Experimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America

Experimentalisms in Practice explores the multiple sites in which experimentalism emerges and becomes meaningful beyond Eurocentric interpretative frameworks. Challenging the notion of experimentalism as defined in conventional narratives, contributors take a broad approach to a wide variety of Latin@ and Latin American music traditions conceived or perceived as experimental. The conversation takes as starting point the 1960s, a decade that marks a crucial political and epistemological moment for Latin America; militant and committed aesthetic practices resonated with this moment, resulting in a multiplicity of artistic and musical experimental expressions. Experimentalisms in Practice responds to recent efforts to reframe and reconceptualize the study of experimental music in terms of epistemological perspective and geographic scope, while also engaging traditional scholarship. This book contributes to the current conversations about music experimentalism while providing new points of entry to further reevaluate the field.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures List of Music Examples List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements About the Companion Website Chapter 1. The Practices of Experimentalism in Latin@ and Latin American Music: An Introduction by Ana R. Alonso-Minutti, Eduardo Herrera, and Alejandro L. Madrid I. Centers and Institutions Chapter 2. "That's Not Something to Show in a Concert": Experimentation and Legitimacy at the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales by Eduardo Herrera Chapter 3. Experimental Alternatives: Institutionalism, Avant-gardism, and Popular Music at the Margins of the Cuban Revolution by Susan Thomas II. Beyond the Limits of Hybridity Chapter 4. "I Go against the Grain of Your Memory": Iconoclastic Experiments with Traditional Sounds in Northeast Brazil by Dan Sharp Chapter 5. Peruvian Cumbia at the Theoretical Limits of Techno-Utopian Hybridity by Joshua Tucker Chapter 6. Experimentalism as Estrangement: Café Tacvba's Revés/Yosoy by Alejandro L. Madrid and Pepe Rojo III. Anti-Colonial Practices Chapter 7. "Gatas y Vatas": Female Empowerment and Community-Oriented Experimentalism by Ana R. Alonso-Minutti Chapter 8. Noise, Sonic Experimentation, and Interior Coloniality in Costa Rica by Susan Campos Fonseca IV. Performance, Movements, and Scenes Chapter 9. "We Began from Silence": Toward a Genealogy of Free Improvisation in Mexico City: Atrás del Cosmos at Teatro El Galeón, 1975-1977 by Tamar Barzel Chapter 10. Experimentation and Improvisation in Bogotá at the End of the Twentieth Century by Rodolfo Acosta Chapter 11. Experimental Music and the Avant-garde in Post-1959 Cuba: Revolutionary Music for the Revolution by Marysol Quevedo Chapter 12. Performance, Resistance, and the Sounding of Public Space: Movimiento Música Más in Buenos Aires, 1969-73 by Andrew Raffo Dewar Chapter 13. Afterword: Locating Hemispheric Experimentalisms by Benjamin Piekut Bibliography