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Agustina Checa Wins International Award for Work on Argentine Cassette Culture
July 7, 2026
Assistant Professor of Music Agustina Checa has received Popular Music and Society’s 2025 R. Serge Denisoff Award for Best Article. Building on her dissertation research, “Safer Covachas—Preserving Digital Music in Cassettes: Grassroots Archiving Practices of Independent Record Labels in Contemporary Argentina” examines how independent record labels in Argentina use cassette tapes to preserve and circulate digital music.
Popular Music and Society brings together interdisciplinary contributions from leading scholars across the globe, and the award is a mark of significant international recognition by a leading journal in the field. Named for R. Serge Denisoff, the journal’s founding editor and a pioneering popular music scholar, the award recognizes the best article published by the journal in the past year.
“It is an absolute honor to receive this recognition from Popular Music and Society, an important space for critical research for those of us working at the intersection of music, culture, politics, and everyday life,” Checa said.
She said the honor was especially meaningful not only because of the caliber of work the journal publishes but also because this was the first article she has published in a major journal.
She is currently completing her first book on the Argentine independent music scene—specifically, the singular role that cassette tapes play in music circulation, preservation and audience cultivation. With a selection of these tapes, Checa has created a digital archive of music and images that complements her public-facing scholarship.
Learn more about her work by visiting the archive here.
Read the award-winning article here.