Song and Social Change in Latin America
Contributions by Carmelo Esterrich, John R. Baldwin, Phillip J. Chidester, Juan Carlos Ureña, Lisette Balabarca, Ignacio Corona, Diana Rodríguez Quevedo Edited by Lauren E Shaw
Publication date:
04 April 2013Length of book:
256 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739179482
Song & Social Change in Latin America offers seven essays from a diverse group of scholars on the topic of music as a reflection of the many social-political upheavals throughout Latin America from the 20th century to the present. Topics covered include: the Tropicália movement in Brazil, the Nueva Canción in Central America, Rock in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Peru, the Vallenato in Colombia, Trova in Cuba, and urban music of Puerto Rico in the mid-20th century. The collection also includes five interviews from prominent and up-and-coming musicians —Ruben Blades, Roy Brown, Habana Abierta, Ana Tijoux, and Mare— representing a variety of musical genres and political issues in Central America, the Caribbean, South America, and Mexico.
[This book] is a must-read for all those interested in building an emancipatory politics of the twenty first century. It opens a poetics of possibility which shines new light on the importance of taking seriously the cultural, the popular and the everyday in social change and political transformation. The collection takes us on a journey that crosses geographical, cultural, political and epistemological borders. . . .[The book's] playful use of form, combining traditional scholarly analysis of song with six interviews with musicians . . . contributes to its ability to stimulate the critical imagination and to open emancipatory horizons. The thirteen unique contributions highlight some of the generic ways in which song-poetry facilitates social change. . . .This volume is to be actively and tenderly explored. Through an embodied act of reading we can become active interlocutors with the text, listening to the traditions discussed. Through savouring the text in this way, we enter a dialogue of knowledges that engages our head, heart, body and imagination. Song and Social Change in Latin America transgresses borders. For this reason it is a gem.