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2. Discordant beats of pleasure amidst everyday violence: The cultural work of party music in Trinidad
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Guilbault,Jocelyne, (Author)
- Format:
- Journal Article
- Publication Date:
- 01/01; 2011
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- MUSICultures
- Journal Title Details:
- 38 : 7-26
- Notes:
- In spaces of violence, scholars and activists have typically addressed music as sites of resistance. In postcolonial Caribbean, the focus of most studies unsurprisingly has thus been placed on the work music has done for the oppressed—or conversely, on the ways the (neo)colonial regimes have used music to increase their control over the masses. Until recently, few publications have addressed the music that has been performed to fortify and gather people together in times of hardship. In this case, what is at stake is not so much a matter of 'us and them' or of resistance, but rather the ways in which the 'us' is mobilized to strengthen senses of belonging and networks of solidarity. Amidst the escalating everyday violence since the mid-1990s, party music in Trinidad continues to thrive. Instead of dismissing such music as merely a source of escapism or hedonism, I want to examine what makes it so compelling and what it does for people. This paper is based on in-depth study of soca music making and mumerous ethnographic interviews with Trinidadian soca artists and fans over the past 15 years.
3. The routes and roots of danzón: A critique of the history of a genre
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Malcomson,Hettie, (Author)
- Format:
- Journal Article
- Publication Date:
- May; May, 2011
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- Popular music
- Journal Title Details:
- 30(2) : 263-278
- Notes:
- Examines the history of a genre that spans several continents and several centuries. Material from Mexico, Cuba, France, and Great Britain are brought together to create anew, expand upon, and critique the standard histories of danzón narrated by Mexico's danzón experts and others. In these standard histories, origins and nationality are key to the constitution of genres that are racialized and moralized for political ends. Danzón, its antecedents, and successors are treated as generic equivalents despite being quite different. From the danzón on, these genres are positioned as being the products of individual, male originators and their nations. Africa is treated as a conceptual nation, and Africanness as something extra that racializes hegemonic European music-dance forms. Political leanings and strategies determine whether these music-dance forms are interpreted, adopted, or co-opted as being black or white.