Latin American Music Center
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Item LAMúsiCa Vol 2 No. 1 (June 1995)(1995-06-19) Latin American Music Center, Jacobs School of MusicThe Latin American Music Center Newsletter. Carmen Helena Téllez, Editor in Chief; Gerardo Dirié, Editor; Erick Carballo, Managing Editor; Mario Ortiz, Contributor.Item LAMúsiCa Vol 2 No. 2 (February 1997)(1997-02) Latin American Music Center, Jacobs School of MusicThe Latin American Music Center Newsletter. Carmen Helena Téllez, Editor in Chief; Gerardo Dirié, Editor; Erick Carballo, Managing Editor; Mario Ortiz, Contributor.Item LAMúsiCa Vol 2 No. 3 (February 1998)(1998-02) Latin American Music Center, Jacobs School of MusicThe Latin American Music Center Newsletter. Carmen Helena Téllez, Editor in Chief; Gerardo Dirié, Editor; Erick Carballo, Managing Editor.Item LAMúsiCa Vol 2 No. 4 (May 1999)(1999-05) Latin American Music Center, Jacobs School of MusicThe Latin American Music Center Newsletter. Carmen Helena Téllez, Editor in Chief; Gerardo Dirié, Editor; Erick Carballo, Managing EditorItem Cuban Art Music in the U.S. before and after the Cuban Revolution [abstract only](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Quevedo, MarysolThe wellspring of U.S. Pan-American sentiment toward Cuba dried up quickly after the 1959 Revolution. Prior to the Revolution exchanges between Cuban and U.S. composers was vigorous, however, the events following the Revolution not only changed economic and political relations between Cuba and the U.S., but also composers’ and musicians’ ability to maintain ties between the two countries. This paper traces the pre-Revolutionary exchanges between Cuba and the U.S. through Henry Cowell’s New Music Society and its related publications (which included Amadeo Roldán’s Rítmicas), the Pan-American Association of Composers, as well as Cuban composers who studied in the U.S. (including Gisela Hernández, and Julian Orbón). The decrease in exchanges between the two countries is most noticeable in festivals and concert series in the U.S., such as the Inter-American Music Festival (IMFA), revealing the embargo’s effect on cultural matters. A quick survey of the programs of the IAMF reveals that after their first festival in 1958 the only Cuban composers included in performances were those who were exiled in the U.S. The lack, and some years complete absence, of Cuban works in the IMFA and the dearth of scholarship about Cuban art music form this period suggests a lack of compositional activity in Cuba. In reality, however, music composition in Cuba flourished, and cultural exchanges with other Latin American countries continued, in fact even increased, with the establishment of institutions to cultivate Pan-American exchanges, most notably the Casa de las Américas. Thus, in spite of the U.S. embargo Cuba actively fostered Pan-Americanism, albeit a different kind of Pan-Americanism from that fostered by the U.S.Item Shaping Perceptions: Early Experiments in Musical Diplomacy and Inter-American Relations [abstract only](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Campbell, Jennifer L.When State Department officials inaugurated a program of cultural diplomacy in the 1930s, their actions stimulated a surge of government-sponsored activity in music. One of the most effective proponents of this initiative was the Music Committee of the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), whose membership included Carleton Sprague Smith and Aaron Copland. This committee focused on furthering musical exchange with Latin America. They decided which U.S. musicians would receive funding for South American tours, as well as encouraged musical reciprocity by commissioning and performing South American music, and, when possible, bringing composers and ensembles north. In this paper, I examine how the decisions and actions of OIAA Music Committee played a role in the way music of the United States was represented in South America and vice versa. In many ways, this committee served as a gatekeeper for cultural exchange with Latin America. Only those U.S. musicians, ensembles, and musical works that met with the committee’s approval were financially supported. In turn, the information gathered by the leaders and participants in these tours influenced which South American musicians and composers the committee advocated to bring to the United States. Two case studies, the 1941 Yale Glee Club tour of South America and the visit of Brazilian composer Francisco Mignone to the U.S. in 1942, serve as examples, offering insight into how the committee members and, more broadly, U.S. government officials evaluated the success of these cultural exchanges and measured the perceived and potentially lasting impact of these new initiatives.Item Brazilian styles and jazz elements: Hybridization in the music of Hermeto Pascoal [full paper](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Côrtes, AlmirBy the late 1960s, the Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal (1936) started producing a musical oeuvre that would become a representative part of the repertory of modern Brazilian instrumental music (known internationally as Brazilian jazz). During his non-formal musical training, Pascoal was exposed to and practiced important Brazilian urban genres such as samba, choro, baião, frevo, and bossa nova. In 1970 he moved to the US, where he lived for around four years. During this time he became intimately involved with jazz music. Among other activities, he collaborated, played, and recorded with the jazz