ABSTRACT
Music as an instrument of social and political expression is at the core of the 2005 UNESCO convention’s definition of the protection of ‘cultural creativity of individuals, groups and societies’. The leaders of the succession of military Juntas that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983 took a dismal view of the new brand of youth, whom they saw as both subversive in themselves and susceptible to subversive influences. Censorship also impacted the material aspect of connection between artist and audience. As it became known that particular singles, albums, or even an artist’s entire output had been banned, the public began to replace the commercial versions of the prohibited material with home-made, un-labelled copies recorded on cassettes. In Argentina, during the second half of the 1970s, the advent of the national security doctrine provided a framework under which the armed forces could intervene at all levels of society to preserve the ‘values of Western civilization’, and under which groups or individuals.
