Courtiser la tradition. Rodrigo Cuevas et le sentiment du local dans l’Espagne contemporaine

Grounded in fieldwork done in the North of the Iberian Peninsula, this paper considers the different ways in which popular music participates in the “production of locality”. It is based on Arjun Appadurai’s work, which defines locality as a “structure of feeling”, as well as on Ana María Ochoa Gautier’s analyses of sonic expressions of locality and the conflicts that they give rise to within the modern aural public sphere. I will question the historical construction of a local identity, and the active role music plays in the process. Stemming from my ethnographic observation, I have identified three distinct modes of production of locality through music, each one of them appearing at a particular moment of Spain’s recent history. This paper then considers Rodrigo Cuevas’s artistic approach. This self-proclaimed “folkloric agitator” mobilizes the various patterns previously identified, locally rooting traditions through music. His example thus enables us to better understand how the feeling of locality can be appropriated and subverted within traditional music.