“The Miami Sound”: A Contemporary Latin Form of Place-Specific Music

The concept of place-specific music, including its characteristics and formative dynamics, is introduced in this case study of the Miami Sound, a contemporary form of Latin commercial music that emerged in south Florida and has diffused rapidly since the mid-1970s. By analyzing musical components, it is concluded that the Miami Sound is a fusion of Latin, especially Cuban, musical influences with North American popular music formats and elements.     

The Danzón,North American Racial Discourses,and Reflections on Early Jazz

This essay proposes a way of understanding the formation of jazz as part of a broader transnational exchange of culture. It argues that the processes by which jazz came into being closely resemble others taking place in Cuba and elsewhere, and thus calls for analysis that positions jazz as part of a hemispheric exchange of cultural influences that extend beyond the United States. Second, it reviews and critiques existing scholarship on New Orleans jazz from a transnationalist perspective. It suggests that such literature presents turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans culture as insular, with little or no recognition of the international movement of artists and musical forms. Finally, it suggests that the cultural projects associated with jazz in the United States have necessitated a strong emphasis on the contributions of black US artists to the exclusion of Hispanics.     

Irrational amusements,theatre law,and moral reformers in nineteenth-century America: implications for later popular music study

This paper considers several case studies of conflicts between moral reformers active in US cities and venues catering to working-class audiences from the 1860s to 1880s. For moral reformers, theatrical entertainments, particularly forms with no educational or moral purpose, were deeply corrupting and threatened not only the well-being of the individual, but also that of the nation. These case studies show that tensions emerged when popular styles sought to expand their audience beyond their traditional patrons or to move into respectable areas of the city – in other words, when they did not stay in their traditional place. This is also true of the many hybrid musical forms that combined European-based folk or religious styles with African-American music. Forms such as jazz and rock ‘n’ roll did not elicit significant protest until they began to find an audience in northern cities among middle- and lower-middle-class youth. Exploring how laws were changed in response to earlier conflicts adds a crucial historical perspective to popular music studies, which tends to remain firmly focused on music from the mid-twentieth century onwards.     

Jazz and the Great Samba Debate,and Vice Versa

This paper will argue that jazz emerges as samba’s kindred foil in Brazilian popular music discourse of the 1940s and 1950s. Eager to underscore “blood” ties between idealized samba do morro and early blues and jazz, contributors to journals such as Diretrizes and Revista da Música Popular nonetheless tended to equate postwar bebop and big band with the menacing venality of the US music industry and the “vulgar” fandom to which it was associated. It was amidst such critical ambivalence toward jazz that bossa nova arrived on the scene, acutely vulnerable to accusations not just of appropriation but also servile imitation and therefore second-hand “decadence.”     

Producing African-descent: afro-peruvian music,intangible heritage,authenticity and bureaucracy in a Latin American music compilation

ABSTRACT

Policy and actions for the safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) are laced with politics of representation and meaning-making of expressive culture within and outside communities. This article explores how ICH experts, practitioners, activists, and other actors negotiate and re-construct ideas of racial identity and authenticity in one such initiative. Sponsored by CRESPIAL in 2012, the album Cantos y Música Afrodescendientes de América Latina is a compilation of music of Afro-descendant communities in Latin America. Conceived as a project for safeguarding the musical ICH of these communities, it involved participation from thirteen Latin American governments. This paper, centered on the Peruvian participation in this project, studies the bureaucratic intricacies of this project, exploring how ideas on racial identity and authenticity overlap with political agendas and administrative requirements in order to produce a unified representation of ‘Afro-Latin American’ music. My analysis highlights 1) the local knowledge systems that inform the ideas of racial identity and authenticity advanced by the project’s actors; 2) their adopted strategies within Peru’s bureaucratic network of heritage management; and 3) the positionality, capacity and agency of each actor for achieving their particular goals in this collaborative project.     

Kennedy's Alliance for Progress: countering revolution in Latin America Part II: the historiographical record

Within weeks of his inauguration in January 1961, President John F. Kennedy proposed an Alliance for Progress: a $100 billion programme of economic, political and social development for Latin America. Its purpose was to tackle the causes presumed to have sparked the Cuban revolution, chiefly poverty and bad governance, and within half a year every Latin American state except Cuba committed to the goals of the Alliance. But within a few years even proponents of the Alliance doubted its efficacy, a pessimism which increased during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, and more so under Richard Nixon. This review of the contemporary and historical literature on the Alliance sets that scholarship within the broader area of US–Latin American relations, with particular emphasis on US–Cuban relations from the 1960s until the twenty‐first century. An important sub‐theme is the peculiarity, the ‘exceptionalness’ of American political rhetoric, derived from and in turn shaping Americans’ sense of the history and the foreign relations of the US: the ‘American mission’ to the world.     

