Examines the political and cultural possibilities and limits of the wide-ranging reggae scene that has emerged along both sides of the U.S./Mexico border since the 1990s. It investigates why and how members of seemingly disparate border communities, including Mexicanas/os, Chicanas/os, and Native Americans, find common social and political ground playing Afro-Caribbean inspired music. It also interrogates how people living in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands have responded to the impact of economic and political globalization by using reggae to fashion multiethnic and post-national political formations and social relationships at the grassroots.
The Caribbean coastal region of Colombia is called the costa, and its inhabitants are referred to as costeños. The müsica costeña (coastal music) is a product of tri-ethnic syncretic cultural traditions including Amerindian, Spanish, and African elements, a merging that begins with the colonial period and continues into the republican period on the Caribbean Coast. Traditional music from the Colombian Caribbean coast expresses its tri-ethnic costeño identity in various vocal styles and musical forms and through its types of instruments and the way they are played. This essay describes the aspects and circumstances under which cumbia, a coastal musical genre and dance form of peasant origins characterized by an African-derived style, has spread from its local origins in the valley of the Magdalena River to acquire a Colombian national identity, becoming in a few years a transnational musical phenomenon.
Focuses on specific aspects of the independent, creative network of musicians who in the late 1960s and early 1970s bonded together as the nueva canción or nueva canción movement across the Latin American continent, the Caribbean, and Spain. The author traces nueva canción through various key phrases. Nueva canción describes a music enmeshed within historical circumstances which included: the forging of revolutionary culture in Cuba; the coming together of political parties to form a coalition to elect the first ever socialist president in Chile in 1970; resistance to brutal Latin American dictatorships; and the struggle for new democracies. The music was often referred to by different names in different countries. It was known as: nueva cancionero (new song book) in Argentina; nueva canción (new song) in Chile and Peru; nueva trova (new song) in Cuba; and volcanto (volcanic song) in Nicaragua. Nueva canción musicians never saw their music as protest song. Nueva canción was regarded as a social force in itself and a key resource for creating collective bonds. This movement in its various forms was an emblematic music of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Functioning as both a national and international music, nueva canción has become part of the active memory of this period. Its potent legacy can be seen in the fact that many high-profile commercial singers today continue to be influenced by it: nueva canción continues to be perceived as a legitimate, unifying, and active force for peaceful change.
An overview of choral activity in Latin America, including cathedrals, missions (particularly Jesuit missions), and musical centers such as the Escuela de Chacao in Venezuela and the Escola Mineira in Brazil. The 20th century witnessed a renaissance of choral music, along with the development of national conservatories and a variety of choral institutions. A regional survey highlights some of the activities in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico; the Caribbean region, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic; and the Andean region, including Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chili, and Uruguay. Composers have been inspired by the burgeoning choral ensembles, writing music that may use contemporary compositional techniques, popular music, folk music, as well as arranging popular music for choirs.
Examines children's musical practices on Corn Island, some 52 miles off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, which has long been a site of cross-cultural interaction and exchange. In 1987, as part of the postwar peace agreements, two autonomous regions—north and south—were established on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. The cultural and education aspects of autonomy came to be envisioned largely through concepts of interculturalidad, or interculturalism. Children's musical practices enter into discourses of interculturalism in several ways. They are often important symbols of the future; informal genres of vernacular expression (such as singing games) are a key resource for curricular reform that aims to bring regional folklore into the classroom; and they are central to processes of cultural interaction, exchange, and transformation. This is because children's activities are often oriented toward playful improvisation and because children are key actors in processes of socialization and adaptation to changing circumstances. Expressive practices such as music are dialogic tools through which differences are enacted, through which boundaries are constructed within and between social groups. This understanding of interculturalism as an everyday practice helps us see how culture emerges from interaction and play and how communication is accomplished using a diverse pool of resources. This essay focuses on the children of Miskitu migrants on Corn Island, particularly on singing game performance.
Adieu foulard, adieu madras is a very popular tune from the French Caribbean. It is just as popular today in continental France, where it has been adapted to different musical genres. Yet, for those familiar with the simple melody and its evocative lyrics, which encourages carefree humming, not many may be aware that it is so deeply rooted in the history of French colonialism, island tropes, and ethnic relations. This essay uses Adieu foulard, adieu madras and its multiple sonic meanings as the lens to better understand the dynamics of the (post)colonial relationship of the people of the French Antilles, particularly from the island overseas departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe, many of whom have now migrated permanently to metropolitan France. For these, Adieu has now also become their song of exile.
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.
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.
