Argentina Travel Guide

With the obvious exception of tango, the music of Argentina has a fairly low international profile. True to its image as the continent's "odd man out", the country has a tradition which doesn't quite fit the popular conception of "Latin American" music: there are none of the exhilarating tropical rhythms of say Brazil or Cuba, and very little of the Andean pan pipe sound popularized worldwide in the Seventies by Chilean group Inti-Illimani. Within Latin America, however, Argentina is famed for its rock music, known simply as "rock nacional" - a term which embraces a pretty ecletic bunch of groups and musicians from the heavy rock of Pappo, through the sweet poppy rock of Fito Páez to the ska and punk influenced Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. You'll hear "rock nacional" throughout Argentina and it's well worth checking out a concert - attended with a fervour similar to that provoked by football - if you can. Folk music, known as "folklore" in Argentina, is popular throughout the country and provides a predominantly rural counterpoint to the essentially urban tango. The genre has also produced two internationally renowned stars; Mercedes Sosa and Auhualpa Yupanqui