In Soundscapes from the Americas, Donna Buchanan and her fellow contributors present a Gedenkschrift for the late Gerard Béhague (1937-2005), renowned scholar of Latin American music and founding member of the “Texas School” of performance ethnography. The assembled essays explore a diverse assortment of performance traditions from throughout the Americas, mirroring Béhague’s own broad and eclectic scholarly interests; the entries cohere, however, around a shared theoretical and methodological focus on the aesthetic, phenomenological, and sociopolitical dimensions of performance and performativity. The volume is also a testament to Béhague’s legacy as a teacher and mentor, in that all of the authors are his former students and colleagues.
The book begins with a foreword by Richard Bauman, who offers a brief personal reflection on the genesis of the “Texas School” approach to performance studies in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as on Béhague’s pivotal contributions to it as a scholar, educator, and administrator. In the introduction, editor Donna Buchanan reviews the intellectual history of the theoretical and methodological frameworks pioneered by Béhague, Bauman, and their colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin, detailing the ontological and political priorities that inspired the “performance turn” and the major concepts and approaches—drawn from disciplines as diverse as folklore, linguistic anthropology, gender studies, and ethnomusicology—upon which the contemporary performance studies paradigm is based.
The three chapters that comprise Part One (Genres, Histories, and Discourses of Power Performed) examine genres of performance as discursive categories, with an emphasis on the ways in which ideas about and approaches to particular performance traditions articulate with broader debates surrounding power, identity, and heritage in a range of geographic and historical contexts. In chapter 1, Robin Moore traces the evolution of representations of blackness across three eras of Cuban teatro bufo performance, arguing that the various stock blackface characters that emerged throughout the nineteenth century reflected changing attitudes toward Afro-Cubans as Cuban society moved closer to abolition and independence. In chapter 2, Ketty Wong compares elite and working-class attempts to define the semantic boundaries of Ecuadorian música nacional (or “national music”), noting that while white and mestizo elites use the label exclusively in reference to European-derived instrumental dance genres, indigenous working-class Ecuadorians apply the term to a broader range of popular styles more reflective of the multicultural makeup of the nation. Finally, in chapter 3, Ted Solís assesses stability and change in the musical traditions of Hawai’i’s Puerto Rican (or “Jíbaro”) migrant community. He contends that while exposure to musical developments from Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland brought about significant changes in Hawai’i-based Jíbaro performance practice throughout the twentieth century, local musicians continue to espouse a narrative of ethnic purity and cultural authenticity, and downplay the non-Jíbaro elements—such as those derived from African Diasporic sources—that have become central to their contemporary performance style.
Part Two (Performing Practice: Style and the Politics of Subjectivity) turns to a discussion of individual performance and performers, and in particular of the ways in which performance can simultaneously model, reinforce, and transform broader social norms and patterns. In chapter 4, Tim Brace offers a rich theoretical analysis of the relationship between the soloist and the accompanying ensemble in jazz improvisation, and suggests that such performance is tantamount to a form of “communion” in which individual musicians both shape and are shaped by the greater musical whole that they work collectively to produce. Next, in chapter 5, Emily Pinkerton investigates women’s participation in the traditionally male-dominated arena of Chilean canto a lo poeta, evaluating improvised lyrics and on- and offstage discourse in order to illustrate both the discursive authority that men still exercise to comment on the presence and prowess of female performers, and the various ways in which women are working from within the tradition to challenge these uneven gender dynamics and redefine the terms of their involvement.
Finally, Part Three (Situated Events and Performance Politics: Fiesta, Festival, Stage, and Street) examines how the aesthetics, experiences, and politics associated with particular types of performance are altered when performers and performance “texts” move between different audiences and contexts. Michelle Wibbelsman compares tourist- and community-oriented performances of a Catholic ritual in a northern Ecuadorian town in chapter 6, arguing that while the former was structured as a detached spectacle for the entertainment of middle-class mestizos, the latter served to create powerful semiotic and phenomenological links between Christ’s suffering and the working-class indigenous community members’ own hardships; this, in turn, strengthened their moral and political cohesion. Similarly, in chapter 7, Thomas Solomon analyzes how indigenous performers in the Bolivian highland province of Bustillo adjust their instrumentation, repertoire, and onstage attire when appearing in community-based fiestas vs. mestizo-directed festivales. He contends that performers deliberately embody—and even exaggerate—mestizo stereotypes about indigenous culture and identity in a strategic effort to impress the mestizo judges that preside over festival competitions, and thus to secure social and material benefits for themselves and their communities.
Taken as a whole, Soundscapes from the Americas makes a number of important contributions to the existing literature on performance, ethnography, and North and South American expressive culture. Buchanan’s introductory chapter is particularly valuable, in that it offers a succinct yet comprehensive primer on the major thinkers and concepts at the heart of contemporary performance studies. The seven remaining essays, meanwhile, vary significantly in their focus and approach. Some authors (e.g., Moore and Pinkerton) present captivating case studies of the aesthetic and sociopolitical dimensions of performance in particular historical and/or ethnographic contexts, while others (e.g., Brace) offer more general theoretical and philosophical reflections on given modes of performance. Still others (e.g., Wibbelsman and Solomon) use specific instances of performance observed in situated ethnographic contexts to challenge or refine more abstract theoretical frameworks, such as Peircian semiotics (for Wibbelsman) and Lacanian poststructuralism (for Solomon). Together, however, the assembled entries paint a rich picture of the many possibilities that the contemporary performance studies paradigm offers for assessing the meanings and functions of musical, choreographic, and social performance in human life. In the final analysis, then, Soundscapes from the Americas successfully captures the breadth and depth of the late Gerard Béhague’s geographic, stylistic, and theoretical interests, and stands as a powerful testament to his legacy as a scholar and educator; as such, it comes highly recommended to ethnomusicologists, folklorists, performance scholars, and students of North and South American culture and society more generally.
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[Review length: 1052 words • Review posted on October 6, 2015]