1st Edition
Made in Puerto Rico Studies in Popular Music
Made in Puerto Rico: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, culture, and musicology of 20th and 21st century popular music in Puerto Rico. The essays in this volume, written by both local experts and leading scholars, contextualize under-researched areas of Puerto Rican popular music-making in relation to ideologies, aesthetics, and symbolism, and propose new ways of thinking about Puerto Rican musical cultures.
A groundbreaking introduction to Puerto Rican musical culture, the volume covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of popular music in Puerto Rico, while also going beyond conventional narratives. Rather than simply providing histories of key genres, these insightful essays focus on the ways in which Puerto Rican musicians reimagine their distinctive musical language as it transmutes from local practices into global expressions.
Offering both a survey of Puerto Rican popular music and pathways into deeper critical inquiry, Made in Puerto Rico is an essential resource for scholars and students of music and of Puerto Rican, Caribbean, Latin American, and African Diaspora Studies.
Series foreword
List of figures
Prologue
Introduction: The embodied soundscape of popular music studies in Puerto Rico
PART I: The invention of the popular in Puerto Rican music
Section introduction: The invention of the popular in Puerto Rican music
Noel Allende-Goitía
1 What is popular in Puerto Rican music? Music and musiking as construction and affirmation of the self
Noel Allende-Goitía
2 Identity debates and symbolic capital: Cultural policies around traditional Puerto Rican music
Mareia Quintero Rivera
3 Revisiting Puerto Rican Nueva Canción and its discourse of resistance
Mario Cancel-Bigay
4 Cuatro music keeps finding new life: Artists, trends, and contemporary practice
Noraliz Ruiz-Caraballo
5 Crisis notwithstanding: Metal in Puerto Rico
Ramón Rosario-Luna
PART II: Music, memory, and history
Section introduction
Hugo R. Viera-Vargas and Errol L. Montes-Pizarro
6 Puerto Rican Music in the Afro-diasporic world
Errol L. Montes-Pizarro
7 Plenazos callejeros, embodied memory, and contemporary plena in Puerto Rico, 2005–2012
Hugo R. Viera-Vargas
8 (Re)listening to Gottschalk, Morel Campos, and the jíbaros: Danza’s connection with early jazz
Jaime O. Bofill-Calero
9 Record companies in New York City’s East Harlem during the first half of the 20th century
Ewin Martínez Torre
10 Bomba: A long invisible practice of Black placemaking in Puerto Rico
Melanie Maldonado
PART III: Globalization of the Puerto Rican sound
Section introduction
Jaime O. Bofill-Calero and Noraliz Ruiz-Caraballo
11 De Puerto Rico Pa’l Mundo: A brief history of Puerto Rico’s reggaeton music scene
Omar Ruiz Vega
12 Between romantic idealism and the tough streets: A look at the development of contemporary salsa in Puerto Rico
Andrés Espinoza Agurto
13 Made in Puerto Rico, made in Chicago: Diaspora as a method for thinking about Puerto Rican music-dance
Juan Eduardo Wolf
(written in collaboration with Orlando Rivera, Evaristo “Tito” Rodríguez, and Omar Torres-Kortright)
14 Queering Menudo: Forever Young
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
15 Coda: Interview with composer Angélica Negrón
Members of Colectivo de Estudios Musicales de Puerto Rico
Selected bibliography on Puerto Rican popular music
List of contributors
Index
Biography
Hugo R. Viera-Vargas is Professor at the Universidad Albizu, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Associate Researcher at Colectivo de Estudios Musicales de Puerto Rico.
Noraliz Ruiz-Caraballo is Associate Researcher at Colectivo de Estudios Musicales de Puerto Rico, and Musical Director for Orquesta Jíbara Dr. Francisco López Cruz, Puerto Rico.
Errol L. Montes-Pizarro is Professor of Mathematics at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Cayey, and Associate Researcher at Colectivo de Estudios Musicales de Puerto Rico.
Jaime O. Bofill-Calero is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico, and Associate Researcher at Colectivo de Estudios Musicales de Puerto Rico.
Noel Allende-Goitía is Associate Researcher at Colectivo de Estudios Musicales de Puerto Rico, and Lecturer of Comparative History of Music and Research Methodology at Armoniarte Escuela Superior de Educación Artística, México.
