Azcona, Esteban - Musical Migrations. Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin America

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Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in

Latin/o America

Azcona, Estevan.

Latin American Music Review, Volume 26, Number 2, Fall/Winter

2005, pp. 352-356 (Review)

Published by University of Texas Press

DOI: 10.1353/lat.2006.0001

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by UCLA Library at 10/25/11 4:16PM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lat/summary/v026/26.2azcona.html





352 : Reviews

semantic meanings and poetic forms that go to make up Kuna culture. Thetapes, available online, furnish access to additional layers of meaning andethnographic experience. The photographs and illustrations contribute a

visual component. The introductions to the texts help us to better compre-hend the social contexts of the discourse production, as well as features of the discourse and surrounding culture that might otherwise remain sternlyopaque. As an exemplary piece of ethnography, as a portal through whichKuna culture can pass into and be accessed by a broader social world, thisbook is a marvelous success.

Greg Urban, University of Pennsylvania

APARICIO, FRANCES R ., AND CÁNDIDA F. JÁQUEZ, EDS. Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin/o America, Volume I . NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, 216 pp. Illustrations, photos, transcrip-tion excerpts, index. ISBN 1-4039-6001-1. Cloth $89.95. Paperback $29.95.

The conceptual borders of Latin American musical life have long beenimagined to stop at the southern boundaries of the United States wherenation, race, capital, and power shape and reshape the perception of things “American.” Even within the boundaries of the United States, theemergence of “Latino America,” while palpable, is more a useful politi-cal project—for some a capitalist project—than an organic historical oc-currence. How Latin America and Latino America materially connect,beyond the newly coined “Latin/o America,” is the topic of much schol-arly and political discussion. It is also a topic that is increasingly piquing the interest of music scholars, whether they are studying 1950s Latin jazz in the U.S. big city, the salsa scene between the Caribbean and theEast Coast, or Chicano musicians on and beyond the Mexico-UnitedStates border. There has been no comprehensive interrogation in this

hemispheric sense, however, of the breadth and depth of these culturalexchanges and what problems and prospects they present to the study of Latin American popular music.

In this context, Musical Migrations is an important and needed set of essays that rethink the complex cultural world that is the music of las Américas . In twelve essays plus an introduction, the authors collectivelymap the expanding web of relationships that chart a Latin American andLatina/o musical universe: from the Caribbean to the United States, Eu-rope, Africa, and back again, radiating out to North, South, and Central

America. On the other hand, the volume does come across as Caribbean-centric, which may detract from its hemispheric vision. This sense of move-ment, or migration, is the main trope of the collection as it “foregroundsthe processes of dislocation, transformation, and mediation that characterize



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musical structures, productions, and performances” (3) within their politi-cal, cultural, and historical frames of meaning. The volume finds its originin the 1997 “Rhythms of Culture: Dancing to Las Américas” conference at

the University of Michigan where most of the chapters were given as pa-pers. Accordingly, the volume is exceedingly multidisciplinary and bringstogether scholars from literary criticism, theater studies, history, anthro-pology, and ethnomusicology. As the editors suggest, this multidisciplinarityis appropriate due to the emergent nature of the topic, particularly for thedisciplinary tensions it invites.

While there is a formal introduction by the editors, upon which I willcomment throughout this review, Musical Migrations is complemented byanother “state of the field” essay, Deborah Pacini-Hernández’s “Amalgam-

ating Musics: Popular Music and Cultural Hybridity in the Americas.” Inwhat may likely become a foundational essay for this emerging confluenceof “Latin/o” music studies, Pacini-Hernández charts the cultural and his-torical processes that have helped form the musical crucible that is popularmusics in the Americas. For example, her analysis of rock music in thismilieu reveals both the shared unacknowledged contributions Latinos fromaround the United States made at various times to the style and culturallybased distinctions between how Chicanos and Spanish Caribbean Latinosinteracted with and made rock their own. Furthermore, Pacini-Hernándezunderstands that the stylistic hybridity that is occurring in Latino musics ismotivated by Latina/os’ need to transgress traditional boundaries in orderto make sense of their complex social experience in the United States.

