new places through various sonic practices, thus capturing the fluctuating nature of home as a musical and emotional category.