giant Miles Davis (1926-1991). This paper intends to show how Brazilian styles and jazz musical elements are articulated in the music of Pascoal. The discussion is based on a definition of hybridization as a social and cultural process in which structures or discrete practices that developed separately are combined in order to generate new structures, objects, and practices (CANCLINI, 2003). The depth of this cross-cultural process will also be examined, showing the boundaries of Pascoal's blending. Recordings and transcriptions of important pieces by Pascoal will be analyzed in order to illustrate which elements are hybridized and which are not.Item Walt Disney and Diplomacy: The Musical Impact of Aquarela do Brasil [full paper](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Berndt Morris, Elizabeth; Morris, CharlesIn a diplomatic attempt to create cultural exchange between Latin American countries and the United States, Disney Pictures created the film Saludos Amigos in 1942. The film Saludos Amigos was a combination of four independently conceived cartoon shorts regarding Latin America. This paper will concentrate on the final of the four cartoon shorts, Aquarela do Brasil. Aquarela do Brasil was created with the specific cultural function of improving relations with Brazil before entering World War II as requested and funded by the United States Government. The strategy of Franklin Roosevelt’s Latin American policy was cultural sharing with the goal of demonstrating how both cultures are similar and to strengthen cultural ties. In 1941, to accomplish the task of creating Saludos Amigos, Disney and a crew of writers, artists, and one musician, explored first-hand a variety of Latin American cultures. Disney and his crew chose to spend the majority of their time in Rio de Janeiro, using it as headquarters for their time in South America. As a result, the cartoon short Aquarela do Brasil, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is much more detailed and accurate. The cultural impact of Aquarela do Brasil’s music was significant and played a large role in the popularization of the samba in North America during the 1940s and 50s. Furthermore, the international popularity of the samba, Brazil, which premiered to American audiences in Aquarela do Brasil, helped samba to be perceived as the “national sound” of Brazil.Item Somos Iguales: Cuban Hip-Hop in the Age of Social Networks [full paper](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Pereira, AlyssaThrough occupation and trade during the last ten years, the United States and Cuba have absorbed facets of each other’s cultural profile. Two products of recent exchange in Cuba as a result of its relationship with the United States are the emergence of online social networks and the growth of Cuban hip-hop. In the US, social networking (through vehicles such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter) is used as a method of communication and a marketing tool. Many small record labels primarily rely on this type of grassroots marketing to appeal to their web-savvy target audience. While rap musicians in Cuba do not always have the capability to commercially sell professionally mixed albums due to a dependence on government allocated musician’s funds and materials, and submissiveness to government’s jurisdiction over what music is publicly released, the accessibility of the internet and social networks make possible a release of music at an underground level. As a result, complete censorship becomes an impossible feat and these musicians are able to release their music nationally and internationally through this medium. In this paper, I explore the expansion in the use of new social media networks in Cuba and their role in burgeoning the commercialization of Cuban rappers and their music. I note the differences in social media’s influence for Cuban underground rappers versus commercial rappers and the resulting success, both culturally and financially. Finally, I discuss the transnational impact of music dispersed through social media in Cuba and compare it to an earlier model of government-mandated distribution.Item Camelia’s Truths in "Unicamente la verdad": Narrative, History, and Musical Gesture [abstract only](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Carballo, ErickGabriela Ortiz’s opera Únicamente la verdad (2008) was inspired by historical figures and events surrounding the narcocorrido “Contrabando y Traición” by Los Tigres del Norte. In reality as in the opera, the causal relationship between history and art is reversed; traditionally, the narcocorrido narrates and also possibly editorializes about events that have already occurred in the drug trade between the United States and Mexico. Ortiz’s opera instead presents a series of multiple and contradictory real-life events and characters that were generated by the fictional narrative in the narcocorrido. These widely varying “truths”—in the midst of an opera whose title implies that we expect only one truth—underscore the social complexity of the drug trafficking problem, and open the conversation to include many truths in a broader narrative. My presentation explores how Únicamente la verdad projects such a plurality of truths from a musical perspective by exploring how particular musical gestures are presented in varying ways according to the “truth” that is being presented in each moment.Item Music in the Bernardo Mendel Collection [abstract only](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Gordillo, BernardIn late January of 