Thursday, October 15, 2009

Based on ethnographic and archival work conducted in Cuba and Mexico between 2006 and 2009, this paper explores transnational cultural relations between Cuba and Mexico and how they inform local ideas about race, Blackness, and nationality as evidence in the historical and contemporary practice of danzón in both countries. I argue that the continuous diaspora of danzón and other related music genres and their appropriation in Mexico allowed for complex transnational constructions of senses of belonging where contradictory discourses about race, class, gender, and nationality intersect.

Alejandro L. Madrid is an ethnomusicologist and cultural theorist whose research focuses on the intersection of modernity, tradition, globalization, and ethnic identity in popular and art music, dance, and expressive culture from Mexico, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the circum-Caribbean.  He is the author of Nor-tec Rifa! Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World (Oxford University Press, 2008), Los sonidos de la nación moderna. Música, cultura e ideas en el México post-revolucionario, 1920-1930 (Casa de las Américas, 2008), and Sounds of the Modern Nation. Music, Culture and Ideas in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Temple University Press, 2009), and co-editor of Postnational Musical Identities. Cultural Production, Distribution and Consumption in a Globalized Scenario (Lexington Books, 2007), as well as more than a dozen articles in national and international refereed journals. Dr. Madrid is the recipient of the Casa de las Américas Award for Latin American Musicology (2005), the Samuel Claro Valdés Award for Latin American Musicology (2002), the American Musicological Society Publication Subvention Award (2009), and the A-R Editions Award of the American Musicological Society, Midwest Chapter (2001-2002).  Dr. Madrid serves on the advisory boards of the Latin American Music Review, Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, and Trans. Revista Transcultural de Música, and is Senior Editor of Latin American and Latina/o entries for the new edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music.  He is associate professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Ethnoise! The Ethnomusicology Workshop
Thursday, October 15, 2009
4:30 pm, Goodspeed, room 205