Overview

Dedicated to the late Gerard Béhague (1937-2005), whose pioneering work in Latin American music, popular culture, and performance studies contributed extensively to ethnomusicological discourse in the 1970s-1990s, this anthology offers comparative perspectives on the evolving legacy of performance ethnography in socio-musical analysis. President of the Society for Ethnomusicology from 1979-81, editor of its journal, Ethnomusicology, from 1974-78, and founder and editor of the trilingual Latin American Music Review from 1980 until his death, Béhague also established the ethnomusicology graduate program at the University of Texas at Austin in 1974, thereby influencing the training and thinking of dozens of the field’s practitioners. Among these are the volume’s eight authors, whose contributions reflect the heritage but also contemporary trajectories of Béhague’s scholarly concerns. Prefaced by an essay outlining key developments in the ethnography of performance paradigm, the volume’s seven case studies portray snapshots of musical life in representative communities of the Americas, including the southwestern and Pacific United States, Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, and Ecuador. Situated in milieus ranging from the indigenous festivals of the Andean highlands, to the competitive public gatherings of poet-singers in post-Pinochet Chile, to the Puerto Rican dance halls of the Hawaiian islands, these studies pose anthropological inquiries into the ontology of performance practice, the social power of poetic performativity, and the experience and embodiment of sound in place.

Full Product Details

Author:   Donna A. Buchanan ,  Professor Keith Howard
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Edition:   Revised ed.
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.30cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.544kg
ISBN:  

9781472415837

ISBN 10:   1472415833
Pages:   210
Publication Date:   07 November 2014
Audience:   College/higher education ,  General/trade ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction, Donna A. Buchanan; Part I Genres, Histories, and Discourses of Power Performed; Chapter 1 The Teatro Bufo: Cuban Blackface Theater of the Nineteenth Century, Robin Moore; Chapter 2 La Música Nacional: A Metaphor for Contrasting Views of Ecuadorian National Identity, Ketty Wong; Chapter 3 Conserve, Adapt, and Reconverge: Rationalizing a Template in Hawai’i Puerto Rican Musical Performance, Ted Solís; Part II Performing Practice: Style and the Politics of Subjectivity; Chapter 4 Transformation in Communion: Toward an Aesthetic of Improvisation, Tim Brace; Chapter 5 Feminine Flowers among the Thistles: Gendered Boundaries of Performance in Chilean Canto a lo poeta, Emily Pinkerton; Part III Situated Events and Performance Politics: Fiesta, Festival, Stage, and Street; Chapter 6, Michelle Wibbelsman; Chapter 7 Performing Indigeneity: Poetics and Politics of Music Festivals in Highland Bolivia, Thomas Solomon;

Reviews

'The ethnography of musical performance is so fundamental to contemporary ethnomusicology that it is like the air we breathe. Buchanan's introduction offers a new window to the genesis of this approach and its broad reach, and then points us to the next steps forward. The articles that follow explore the politics of performance and the power of performativity in relation to history, subjectivity, and specific events through a series of vibrant case studies from across the Americas. Of special interest to Latin Americanists, Americanists, and ethnomusicologists in general, this book both explains and exemplifies why the ethnography of performance has become foundational to the ethnomusicological project.'Thomas Turino, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

'The ethnography of musical performance is so fundamental to contemporary ethnomusicology that it is like the air we breathe. Buchanan's introduction offers a new window to the genesis of this approach and its broad reach, and then points us to the next steps forward. The articles that follow explore the politics of performance and the power of performativity in relation to history, subjectivity, and specific events through a series of vibrant case studies from across the Americas. Of special interest to Latin Americanists, Americanists, and ethnomusicologists in general, this book both explains and exemplifies why the ethnography of performance has become foundational to the ethnomusicological project.' Thomas Turino, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Author Information

Donna A. Buchanan is associate professor of music and anthropology and director of the music ensemble 'Balkanalia' at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she teaches courses in ethnomusicology and the musical cultures of the Balkans, Russia, and Eurasia. Her scholarly interests include the implication of music in cosmology, sound ecologies, and relations of social power and identity.

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