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2. From Otello to Porgy: Blackness, masculinity, and morality in opera
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- André,Naomi, (Author)
- Format:
- Book, Section
- Publication Date:
- 01/01; 2012
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- Collected Work: Blackness in opera: How race and blackness play out in opera.Pages: 11-31.(AN: 2012-00965).
- Notes:
- Around the beginning of the 20th century the codes for representing masculinity in opera began to change. This essay focuses on how the changing codes of masculinity in leading male roles are calibrated differently for white European characters and nonwhite characters with non-European ancestry (for example, African American, Caribbean, Moorish, or African) and shows how masculinity and heroism are brought together differently for black and non-black characters. The first section examines Giuseppe Verdi's Otello (1887) and focuses on a critical moment near the end of the opera that links orchestral developments in Italy at the end of the 19th century with the way Verdi dramatizes Otello's vicious murder of Desdemona. A broader overview considers four operas written in the first half of the 20th century: Berg's Wozzeck (1925), Krenek's Jonny spielt auf (1927), Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1935), and Britten's Peter Grimes (1945). Two of these operas (Wozzeck and Peter Grimes) feature white European title characters, while the other two feature African American protagonists.
3. Modernity, agency, and sexuality in the pagode baiano
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Lima,Ari, (Author)
- Format:
- Book, Section
- Publication Date:
- 2011-01-01
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Notes:
- Examines a variation of samba called pagode baiano in several peripheral neighborhoods of the city of Salvador. Dance parties organized around this genre provide the context for the affirmation of a racial identity discourse as well as the reterritorialization of 'easy women', 'dishonest and lazy people', jobless people, homosexuals, and blacks. Pagode reintegrates aspects of traditional African manifestations found in Brazil, such as dance, call-and-response song, and the emphasis on polyrhythm. It embraces a sub-altern gender (feminine) and sexuality (homosexual) and undermines the hegemony of the macho. It exists as a musical experience whose feelings are particular and shared amongst certain subjects. Musicians and the public share a language and a way of speaking about themselves and others that reveal an emergent, imperfect citizenship.
4. Tradition as adventure: Black music, new Afro-descendant subjects, and pluralization of modernity in Salvador da Bahia
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Pinho,Osmundo de Araújo, (Author)
- Format:
- Book, Section
- Publication Date:
- 01/01; 2011
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- Collected Work: Brazilian popular music and citizenship.Pages: 250-266.(AN: 2011-04563).
- Notes:
- Examines aspects related to the plural constitution of Afro-descendants informed by black discursiveness in Salvador, Bahia. This discursiveness is strongly marked by the role of black music and by the history of Afro-descendant Carnaval. This essay shows that these subjects are a product of modernization and operate in it, while giving it a specific configuration. Social agents as reflexive audience play a decisive role in the review and criticism of such modernity, pluralizing it and pushing the boundaries of democracy and of representation politics, in their demand for recognition and changes. Music, as discursive production and as sociability experience, plays a key part in this process.
5. White face, black voice: Race, gender, and region in the music of the Boswell Sisters
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Stras,Laurie, (Author)
- Format:
- Book, Section
- Publication Date:
- 01/01; 2011
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- Collected Work: Jazz.Pages: 153-202.(AN: 2011-21316).
- Notes:
- Reprint of the article abstracted as RILM ref]2007-01616/ref].
6. Witnessing forced internal displacement in Colombia through vallenato music
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Rodríguez Quevedo,Diana, (Author)
- Format:
- Book, Section
- Publication Date:
- 01/01; 2013
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- Collected Work: Song and social change in Latin America.Pages: 123-150.(AN: 2013-02135).
- Notes:
- In Colombia, armed conflict, exacerbated by the war on drugs and the effects of neoliberal economic policies, has forced Afro-Colombian communities in the Chocó region off their land. The author studies the lyrics of a collection of vallenato songs that affirm the identity of the displaced of Chocó and help create solidarity and consciousness about their struggle. She explains the ideological roots of the armed conflict between the state military, the guerilla groups, and the paramilitary units of Colombia. She also describes the displacement she believes is caused by specific economic development projects resulting from 21st-century free-trade agreements between North America and Colombia. She analyzes how the villanato songs bring visibility to an otherwise invisible group of displaced peoples.