The subtitle of the volume, “Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity inLatin/o America,” establishes the organizing structure with two groups of essays exploring both cultural processes. The first group of essays considersthe various issues that address music and transnationalism in the Caribbean:transnational flows of music culture in and out of the Caribbean, musicaltransformation in diasporic communities, and the problem of musical na-tionalisms. For example, Marisol Berrios-Miranda addresses the latter as she

offers the case of Venezuelan salsa, exploring how its own development hasbeen through musicians from Puerto Rico rather than from the New York-Cuba binary, a significance that the scholarly literature has over-emphasizedin the author’s consideration. The essay by Paul Austerlitz tackles the pre-dicament of studying Black Atlantic aesthetics and style through the tools of the Western academy. By problematizing the forms of Western musical nota-tion typically used to study Caribbean popular musics, Austerlitz seeks todecentuate melodically based staff notation towards the rhythmically basedTime Unit Box System (TUBS), which he argues is synesthetically related to

West African textile patterns. James Winders’s essay re-focuses thetransnational perspective to the lingering postcolonial residue in the FrenchCaribbean that forms zouk musical practices and aesthetics. While certainlyrepresentative of the dynamic terrain of transnationalism in the hemisphere,



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the editors do not explain how this essay fits within the “Latin/o American”world they are attempting to describe. The politics of culture in the diaspora is the topic of Gema Guevara’s essay as she outlines the political landscape

reflected in music coming out of the Cuban American community, particu-larly the nostalgia for the pre-revolutionary period, exemplified in part throughGloria Estefan’s 1993 album, Mi Tierra .

Whereas in the first part of the volume the essays were geared morearound the trope of movement of musical ideas, the second group of es-says concerns itself with the broad strokes of Latin American cultural hy-bridity, particularly through the work of Nestor García Canclini: the tensionbetween tradition and modernity, mestizaje , and border cultures. ShannonDudley confronts the former in his essay describing the aesthetic conflicts

that arise in contemporary performance within Trinidadian steelband fes-tivals, particularly between the “Western-influenced” symphonic arrange-ments and the more historically based traditions of calypso. Co-editorCándida Jáquez similarly tackles the issues of “authenticity” and “tradi-tion” within the realm of contemporary mariachi performance in the UnitedStates. For Jáquez, the profound significance of culture to Mexican com-munities on this side of the border is complicated by generations of forcedassimilation and an expanding aesthetic palette within sectors of the samecommunity. In an essay describing the unique position ethnologist JoséMaría Arguedas held in introducing criollo Peruvian society to its indig-enous populations, Juan Zavallos-Aguilar reflects on these social bordersthrough Arguedas’s work on la danza de las tijeras (the scissors dance). Alsoexploring the concept of borders is Bridget Morgan as she examines theArgentine social imagination through nineteenth-century literary worksabout the unique figure of the gaucho, set between sectors of the Argentinesocial order: the civilized urban dwellers and the still “primitive” indig-enous groups that live beyond; the world of the gaucho is demarcated andapparently lyrically defended by musical traditions.

Musical Migrations , however, is a collection of essays that also demon-

strate the significance of popular music in the Americas. While virtually allthe essays of the volume explore the importance popular music holds inthe everyday lives of people throughout the hemisphere, three essays ad-dress the transformative nature of popular music. Anthony Macias’s essaycharts the long history of Chicano Angelenos playing and innovating vari-ous idioms of American popular music and is another intervention at de-fining the “Mexican American Generation”—the cohort that came of age inthe wake of WWII, ushering in a distinctive period in the history of Mexi-cans in the United States. The essay by Jorge Giovannetti gives a view of

the various ways vastly popular styles like reggae and rap are formative of identity construction among Puerto Rican youths and suggests that thesestyles serve as potential mediums of resistance, observable through thetypes of localized differentiation occurring amongst youth on the island. In



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the final essay of the collection, Luis Ramos-García offers a powerfullywritten cultural critique on the marginalization felt by those on the fringesof Peruvian society and the discursive roles rock’n’roll music (both im-

ported and local) plays within this cultural milieu. Ramos-García deftlymaneuvers through the contestatory ground of resistance and hegemonyand points to the importance of cholo bands, like Los Mojarras, with their folkloroso sound.

