The 1960s marked a crucial political moment for Latin America, and aesthetic responses resulted in a broad range of musical experimentation. A new book, 鈥淓xperimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America,鈥 seeks to broaden the traditionally Eurocentric interpretive framework applied to experimental music traditions.
The book includes essays about experimental practices in Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica and Colombia and among Latinos in the United States. An accompanying website contains pictures, documents, music and video links.
鈥淏y focusing on elite and popular musical practices by Latin American and Latino musicians, the book contributes to decolonizing the Anglo-American and Eurocentric tradition that has defined experimentalism in narrow nationalist terms for decades,鈥 said Cornell professor of music and co-editor with Ana Alonso-Minutti of the University of New Mexico and Eduardo Herrera of Rutgers University.
The definition of experimentalism 鈥 often contrasted or conflated with 鈥渁vant-garde鈥 鈥 is debated among scholars, and the editors are more concerned with the performance of experimentalism rather than defining it. As they write in the introduction, 鈥渨e are primarily concerned with what happens when experimentalism happens.鈥 They emphasize that there is no universal experimental sonic experience, but rather each experimental expression arises from the 鈥渟pecific music traditions and shared habits of listening鈥 of a particular musical context.
The book has four thematic sections. The first, 鈥淐enters and Institutions,鈥 addresses experimentalism amid the politics of the Cold War era in the 1960s and 1970s. The second section, 鈥淏eyond the Limits of Hybridity,鈥 examines experimentalism among popular musicians and includes a chapter by Madrid and Pepe Rojo analyzing a 1999 album by a Mexican rock band, 鈥淓xperimentalism as Estrangement: Caf茅 Tacvba鈥檚 鈥楻ev茅s/Yosoy鈥.鈥
鈥淲e wanted to show how the album forces audiences to hear fantastic new possibilities in the sounds the band created. By emphasizing the centrality of locality, the album is also an attack on the music industry of the 1990s,鈥 Madrid said.
The third section, 鈥淎nti-Colonial Practices,鈥 looks at how experimentalism may 鈥渆ngage, reproduce or challenge colonialist and colonizing projects.鈥 The fourth, 鈥淧erformance, Movements and Scenes,鈥 examines the aesthetics and political concerns of a theater troupe in Mexico and intermedia artists in Argentina.
Associate professor of music wrote the book鈥檚 afterword, 鈥淟ocating Hemispheric Experimentalisms,鈥 showing how John Cage鈥檚 connections with the European avant-garde helped to cement a U.S.-centric concept of American experimental music.
鈥淭racing the history of a term like experimentalismreveals a multiplicity of hemispheric histories and meanings,鈥 Piekut said. 鈥淭he essays in this volume detail and analyze this multiplicity in a lateral rather than linear way, sensitive to the ruptures, disjunctures and asymmetries across which discourses and techniques move or get invented anew.鈥
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