The historiography of nationalism and national identity in Latin America

ABSTRACT. This article surveys the current state of research on nationalism in Latin America, focusing on the large body of work produced from the 1990s onwards in a wide variety of disciplines (history, the social sciences and cultural studies). Covering work on both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, it takes as a starting point the impact of Benedict Anderson's work, Imagined Communities, on Latin Americanists. It discusses the ways in which Latin Americanists have applied his ideas, and their critiques of many of his claims about Latin American nationalism. It goes on to outline major recent developments across the field, within the context of an argument that it is important for all scholars of nationalism to incorporate Latin American experiences into their debates on the history and theory of nationalism. The references have been selected to guide readers to key relevant works; regrettably, the article cannot, for reasons of space, offer a fully comprehensive bibliography.     

Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) and his anti-war and pro-peace protest songs: from hippy peace to Islamic peace

ABSTRACT

In the 1970s Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) inspired a generation with his songs on anti-materialism, finding self and peace in such classic albums as Tea for the Tillerman (1970, US 3x platinum) and Teaser and the Firecat (1971, US 3x platinum). In December 1977 he converted to Islam, gave up popular music and focussed on humanitarian and educational work, until he returned to popular music in 2006. Meanwhile, Muslims became associated in the West as intolerant and violent. Yusuf has emerged in the last decade as a voice for progressive Muslims. This article explores the continuities in his music from his Cat Stevens days to his comeback and how he has reconciled popular music and his Cat Stevens past with his understanding of Islam. The focus is on his anti-war and pro-peace songs. It argues that his earlier songs are similar in their messages of world peace through love and unity, though less dark than his post-2006 songs. Additionally, his recent songs have a new message that the world must be more inclusive to achieve world peace. This is connected to him being a Muslim in the West and his feeling of exclusion, in an age when many in the West portray all Muslims as extremists. Consequently, in his recent music he reflects his experience as a Muslim, in the same way as his earlier music reflected the counter-culture of that period. Thus he has gone back to his earlier self after adopting a progressive understanding of Islam. Not Started Completed Rejected.     

“This Greater Issue of Light against Darkness”: Sereno Edwards Bishop,Missionary Religion,and the Hawaiian Islands, 1827–1909

The history of nineteenth‐century missions provide a fruitful field to explore the development of religious thought and practice in a secular setting. This article shows how the religious views of the clergyman and educator Sereno Edwards Bishop, born in Hawai‘i of American missionary parents, were shaped by his childhood among the mission community in Hawai‘i and by his American college education. These instilled in him a liberal approach to theology that was informed by a spiritually alert sense of Hawaiian geography and environment. Contrary to the notion that he cast his faith aside in addressing matters of wider social and political importance, Bishop emerges as someone who thought critically about mid‐nineteenth‐century Protestant Christianity, grounding his perspective on politics, society, and natural history in Hawai‘i according to his religious principles. Given Bishop’s specific intellectual and cultural heritage, it is difficult to subsume his perspective within broader narratives of American expansion; rather, both Pacific and mainland American elements shaped the thought of such mission‐descended figures.     

Working/Touring the Past: Latin American Identity and the Political Frustration of Heritage

This article explores the pervasive impact of the pre-Hispanic past on contemporary Latin American identity, using the Ecuadorian Indian movement and the Yucatacan town of Izamal as two symbolic sites where many of these factors vie for official recognition. Therefore, the central topic of this article is also an essential element of the debate contained within the global development discourse: How is it possible for Latin American to face the constant onslaught of powerful North America and European iconic images and not in some way embody its own inherent internalized forms of colonial oppression?     

Photography and Latin American Ruins

Ever since the nineteenth century photographers have regularly turned to Latin American ruins to express a diverse range of scientific, colonial, aesthetic and spiritual desires. This article looks at photographs of Latin American ruins from the nineteenth century through several archaeological expeditions in Central and South America over the course of the twentieth century. Focusing in particular on photographs of ruins that include human subjects, I argue that the human-material interactions evident in these images undermine the traditional view of a split between the archaeological subject and the material object, serving as a reminder of the political actuality of ‘classical’ ruins, sites that have sometimes been left out of the West’s contemporary fascination with the dark underbelly of modernity. Acknowledging that such politics is by no means always innocent, sometimes reflecting as it does the embedded power relations of neo-colonial desires, I argue nonetheless that ancient ruins in Latin America continue to be spaces around which social relations can be formed, not least through humour and pleasure.     

MR.PALDO TALKS ABOUT TIBETAN TRADITIONAL SPORTS

Mr.Paldo is a famous person;not only is he gifted at studies in Tibetan music and recognized for his music monographs, but has had rich experience in Tibetan folk culture as well.In old Tibet,he worked for merchants as a team member of caravans to transport goods,perform on the flute,or even act as a soldier.This rich life experience has enabled him to be knowledgeable in Tibetan folk culture.     

