Women in jazz in Chile. Modelling, symbolic regime and gender trajectories

Authors

  • Miguel Vera Cifras Universidad de Chile

Abstract

Since its inception in Chilean jazz, women have been traversed by two great symbolic regimes in tension: sublimation and frivolization, respectively. In this context, whether as seeds of liberation or as a dangerous expression of decadence, their gender trajectories had to follow dialectically three models in their vocal development, being successively modeled as cupletista, vedette and lady crooner, before moving to the format of “jazz singer” in the 60s. The long forgetfulness in which their existences remained has been much more than an innocuous lapse, involuntary or irresponsible, since it has been operating, in practice, as a collective and normalized amnesia from the androcentric optics of a professionalized jazz and a historical discourse that consecrates it.

Keywords:

Jazz, woman, modelling, symbolic regime