Ballads to Hip-Hop: Race, Music, and American Latinos

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course is designed to introduce students to important historical and stylistic musical developments as part of the cultural experience of ethnic Mexicans in the United States. To this end, we examine both music-making and performance as aesthetic dialects of the social texture of "everyday life". We will cover various styles and genres, including corridos (the Mexican ballad form), Chicano rock 'n- roll and hip-hop, jazz, and contemporary folk-derived styles (i.e. Banda, Pasito Duranguense, Norteño) with attention to their historical, political, and musical significance. In order we achieve our aims, the course is organized along two axes: one chronological, the other conceptual - neither complete. The chronological portion will allow us to survey the various genres, styles, and ensembles of ethnic Mexican musical production. We dovetail this effort with a focus on important themes and concepts, identity, race, gender, migration, hybridity, that pertain to the present and historical social conditions of this community. Our approach, such that we are dealing with music-cultures, is at once anthropological and ethnomusicological, yet we are guided more broadly, by the paradigm of cultural studies, as we interrogate the expressive terrain where history, language, performance, and social bodies intersect.