Between West and non-West: Latin American Contributions to International Thought

This article seeks to highlight the significant contribution of Latin American scholarship to the further promotion and understanding of more ‘global’ approaches to International Relations. It focuses on the immediate post-independence period and explores the internationalist perspective of Andres Bello, an enormously influential continental scholar, publicist, and political figure, whose work is little known outside South America. It argues that his contribution to International Relations broadly conceived, part of a wider regional contribution, cannot be neatly accommodated within either accounts of the expansion of international society or revisionist post-colonial thought. As such it is neither fully ‘Western’ nor ‘non-Western’. Analysing his contribution under three interrelated headings - international law, the problem of order and international co-operation - it argues that Bello's work needs to be examined on its own terms. Above all it provides an illustration of why we need to take more seriously Latin American thought as part of a wider movement to internationalise International Relations.     

Cultural policies for national music in South and North Korea (1960s–70s): a comparative study

ABSTRACT

This article is a comparative study of the cultural policies of North Korea (DPRK) and South Korea (ROK) in the 1960s and 1970s, specifically concerning the disciple of music. In this period, both South and North Korean regimes demonstrated similar conceptualisations of ‘national music’, harmonising Korean traditional music with western musical styles, but the end result differed in the two regimes. The DPRK developed national music through a homogenised musical style by assimilating Korean folk music with a western musical style while excluding traditional court music, with drastic modifications to traditional instruments and musical forms. In contrast, the ROK’s policy on establishing national music resulted in a combination of traditional court music for the ruling class and western classical music, indicating elitism. Particularly, this article argues that these distinct features of their national music were the result of differences in the strength and interest of government officials between the regimes.     

Jean-Paul Sartre,Simone de Beauvoir and the Paris jazz scene

There is a substantial amount of common, if relatively unexplored, ground between the emergence of existentialist philosophy in France and the growth of a French jazz culture. Both Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir play significant roles at the interface of these phenomena. This study investigates those roles and attempts to clarify the relationship between the 'home-grown' French philosophies and the cultural import. There are in fact two quite separate stories which have different outcomes, though there are important points of convergence. Both de Beauvoir and Sartre appropriate jazz, and for both of them the music is associated with fundamental freedoms, but where he uses it to inform and illustrate his philosophy, she derives from it a programme of action, or at least the basis for developing such a programme. Interestingly, the critical period for revealing the nexus between jazz and existentialism is not so much the post-Liberation era, but the time between the wars.     

Guy D’Arezzo et « Notre Notation Musicale Moderne »

In his Sociology of music, Max Weber stressed the importance of the invention of notation on lines by Guido of Arezzo (c. 990–1035). This article traces the beginnings of musical notation. Although Guido of Arezzo proposed a system of lines in which each note is always in the same place, he also placed the neumes invented before him on these lines. The first annotators sought to note with precision the rhythmic nuances and ornaments of the melodies; but those subtle indications disappeared little by little from the notation, betraying an inflexibility of the tradition, which contributed to the orientation of western music towards paths which did not know other music of oral tradition.     

Missionary Critiques of Empire, 1920–1932: Between Interventionism and Anti-imperialism

This article investigates the activism of North American evangelical and Christian pacifist missionaries, specifically the leadership of the Committee of Cooperation in Latin America (CCLA) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), who took direct action to oppose US foreign policy toward Latin America prior to the promulgation of the Good Neighbor Policy in 1933. These historical actors were struggling to articulate a moral and Christian-based anti-imperialism that would bring Latin Americans and North Americans together. They were doing so at a critical historical moment of high US interventionism. Their respective missionary agendas demanded that they articulate non-violent, ethical and spiritual forms of anti-imperialist dissent as a way to salvage the Western Hemisphere from excessive materialism and unfair governance as well as to bolster the legitimacy of their missionary work abroad. A distinctive feature of the CCLA and the FOR's missionary work was their attempts to forge relationships with sectors of the Latin American anti-imperialist left. Their critiques of empire thus emerged in dialogue with anti-imperialist ideas that came from outside the United States, as they allowed themselves to be instructed by the vision and philosophies of the Latin American thinkers themselves.     

The Political Economy of Industrialization: A Comparison of Latin American and East Asian Newly Industrializing Countries

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the industrial performance of two East Asian (South Korea and Taiwan) and three Latin American (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico) newly industrializing countries. It argues that the better performance in East Asia is not due simply to differences in trade orientation or the degree of state intervention, but rather to the effectiveness of intervention. This is explained in terms of the relative autonomy of the state and the structuring of the state apparatus in the two regions. The historically determined class structure and the international context led to much greater state autonomy in East Asia than in Latin America. The last part of the paper shows a number of ways in which this greater relative autonomy has contributed to rapid industrial growth in East Asia in comparison with Latin America.