New Man and New Woman? The Feminine and the Masculine in the New Cuban Trova of Silvio Rodríguez and Sara González

Abstract

This article proposes to discuss different aspects related to the musical creation in the author’s song by two important exponents of the Nueva Trova Cubana. The historical framework of revolutionary music in the 1960s, draws an ideology of the feminine that emerges as a representation in the songs of Silvio Rodríguez, and as an embodiment in the figure of the troubadour: Sara González. In methodological terms we will review different strategies of musical enunciation, for a construction of the feminine and masculine evoked from the political postulates of the “New man” (Guevara, 1979), and the points of tension that arise from the feminine creation, to face what would be the “New woman” (Kollontái, 2000 [1977]) in the context of the Nueva Trova. The political crosses of the feminine and the masculine, allow us to approach the author’s song as a story, turned into an ideological battlefield, which negotiates different degrees of appropriation of meanings. In this sense we ask ourselves: What feminine ideology is constructed both in the representation and in the musical creation? How is the figure of the Cuban troubadour built in a male revolutionary context? What relevance does Silvio Rodríguez have as an actor representing the male canon regarding Sara González? What are the political spaces that are negotiated in the construction of the troubadour and woman troubadour within the framework of the “New man” and the “New woman”?