The recent surge in Latin American popular entertainment that features portrayals of Arab people and culture is a trend that includes orientalist and stereotypical representations of Middle Eastern life and traditions. How do the Arab immigrant populations in Latin America react to such representations? Furthermore, how do these populations prefer to represent themselves? With a sizeable presence (in Argentina, the people of Syro-Lebanese descent comprise approximately ten percent of the total population), there is no question that the Arab diaspora thrives and influences Argentine economic, political, social, and cultural spheres (Karam, 2). However, nationalist movements from the late 19th well into the 20th centuries not only failed to include the Arab Argentine population, but also successfully supported anti-Arab sentiments (Civantos, 5). This milieu, in combination with a detachment from the homeland, provided that Arab Argentines improvised new traditions that are now accepted as legitimate cultural representations of various Arab peoples in Argentina. This study seeks to examine contemporary Arab cultural representation in Argentina through the production of what is labeled “traditional” Arab music. By exploring the communal and festival practices of the Social Club of Syrian Argentines in Rosario, Santa Fe, I demonstrate how nostalgia and the immigrant experience have effected contemporary conceptualizations of tradition, and how a communally false sense of a traditional past leads to the reproduction and reinforcement of trivialized Arab musical practices. Civantos, Christina. <i>Between Argentines and Arabs<i>. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Karam, John Tofik. <i>Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil<i>. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007.