Musical Migrations makes its mark on the scholarship of Latin Americanmusic studies by its historically situated and process-oriented approachover previous solely geographical or regional conceptions. Due credit forthis innovation, however, predates the volume as Gerard Béhague beganthis discussion through a series of lectures culminating in the article pub-

lished in this journal, “Boundaries and Borders in the Study of Music inLatin America: A Conceptual Re-Mapping” (LAMR 21, 1, 2000). The edi-tors of Musical Migrations , however, have taken the discussion to the next step with this collection of essays which will now set the standard for com-prehensive overviews of music of the Americas. Further, the inclusion of the musical production and meaning from Latina/o communities of theUnited States in the Latin American musical world connects a long historyof cultural exchange and contemporary political activity to an emerging hemispheric consciousness and the implications of the ever-expanding glo-bal reach of cultural commodities.

In connecting the musical worlds of Latin Americans and Latinas/os,however, the editors find themselves in the uncomfortable position of hav-ing to make reference to these entities as a whole and here lies a bit of semantic confusion. The reference in the volume title, “Latin/o America,”appears as a somewhat economical reference and seems to be a designa-tion growing as much in popularity as it is lacking in clarity. However, theeditors have chosen in their introduction to discuss music within this realmas “Latin(o)” music. What the difference is between the slash and the pa-rentheses is unclear and neither usage reads with any ethnographic valid-

ity outside the United States, nor perhaps even within. The editors furtherpoint out that other authors in the volume prefer or use other designations,such as “Latin” or “Latino/a” music. There is also intermittent reference to“U.S. Latinos” which suggests that Latin Americans, or at least some sectorof them, self-identify as “Latino” of which I have seen no evidence. This iscoupled by the confusion over “Latin/o,” referring to the Americas gener-ally, and the standard usage of “Latina/o,” by scholars in the United Statesto assuage the gender politics of the academy. While it is just this type of messiness that gives the subject its rich, complex character and motivates

needed discussion inside and outside of the academy, the treatment of identifying terms needs clarification, not more ambiguity.Over-arching terms, such as those noted above, while convenient can

also be a recipe for misrepresentation. The particular leanings of the



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volume suggest that popular musics of the Americas are dominated byAfro-Caribbean dance musics. While certainly popular, there is hardlyethnographic evidence that these styles dominate the hemisphere, except

perhaps in the imaginations of non-Latinos in the United States. Care must be taken that analysis of the hip-swiveling, dancing, sexual dark bodies onthe dance floors do not border on the social stereotype of the “Latin” orecho market trends.

The study of popular musics of the Americas is increasingly revealing the global character of its aesthetic interconnectedness and theoreticalmeaningfulness to the world. Students and scholars at all levels will beenriched by the conceptual and ethnographic elaborations within Musical Migrations . The volume is a forward-looking reconfiguration of the field

that will serve Latin American and Latina/o popular musics well. I, forone, look forward to the second volume as I hope to see a continued elabo-ration of the social and political ground from which musical migrationsoccur throughout the hemisphere as well as how “Latin/o” music emerg-ing from the United States is affecting the Latin America’s musical imagi-nation of itself.

Estevan Azcona, University of Texas at Austin

MCALISTER , ELIZABETH A. Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora . Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002,259 pp. Appendix, glossary, end notes, bibliography, discography, index,compact-disc. ISBN: 0-520-22823-5. $24.95.

Elizabeth McAlister is certainly qualified to write a book on the Haitianmusical tradition known as Rara. She earned a bachelor degree in anthro-pology from Vassar College and two master’s degrees in African Americanstudies and history and a doctorate in American studies from Yale. Fur-

thermore, one of McAlister’s specialties is Haitian Vodou, a religion withwhich she became intimately acquainted during multiple visits to Haitibetween 1990 and 1995. As one would expect, Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora (Rara! henceforth) reflects the strengthsof McAlister’s interdisciplinary background, as well as her extensivefirsthand knowledge of Haitian history, religion, politics, and music. Fromone point of view, McAlister’s unique skill set constitutes a refreshing changeof pace, methodologically speaking. Rather than delving into detailedmusical analysis, decoding local epistemologies of musical performance,

or developing yet another quirky system of transcription, she instead spendsher time exploring divination and magic, analyzing dialogic speech codes,and examining Rara as part of the historical struggle of Haiti’s poor, op-pressed majority to obtain basic human rights on both the local and

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Azcona, Esteban - Musical Migrations. Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin America