Music, voice, and affections. Masculine tenderness in Chilean popular songs

Abstract

In this article, male tenderness does not appear as a fixed and unique concept, rather it refers to three types of ten- derness: loving, childish and paternal tenderness. These three concepts become the main dimensions of analysis to discuss how a group of popular songs through music/sound/vocal performance/discourse constitute a way to express male affection. Likewise, it analyzes how masculine tenderness is represented, the voice being a fundamental space of enunciation that functions as a vehicle of affection, to find out to what extent masculine tenderness could be a way of dislocating gender stereotypes through behavior affective or an “affective performativity”. The construction of meanings, appropriation, and re-signification of concepts such as affection, paternity, tenderness, masculinity, and childhood are problematized, from the criticism of the concept of masculinity and the theoretical basis that different representative authors from the “affective turn” contribute.