This book constitutes not only a key contribution to the field of Latin American music studies as a whole, but it also responds directly to the pressing need of making the work of Latin American scholars available to Anglophone readers. Along these lines, the book should contribute to further the dialogue between scholars of Latin American music regardless of their location or institutional affiliation. As the editors point out, the academic production of a vast portion of Latin American scholars remains unknown in the Anglophone academy. Either by “dismissing the voices of Latin American researchers” or by merely stereotyping the region--just as the global music industry does--Latin Americanists in the U.S. and Europe are often trapped “in a circumscribed scholarly monologue” (xii). While highlighting the sophisticated ideas of leading authors in the field, the book offers a robust intellectual ground to counterbalance Anglophone readers’ ideas about the music and the academic production of the region. Still, the book is only a preamble to the research and ideas advanced by Latin American music scholars in the last decade.
Compared to other regions of the world, Latin America did not produce an abundance of music scholars in the twentieth century, and many of those who defined the field in the area were not trained as musicologists or ethnomusicologists. However, since the late 1990s, music scholarship has grown substantially, with the presence of a younger generation of researchers, new publications, professional associations, a growing interest in interdisciplinary approaches, and the foundation of educational programs specifically designed for the professional study of music. Such a panorama makes evident, paradoxically, the way in which this book cannot do justice to the musical diversity of the region or to the richness and depth of the scholarship recently produced in Latin America or by Latin Americans. Nevertheless, this scenario--if only hinted at in the book--makes apparent how inexcusable it would be for Anglophone scholars to keep bypassing or dismissing the work of their Latin American counterparts.
The volume opens with a comprehensive yet succinct introduction to the theoretical angle that articulates the various chapters of the book--the notion of “music scenes”--and to the field of popular music studies in Latin America. The editors trace the emergence and suitability of the concept of “music scene” as an alternative to that of “subculture” and as a supplement to notions such as “social distinction.” At the same time that it accounts for the fluidity of cultural identities, the concept of music scene is particularly useful for the consideration of local, translocal, and virtual scenarios in postindustrial societies. In the case of Latin America, the concept of music scene also seems to operate functionally vis-à-vis the concept of music genre--still a crucial theoretical tool for many scholars in the region. The introduction does not offer specific consideration of the various chapters in the book. Yet, the critical assessment of how Latin American scholars have dealt with the notion of music scenes announces the way in which the contributors to the volume approach their case studies: they either adopt, implicitly or explicitly, the concept of music scene as developed by Will Straw, Andy Bennett, and others, or criticize their English-speaking counterparts, offering instead, a kind of reconceptualization in the light of the empirical evidence gathered in the scenes they study.
The book is divided into five parts, each one encompassing two or three chapters. The first part, on Historical Issues, features two essays that focus on the local music scene of the carpas variety shows in early twentieth-century Mexico City (Natalia Bieletto-Bueno) and the translocal scene of ballroom music culture across Spanish America during the nineteenth century (Juan Francisco Sans). Part Two, Imaginaries, Identity, and Politics, includes the monographic contributions of the editors of the volume. By attending to music scenes in Ayacucho and Santiago de Chile, Mendívil and Spencer, respectively, examine the interaction between imagined communities and political identities and the role of music in shaping ideologies and discourses of authenticity. Part Three is dedicated to the transnational genre of cumbia in relation to issues of class and national identity. The authors focus on the development of music scenes around cumbia villera in Argentina (Pablo Alabarces and Malvina Silba), Ecuadorian tecno-cumbia (Ketty Wong), and chicha from Peru (Arturo Quispe), thus providing a noteworthy characterization of the varying ways in which this genre has been appropriated in different cultural scenarios. As such, it constitutes an ideal supplement to other available studies about cumbia in Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia, the Caribbean, and other places in the Americas.
Part Four, entitled Global Flows, showcases three remarkable studies of the translocalization of music scenes and the figuration of Latin American music in the global arena: the bilocal scene of merengue típico musicians in New York and the Dominican Republic (Sydney Hutchinson), the negotiation between translocal tango scenes in the queer Tango Festival in Buenos Aires (Mercedes Liska), and the transnational connections between Otavalan musicians in the diaspora (Michelle Wibbelsman). The last part of the book includes two chapters: a text by Ana María Ochoa centered on Fernando Ortiz’s notion of “voice,” particularly relevant to rethinking the very notion of music scene, and the epilogue of the book, in which the editors provide a brief analysis of the pertinence of the music-scenes framework for the study of Latin American popular music in light of the contributions of the eleven chapters in the volume.
This book would be a very useful addition to upper-undergraduate or graduate courses on Latin American music or Latin American music scholarship. It would also be an ideal point of entry for scholars interested in engaging with the field and with their colleagues south of the border. In either case, the abundant bibliographic references constitute inviting resources to continue the intellectual quest beyond the pages of the book. For the most part, its writing is accessible, with a proper balance between empirical presentations and theoretical considerations. Taken together with other recently published volumes on Latin American scholarship, such as Javier León’s and Helena Simonnett’s A Latin American Music Reader, this book should be celebrated as another important brick for the construction of a bridge between the Latin American and Anglophone academies.
--------
[Review length: 1027 words • Review posted on April 19, 2018]