chacarera

250px|thumb|Couple dancing a chacarera in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The Chacarera is a dance and music that originated in Santiago del Estero, Argentina. It is a genre of folk music that, for many Argentines, serves as a rural counterpart to the cosmopolitan imagery of the Tango. A dance form played by contemporary musicians as soloists or in small ensembles of voice, guitar, violin and bombo drum, the Chacarera is often legitimized by its “origin” in the remote province of Santiago del Estero.

==Chacarera music== While much of the Chacarera repertoire can be traced to the 1920s sheet music of Andrés Chazarreta (Chazarreta 1947[1916]), the contemporary Chacarera style described in this article was standardized by the recordings of the 1950s folk group Los Hermanos Ábalos (Ábalos 1952). Today, this style is ubiquitous throughout Argentina, with important variants appearing in the provinces of Santiago del Estero and Salta.