Blurb:

This article is based on the 2021 Jeporeka project, which was conceived and directed by Paraguayan guitarist Berta Rojas as a virtual music participation and education project to promote the creative collaboration between and development of Paraguayan musicians, artists and writers through music composition, and explores the negotiation and expression of Paraguayan national and other identity through contemporary song. Due to their verbal and musical nature, songs serve as a mirror to faithfully reflect processes of national and other identity construction. Being simultaneously spaces of representation and cathartic tools, songs contain thought, language and music that serve certain interests and fulfil specific functions in the construction of this identity. Songs are like photographs that portray an individual and social groups at a specific time and place; they reflect the values, aspirations, ideas and needs, as well as shared history and memory, that individuals and social groups consciously or unconsciously have at a specific moment in time. Informed by music theory and analysis and cultural theory, this article regards the songs of the Jeporeka 2021 project as a window into the present by illustrating the musical and cultural meanings and values ascribed to these songs by the participants of Jeporeka—composers, lyricists and performers—who created them under the guidance of six Latin American maestros. It reveals how the Jeporeka songs identify and connect these young Paraguayans to a set of values—social class, a place, a mood, a desire, an aspiration, and speaks of their shared history, memory and identity.