1969, musicologist Robert M. Stevenson visited the Lilly Library at Indiana University, where he requested permission to study three Latin American manuscripts—Ramírez del Aguila’s Noticias politicas and two others simply labeled “Peru” and “Guatemala.” His visit, the first of several undertaken over a period of many years, was most likely due to an open invitation extended by the library just months before. The manuscripts that Stevenson studied, and from which he would later refer to in his writings, were all part of the Mendel Collection—a unique and extensive archive focused on the Spanish Empire in Latin America and the Philippines—whose foundation was the personal library of Austrian businessman Bernardo Mendel. Now containing approximately 40,000 printed items and 26,000 manuscripts, which embrace the Age of Discovery through the early 20th Century, the collection has been at the library for five decades, in which time its reputation as one of the largest in the United States has not only grown, but attracted much interest from many a scholar. Of particular consideration is the music contained within the collection. And while modest in comparison to other areas, it is nonetheless significant for a handful of items, including the Guatemalan manuscript which attracted Stevenson. In this paper I explore music prints and manuscripts in the collection with a brief survey the contents, acquisition history, and known influence and dissemination. Music-related sources, such as villancico text booklets, are also examined.Item El Dorado in Philly: Latin American Symphonic Music in the Fleisher Collection [abstract only](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Galván, GaryWhile la Musica may have fostered the legend, it is la musica that makes the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music at the Free Library of Philadelphia the El Dorado of Latin American symphonic music. Believing that no collection of orchestral music could be considered complete without the inclusion of the works of South and Central American composers, Philadelphia music philanthropist Edwin Fleisher began working directly with the United States Government in the 1940s to establish and cement cultural relations and personally commissioned Nicolas Slonimsky to visit Latin America in 1941-1942 in order to secure Pan American orchestral works so that they might be copied for the Fleisher Collection. Fleisher also attracted enthusiastic support from valuable resources such as Walter Burle Marx, Francisco Curt Lange, the Pan American Union, and the Library of Congress to mark the Federal Music Copying Project’s enlarged entrance into the field of producing full performance sets of unpublished contemporary South and Central American orchestral music. Ultimately, Fleisher amassed the largest collection of orchestral performance sets of Latin American orchestral music in the world. Through my research into this collection, I have recently uncovered over 70 uncatalogued Latin American works on microfilm which lack complete materials for performance. This presentation examines the history of the copying project through primary source documents, addresses the collection’s inestimable value to researchers and performers worldwide, and postulates a plan for moving this hidden treasure from the page to the stage.Item How does a Latin American Music Initiative impact an American Charter School Community? Observations from El Sistema Boston [full paper](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Campe, Katherine L.; Kaufman, Brian L.Rooted in Venezuela, El Sistema is a visionary global movement that has transformed the lives of youth through music since 1975. A Boston public charter school restructured and invigorated its’ curriculum with the El Sistema music program in September 2010. The pedagogical focus of El Sistema is the orchestra, a model for an ideal community that advances the social and performance skills of students empowering their personal and musical development. Our project aimed to assess the impact of El Sistema, a Latin American education initiative, on an American urban charter school. Self-regulation, motivation, peer-respect and responsibility are the skills and behaviors that were of interest and markers for cognitive, emotional and social development beyond academic achievement. We observed and collected perceptions of social and behavioral changes in students and assessed the potential positive musical influence of El Sistema through a qualitative and quantitative music literacy test. In our observations, the El Sistema curriculum has been perceived as a positive influence on the students’ social and behavioral development. Participating in the program provides students with valuable social interactions, enabling them to engage in collaborative learning, as well as propelling their musical knowledge. Further assessment will determine the El Sistema curriculum’s impact outside of the music classroom. Through further observation of El Sistema programs throughout the U.S., we can observe and acknowledge the large scale impact of this Latin American music initiative in our country.Item Audioscapes: Interpreting Nationalistic Perspectives Through Transnational Death Metal (Band: Brujeria) [abstract only](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Mena, MichaelThe California-based Mexican-American “activist” metal band Brujeria, uses a powerful, yet conflicting, blend of nihilism, anarchism, and racism with a dose of hyper-patriotism in its attempt to convey the voice of oppressed Mexicans on both sides of the border. My research on this band has revealed a peculiar concentration of live performances along the U.S.