The Invention of Latin American Music

Abstract

This book reconstructs the transnational history of the category of Latin American music during the first half of the twentieth century, from a longer perspective that begins in the nineteenth century and extends the narrative until the present. It analyzes intellectual, commercial, state, musicological, and diplomatic actors that created and elaborated this category. It shows music as a key field for the dissemination of a cultural idea of Latin America in the 1930s. It studies multiple music-related actors such as intellectuals, musicologists, policymakers, popular artists, radio operators, and diplomats in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, and different parts of Europe. It proposes a regionalist approach to Latin American and global history, by showing individual nations as both agents and result of transnational forces—imperial, economic, and ideological. It argues that Latin America is the sedimentation of over two centuries of regionalist projects, and studies the place of music regionalism in that history.

Hello Friends, Cantemos: La música en las representaciones de lo latinoamericano en largometrajes de ficción hollywoodenses durante la Política del buen vecino (1933-1945)

“…América Latina, o una idea geográfico-imaginaria de ella, ha sido caracterizada, evocada y, en definitiva, representada en la música europea y estadounidense en distintos momentos, espacios y géneros. Al respecto, pueden considerarse aquí no solo ejemplos posteriores a la definición y uso del concepto "América Latina" -proceso que, como plantean autores como Grínor Rojo (2001) o Pablo Palomino (2020), toma gran parte del siglo XIX y cuya consolidación tiene que esperar hasta las primeras décadas del XX-, sino también manifestaciones anteriores como, por ejemplo, las óperas europeas -sobre todo del siglo XVIII-escritas en torno a la temática de la Conquista de América. Sobre lo mismo, resulta pertinente pensar también en un sinfín de piezas breves, canciones, marchas o valses, escritos y publicados a lo largo del XIX en Estados Unidos en alusión a diversos conflictos políticos de las incipientes repúblicas latinoamericanas, entre las cuales se encontraban homenajes musicales a héroes independentistas como Simón Bolívar, Bernardo O'Higgins o Jean Pierre Boyer.…”

The Role of Songs in Intergenerational Transmission of Spanish as a Heritage Language

“…Common themes in vallenato are local and regional events, history, customs such as food, regional myths, geographical spaces, but mostly romance and breakups (Cepeda, 2003). 3 According to Palomino (2020): "Latin American music is both a geographic frame of reference and an aesthetic category" (p. 3). Although Pacini-Hernandez (2010) employs the terms Latin American music and Latino American music interchangeably to qualify music from Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries, frequently featuring vocals, most scholars use with the term Latin American music (Palomino, 2020).…”

“…It is an authentic voice that may be more or less transparent (e.g., in song lyrics) or very subtle; in all cases, however, it is the product of a certain time and place. (Šabec, 2017, p. 155) Colombia is one of the richest and most diverse countries in the world with regards to music genres: e.g., vallenato, cumbia, estilo norteño, música llanera, pan-Latin genres such as salsa and Latin pop (Palomino, 2020, Cepeda, 2003. Few ethnomusicological studies focus on…”

“…As evidenced in the literature, music and the Spanish language in the Colombian diaspora are important conveyors of cultural identity and even of a "Latin musical identity" (Román-Velásquez, 1999, p. 303;Cepeda, 2003). As stated by Palomino (2020), music in Latin America is "particularly effective to express the power of culture better than other aesthetic practices" (p. 12). According to Pacini-Hernandez ( 2010), music becomes a connection to home, "as a form of cultural resistance, as a way of negotiating emergent identities, as a way of strengthening ethnic, racial or class solidarities, and so on" (p. 137).…”

“…Spanish-language music genres such as vallenato and salsa are immensely popular and widespread in Colombia and in the Colombian American diaspora (Palomino, 2020;Pacini-Hernandez, 2010;Román-Velásquez, 1999;Cepeda, 2003). Although these studies illustrate the significance of music for members of the Colombian American diaspora, little research has been conducted on the role of music in Spanish-language transmission, particularly in the Colombian diaspora in Canada.…”