How do you make a payador? The education of the body of a musician countryman between tradition and innovation

In Argentina, improvisation is part of a long tradition. Payada is a type of improvisation that has historically been located in the province of Buenos Aires. A payador can be described as a singer who improvises, with a guitar, talking about real events or people. Nowadays, payada is recovering its presence mainly because it is possible to find places where to learn and share knowledge about this art. In this article we will observe the process of education and learning of this traditional artistic practice, considering a workshop for the training of payadores for all ages that is held in the city of La Plata. The investigation will carry out with participant observation, focusing on the narrative of the person who carries out the workshop, in accordance with the methodological proposal of anthropology to understand the perspective of the actors. The intention is focused on those components that are part of a training process in corporal-artistic practices, paying special attention to the singular conformation of the payador’s corporality, as well as to the absence of such body education in the narratives, due to naturalisation. According to this conformation, we will play with the link between tradition and innovation in the current state of this practice.