-Mexico border. While it is uncertain whether or not Brujeria is intentionally political, their live performances and song lyrics are highly critical of both the U.S. and Mexico regarding immigration policy, border-crossing, and other issues which have resonated among the binational youth of South Texas and Northeastern Mexico (locally referred to as “border kids”). In this paper I explore the conflicting notions of space, performativity, binationality and U.S. Mexico relations within the context of Brujeria performances in the South Texas Borderlands. As a participant/observer of the South Texas Death Metal scene, I have witnessed the emotional impact that Brujeria has on border kids. This audience is deeply confused about its social identity, and Brujeria appear to have developed a devoted following by tapping into the emotions of such a volatile binational youth audience. While on the surface, it might appear that Brujeria’s primary ambition is to prey on such a young and influential audience, I argue that Brujeria promotes and nurtures a new form of bicultural and biracial pride among the border kids that might be considered in response to a long history of exploitation and oppression of Mexicans in the region.Item Singing Blackness across Borders. Capeyuye and Mascogo Identity in Northern Mexico [abstract only](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Madrid, Alejandro L.This paper takes capeyuye [spiritual singing] as a point of departure to study the Mascogos’ continuous struggle to define themselves as binational people, as Afro- Seminoles living in Coahuila, Mexico. By reflecting on the intersections of race, nationality, and the body within the specificities of Mascogo border culture and history, the paper problematizes Anne Anlin Cheng’s notion of “racial melancholia,” suggesting that self rejection might be a more strategic move than she acknowledges to be. In the end, the author coins the term “dialectical soundings” and propose that the singing of spirituals among the Mascogos in fact renders Blackness visible in the context of the Mexican border essentialist racial discourses.Item Olin Downes and the Reception of Latin American Composers in the United States [abstract only](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Lopes, Luiz FernandoOlin Downes, influential music critic of the New York Times from 1924 until his death in 1955, was an indefatigable supporter of contemporary music and his interest extended to Latin American composers such as Carlos Chávez, Alberto Ginastera, Camargo Guarnieri, and Heitor Villa-Lobos. Downes’s reviews and newspaper pieces in relation to the New York World’s Fair from 1939 were especially instrumental in consolidating the reputation of Villa-Lobos in the United States. Downes thought highly of Chávez not only as a composer but also as a conductor, whom he compared in favorable terms to Arturo Toscanini’s tenure with the New York Philharmonic. Downes established a particularly enthusiastic relationship with Villa-Lobos and his music, about which he wrote more often than that of any other composer from Latin America. The Brazilian composer reciprocated in kind by dedicating to Downes his Symphony No. 8 from 1950. This paper examines Downes’s music criticism in the New York Times, especially his reviews of Latin American music performances, as well as his papers and unpublished correspondence, which mostly survive at the University of Georgia in Athens. Although it is clear that Olin Downes’s support of Latin American music was indefatigable and genuine, this paper reveals that is was not entirely disinterested and that the renowned critic also worked in tandem with the State Department in Washington, D.C., and its Good Neighbor Policy for the arts.Item Save the Children or Save the Music: Venezuela’s El Sistema as Syncretic Aesthetic and Pedagogical Export [full paper](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Pedroza, Ludim R.El Sistema defines itself as a “Venezuelan government social institution for the systematization of instruction and collective practice of orchestral and choral music as instruments of social organization and community development.” The program trains mostly poor children throughout their elementary and secondary education. Some will ultimately join the famous Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, and a handful, such as conductor Gustavo Dudamel, might become world-renown musicians. Founder José Antonio Abreu emphasizes the social objectives of the program and exhibits a keen consciousness of the versatile nature of Latin America’s modernity and the program’s adaptability and mutability. On the other hand, Abreu’s belief in the “unique” power of music to “transform” echoes Romantic ideologies specifically exemplified in Lisztian philosophy. In short, the program’s history, documentaries, and performances, reflect an aesthetic negotiation between European musical mythology and Venezuelan socio-artistic identity; the resulting entity both nurtures the “classical” canon and challenges it through the inclusion of Latin-American composers and adapted popular dances. Foreign musicians and media, nevertheless, appear to understate the social and musical syncretic potential of the El Sistema phenomenon, emphasizing instead the program as “the future of classical music.” Upon this dualistic foundation, Mark Churchill (of the New England Conservatory) now attempts to build