One of the latest installments in Bonnie C. Wade and Patricia Sheehan Campbell’s “Global Music Series,” Music in the Hispanic Caribbean, is a brief, accessible introduction to the diverse array of musical styles and sensibilities that have their origins in this particular corner of the world. While many of the publications in the series focus on music-making in individual countries and contexts, Moore chooses instead to examine all three of the islands that constitute the Hispanic Caribbean: Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. This broad vantage point affords him the opportunity to analyze both the cultural and historical commonalities that tie the region together (language, religion, colonialism, slavery, etc.), and the idiosyncratic events and circumstances that have shaped local musical realities on each island. The Music in the Hispanic Caribbean package consists of the book itself, a 70-minute CD of audio examples, and the link to a companion website which contains a variety of supplemental resources (listening guides, classroom activities, and detailed bibliographies and discographies) for the reader (or teacher) of this text.
The seven chapters that make up Music in the Hispanic Caribbean cover a wide range of subject matter, but Moore maintains an overall sense of coherence by employing an organizational and thematic framework that remains consistent throughout the book. Each chapter, for instance, introduces a broad concept which is first elaborated on in historical and theoretical terms, then demonstrated with a detailed discussion of three or four relevant musical case-studies; these examples are further illustrated by in-depth musical and lyrical analyses of representative recordings and didactic audio tracks on the accompanying CD. Similarly, each chapter relates in some way to one (or more) of the book’s three central themes: “colonization and slavery;” “hybridity [and] creolization;” and “diaspora, movement, and musical exchange” (xiii). A focus on these interrelated concepts allows the author to make connections between the individual chapters and case-studies, and thus to outline the broader historical and cultural processes that have shaped the form and content of the music of the Hispanic Caribbean.
Moore’s opening chapter sets the stage for the discussions that follow by providing brief theoretical introductions to the book’s three main themes and to Hispanic Caribbean music in general. Chapters 2 and 3 present the idea of a spectrum of creolization, with European-derived forms and characteristics (the focus of chapter 2) at one end, African-derived sounds and styles (the subject of chapter 3) at the other, and a wide range of hybridized musics in between. Chapter 4, meanwhile, provides an in-depth analysis of some of the most popular and influential creolized dance music genres that each island has produced. In chapter 5, Moore emphasizes the fact that the Hispanic Caribbean has been in dialogue with the rest of the world since the beginning of the colonial period; he thus documents a number of genres which have been born out of the transnational interaction of European, African, North and South American, and Caribbean musical sensibilities over the past several hundred years. Chapter 6 analyzes the ways in which a specific breed of Latin American protest song (nueva canción) took root in the region in the 1960s and 1970s, discussing the overall uniformities of the movement but also the idiosyncratic local realities that informed how it was manifested on each island. Finally, chapter 7 traces shifting attitudes towards blackness throughout the history of the region; Moore argues that while Afro-Caribbean music is now heralded as emblematic of national identity on each of the three islands, it was once viewed as a far less positive aspect of Hispanic Caribbean culture, and he illustrates this gradual change with musical examples dating from the colonial period through to the present.
As a case-study volume in an educational series designed for undergraduate world music courses, Music in the Hispanic Caribbean does not say anything new; Moore’s aim is to present a brief introduction to the music, culture, and history of the region rather than to offer an innovative theoretical contribution to the scholarly literature on the subject, and he does this quite effectively. In a sense, the book also serves as an overview of the substantial body of ethnomusicological research that has been carried out in the Hispanic Caribbean to date, and indeed Moore frequently draws upon the theories and findings of his colleagues to enrich his discussions of the genres, populations, and phenomena with which he has less first-hand experience. Finally, Music in the Hispanic Caribbean is a useful reference guide for those who are interested in pursuing specific topics further; the author provides extensive lists of bibliographic and audiovisual resources in the book itself and on its companion website.
On the whole, then, Music in the Hispanic Caribbean certainly meets its stated goals. It affords the reader an in-depth look at the broad cultural and historical processes which have shaped the music of the Hispanic Caribbean in general as well as the idiosyncrasies which have governed how these processes manifest themselves on each of the three islands, and it does so with an informative and entertaining exploration of a diverse array of musical sounds and styles. There are, however, some minor inconsistencies which detract slightly from the overall effectiveness of the book. The degree of attention paid to musical and to historical/theoretical analysis in each chapter, for example, varies quite considerably; the earlier segments on European-derived, African-derived, and creolized forms are rife with representative recordings, detailed listening guides, and didactic breakdowns of rhythmic patterns that successfully illustrate the musics that inform the theories, but the subsequent chapters are much more textually-based. While Moore’s arguments in these latter sections are still clear and concise, they lack the vibrancy and depth of the first half of the book. Ultimately, however, Music in the Hispanic Caribbean is sufficiently detailed and well-documented to keep specialists (ethnomusicologists, Caribbeanists, etc.) interested, but not so musicology- or theory-heavy as to intimidate non-specialists. Most audio examples, for instance, are at least partially transcribed in Western notation, but Moore’s listening guides focus on lyrics and the general roles and behaviors of instruments rather than the specific harmonies, melodies, and rhythms that they play. I would thus highly recommend this book for the introductory undergraduate courses in world music or ethnomusicology and the upper-level courses on Caribbean and Latin American music and/or culture for which it is intended, as well as to anyone (musically-minded or not) who wishes to know more about the fascinating musical cultures of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.
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[Review length: 1078 words • Review posted on June 1, 2010]