Popular Music and Social Change in Latin America

This course is designed to illuminate the many ways that popular musicians shape, and are shaped by, the broader social milieu within which they act. Focusing largely on twentieth-century case studies from Cuba, Brazil, and Peru, it illustrates how social dynamics particular to Latin America have constrained popular musicians' efforts to communicate, circumscribed their artistic and political goals, and enabled them to intervene in sociocultural debates in specific ways. Issues to be considered include the sanctioning of musical styles as national symbols; the harnessing of music to project promoting racial diversity; its use as a medium of political protest as well as a vehicle for populist politics; the shifts in style wrought by industrialization, migration, and urbanization; the importance of media dissemination and commercialization, both in driving musical change and in determining its scope of influence; and the ambivalent role of the processes variously dubbed "westernization," "Americanization," and "globalization."