El Sistema USA. This paper will scrutinize the complex aesthetics of El Sistema and its transplantation as a pedagogical model to the U.S. Such scrutiny affords us an opportunity to explore current mythologies of “classical music” and El Sistema’s potential to preserve them or mutate them.Item Bordering Spaces and Encounters in Music of Gabriela Ortiz [abstract only](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Kielian-Gilbert, MarianneThe Mexican city of Cuidad Juárez, Chihauhaua, across the river from El Paso, Texas, has become a flashpoint for the complex of values of border relations between the United States and Mexico. Two works of Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz confront ever-present problems of drug trafficking and violent death (the “disappeared women of Cuidad”) in, respectively, her video-opera ¡Únicamente la verdad! (Only the Truth!) (2008-10) and 2009 “requiem” setting Río Bravo for six female voices and crystal cups to text by Mónica Sánchez Escuer. ¡Únicamente la verdad! crosses boundaries of fact and fiction, myth and reality, documentary, opera, and corrido (Mexican ballad). Drawing on specific journalistic reports, it explores border imaginations of Camelia La Tejana, a woman fictionalized in the narcocorrido Contrabando y traición (Smuggling and Betrayal) made popular by the norteño music band Los Tigres del Norte in the 1970s. In multiple musical references (corrido, la música ranchera, cumbia del norte, art/popular music), scene five enacts the journalist César Güemes’s interview of Camelia María, one of the “Camelias” of the opera, and her resistance to his attempt to pin down the “real” Camelia. Ortiz’s 2009 work, Río Bravo takes a different turn in honoring the “lost “disappeared” women (Desaparecidos) of the Juárez maquiladoras (sweatshops). Their voices, “without echo”, multiply through work’s musical “echoing”, articulating the strangeness of their musical displacements of Escuer’s poem. I consider how private spaces—the interview, the requiem—can have public impact in musically enacting and ritualizing the stark realities of individual experience and loss.Item Double Meanings in Carlos Chavez’s Horsepower [abstract only[(Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Gibson, Christina TaylorGala crowds braved torrential rain and thunder to see the premiere of Carlos Chávez’s ballet H.P. (Horsepower or Caballos de Vapor) on March 31, 1932. The performance was directed by Leopold Stokowski, choreographed by Catherine Littlefield, and featured sets and costumes by Diego Rivera. It marked the first major performance of Chávez’s music in the U.S. Advance publicity emphasized a utopian Pan-American reading of the scenario; it advertised the composer’s use of son, tango, and zandunga, Rivera’s tropical fruit costumes, and Stokowski’s research trips to Mexico. A close study of Chávez’s manuscript score indicates, however, that the composer’s public support of a Pan-American reading was contradicted by the quasi-hidden dystopic program evident in the score. There the son and zandunga are overwhelmed by aggressive, dissonant, mechanical “Northern” sounds, closely identified with the U.S. Although Chávez managed to conceal his true program from Stokowski, Littlefield, and U.S. critics—the overt message of American cooperation was far more appealing than the co-optation represented in the score—the existence of the alternate program wrecked havoc on the necessarily collaborative art of ballet production, rendering the H.P. premiere confused and confusing. As a result, reviewers concurred that, “It was more of a sensation before it began than after it was over.” In this paper I will examine evidence for a hidden program in Chávez’s music for H.P., and analyze its affect on the performance and reception of the work.Item Musical Analysis of 16 Poesilúdios for Piano, by Almeida Prado, According to Analytical Techniques Developed by American Theorists [full paper](Latin American Music Center, 2011-10) Moreira, Adriana Lopes da CunhaThis work presents a musical analysis of structural and pertaining to surface aspects in the 16 Poesilúdios for piano, by the Brazilian composer Almeida Prado (1943-2010). It focuses on aspects of study, analysis and promote of contemporary Brazilian music, as a contribution for its bibliography. The methodology unites a brief biography of the composer; the division of his work into four phases; the presentation of excerpts by a compact disc with the pieces played by the researcher that presents this work, as well as photos of the paintings that have suggested the composition of some Poesilúdios; interviews with some artists to whom some pieces are dedicated, and an interview with the composer with his consideration about his own compositions are also included. It also explores aspects in relation to tempo, dynamics, timbre, texture and structure, with special emphasis on set theory, and proposes an association between musical analysis techniques developed during the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, presented by authors like Felix Salzer (1982) and Joseph Straus (2005). Therefore, it defends the approach of a work conceived by one of the most relevant Brazilian composers after Heitor Villa-Lobos, which work is analyzed according to techniques developed by American theorists and analysts. The conclusion verifies possible interactions between all these aspects, identifying the elements of unity and considerations about the structure of the Poesilúdios.
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