Singer Sabina Chiaverano became the first graduate of the Bachelor's Degree in Cultural Management at the UNR (National University of Rosario). Her thesis, on women in local music, focuses on the transition from "backup singers" to "frontwomen."
In the corridors of the Faculty of Humanities and Arts of the Universidad Nacional de RosarioIn Rosario, where history and theory often intertwine, a milestone has just occurred connecting academia with the stage. Sabina Chiaverano, a familiar and beloved figure in the city's artistic scene, became the first graduate of the Bachelor's Degree in Cultural Management. But her achievement transcends the diploma: her final thesis, titled "From Chorus Singers to Frontwoman: Women in the Rosario Music Scene: A Characterization of Female Musical Productions in the City of Rosario from 2014 to 2025," fills a documentary and reflective void.
The path to this title wasn't linear, but rather the result of a lifelong quest and a series of coincidences that ultimately defined his vocation. At the end of 2019, Chiaverano was wrapping up musical projects and producing the Sabina Cantina series at Unicanal studios, which at the time were located in the Faculty of Political Science. “It was a very beautiful experience for me to go to the Faculty because I didn't have a background in public universities, so recording there was very moving,” he recalls about those days. It was that university atmosphere, experienced almost by chance amidst cables and mixing consoles, that planted the seed of what was to come.
When the 2020 pandemic brought the world to a standstill and silenced the stages, Sabina found a new horizon in enrolling in the degree program—along with her friend and colleague Eugenia Craviotto, lead singer of Mamita Peyote. What began as a curiosity in the face of the void in the artistic calendar transformed into an emotional and intellectual lifeline. “I got completely hooked, I loved studying. The first few years, right in the middle of the pandemic, the degree program did its job because it served as a refuge,” she confesses.
For an established artist, returning to the classroom was an exercise in reinvention. The coursework allowed her to explore unfamiliar areas, such as visual arts and art analysis, but fundamentally, it rekindled her passion for writing, a facet that had always been dormant. “I connected deeply with writing. In my thesis defense, I said that starting my degree was like shedding the expectations and demands of my musical career,” Chiaverano explains. Suspending the pressure of musical “success” allowed her to view art from a different perspective.
During that break from the demands of the stage, the question of identity and gender arose. For her thesis, she chose a specific and revealing timeframe: 2014 to 2025. Why that starting date? Because 2014 and 2015 were pivotal years for local music production. “There was a boom in the production, composition, and recording of albums by local female artists leading their bands,” explains the newly graduated artist. It was the moment when figures like Evelina Sanzo and Craviotto's own band received Gardel Award nominations, validating a scene that was thriving but lacked formal recognition.
However, researching her own colleagues and an ecosystem of which she herself is a part presented an enormous methodological challenge. Violeta Jardón, her thesis advisor and an anthropologist, was clear from the beginning: “You have to shift from the first person to the third-person observer.” This shift was crucial and difficult. It allowed Sabina to stop being the colleague who shares a dressing room and become the facilitator who analyzes patterns, discourses, and silences. “That movement enabled me to listen, observe, and put myself in another place. I really stepped back from my own experience, but I returned to myself during the work,” she reflects.
One of the most valuable contributions of the research is its critical review of the city's musical identity. Chiaverano delves into recent history, from the return to democracy in the 80s, to point out an uncomfortable truth: the soundtrack of Rosario's "identity" was narrated almost exclusively by men.
“There’s a current insistence on defining a singular musical identity for Rosario, one comprised of the music of the Trova movement, of the men of the Trova,” argues the professor. While acknowledging the immense poetic and political value of that movement in de-elitistizing culture in the post-dictatorship era, she warns that this label often functions as a nostalgic straitjacket. “It’s an identity that is often closed off. It limits us because it doesn’t fully accommodate a scene that is now completely heterogeneous.”
To illustrate this point, she uses an iconic example that exposes these dynamics: the song “Era en abril” (It Was in April), popularized by Silvina Garré’s crystalline voice. Although the performance is feminine and moving, the narrative belongs to a man, recounting a loss from a paternal perspective. “We don’t know how a woman would have named it or what she would have had to say about it,” Sabina reflects. Her work seeks, precisely, to rescue those other sensibilities that for decades were relegated to the background or mediated by male voices, proposing that the city must begin to be considered also from the perspective of its female creators.
From object of representation to creative subject
The title of the work, “From chorus girls to frontwoman”, uses the Anglo-Saxon term to illustrate a fundamental paradigm shift: the transition of women from lyrical object or harmonic accompaniment, to political and creative subject who takes center stage.
The research compiles testimonies that highlight the visible and invisible barriers to this transition. Historical voices emerge, such as that of Flor Croci, who recounts how as a child she wanted to play the guitar “like a boy,” until she understood that she could play it “like a woman,” thus redefining the instrument. Or the experience of Eugenia Craviotto, often mistaken for “the backup singer” by technicians or producers simply for being the only woman in a group of men.
“This sense of struggle emerges, the difficulty of making a name for oneself,” Chiaverano points out. But the desiring body also appears, along with love narrated in the first person and the audacity to venture into diverse genres. The thesis highlights emerging artists like Juana Maidagan (who dared to explore soul) and Luisina Caligari, who demonstrate that new generations no longer ask permission to appropriate styles that were once considered foreign to the “Rosario identity.”
The thesis defense was enthusiastically received by a jury composed of Violeta Jardón, Virginia Giacosa (Social Communication), and Sabina Florio (Fine Arts), who not only approved the work but also urged Chiaverano to publish it. The text also engages with other recent research, such as that of historian Florencia Bianchi on women in local rock, weaving a network of new meanings.
Beyond her personal academic achievement, Sabina Chiaverano sees this degree as a reaffirmation of the role of public education as a tool for social and personal transformation. “We need to give ourselves the opportunity to change our destiny, even just a little. And I believe that the public university is the place that allows us that possibility; it is something very vital and empowering,” she concludes.
Today, the first woman to graduate with a degree in Cultural Management from the UNR not only holds a diploma, but also brings a new perspective to the city. Her work confirms that in Rosario, women no longer just sing about history; now they also write it, analyze it, and manage it.
Journalist: Victoria Arrabal/Photographer: Camila Casero