Every February, Montevideo fills with voices. With nasal and powerful tones, las murgas [street-groups] sing about the pitfalls of living with others: they denounce what does not work on a social level, but also the failure of the bond between the sexes, love and its vicissitudes. Their polyphonic choral singing dismantles the illusion of collective harmony. Distinctive voices, distinctive tones, distinctive colors.
Montevideo celebrates the longest carnival in the world, for forty days. This popular festival floods the city with costumes, music, and performances. Although its epicenter is the Teatro de Verano, the groups also perform on neighborhood stages. The crowds are enormous.
The most emblematic category is la murga: groups that pay homage to the god Momo with irony, mischief, and protest, to the rhythm of la marcha camión, with bass drums, cymbals, and snare drums. Carnival is jokes, humor, and excess, but it is also criticism: it sings of fractures, missteps, and ruptures. In 2025, the group La Nueva Milonga dedicated a song to self-awareness, emphasizing the discord in the bond between the sexes:
– My girlfriend perceives herself as being in an open relationship, and although I don't agree, I accept it and don't question it.
– Look at the effort you make not to perceive yourself as a cuckold.1
Traditional and contemporary fictions about love and couples contrast, revealing the insistence of what does not work.
In 2010, the group Queso Magro touches on various means of answering the question "What is making love?" Beyond the sexual act, they sing about the pleasure of being with your partner and also about putting up with what bothers you about the other person's body: "it's trusting someone, always understanding them, in bed it's like smoking a fart."2
Murgas use contrafactum as a composition technique: new verses are written to existing music, usually popular songs. This technique brings together the familiar and the disruptive. They disturb the audience's expectations.
Metele que son pasteles, in 2023, uses the song "Te felicito" and transforms its lyrics into a satire of the contradictions in the carnival scene, in an attempt to deconstruct the patriarchal form of organizing relation. They comment ironically on the stereotypes of those who try to apply the political correctness of gender theory and feminism. They sing: "I congratulate us, how good la murga is, we did all our homework, we set up some workshops."3 La murga does not veil what does not work: it turns it into it sound. What fails in relationships is staged, with humor, at the heart of the festival.
[1] La Nueva Milonga, 2025, available online: YouTube.com.
[2] Queso Magro, "Hacer el Amor," 2010, available online: YouTube.com.
[3] Metele Que Son Pasteles, 2023, available online: YouTube.com.
