Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures

by Frances R. Aparicio

Overview

Portrays the complex politics of gender, sex, class, and race in Puerto Rican salsa music.

Winner of the MLA's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for an outstanding book published in English in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and culture (1999)

Winner of IASPM's 1999 Woody Guthrie Award

For Anglos, the pulsing beats of salsa, merengue, and bolero are a compelling expression of Latino/a culture, but few outsiders comprehend the music's implications in larger social terms. Frances R. Aparicio places this music in context by combining the approaches of musicology and sociology with literary, cultural, Latino, and women's studies. She offers a detailed genealogy of Afro-Caribbean music in Puerto Rico, comparing it to selected Puerto Rican literary texts, then looks both at how Latinos/as in the US have used salsa to reaffirm their cultural identities and how Anglos have eroticized and depoliticized it in their adaptations.

Aparicio's detailed examination of lyrics shows how these songs articulate issues of gender, desire, and conflict, and her interviews with Latinas/os reveal how they listen to salsa and the meanings they find in it. What results is a comprehensive view "that deploys both musical and literary texts as equally significant cultural voices in exploring larger questions about the power of discourse, gender relations, intercultural desire, race, ethnicity, and class."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819563088
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1998
Series:	Music/Culture Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.79(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

FRANCES R. APARICIO is director of the Latina and Latino Studies Program and professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Her books include Listening to Salsa (Wesleyan, 1998) and critical anthologies such as Tropicalizations (1997), Musical Migrations (2003), and Hibridismos culturales (2006). Her English translation of Cesar Miguel Rondon's The Book of Salsa was published in 2008. She is the founding member of the Latinos in Chicago and the Midwest Book Series with the University of Illinois Press. She is also co-editor with Suzanne Bost of the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature and is currently writing a book on Latinidad and Intralatino subjects in Chicago.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
PART I THE DANZA AND THE PLENA: RACIALIZING WOMEN, FEMINIZING MUSIC
A Literary Prelude
A White Lady Called the Danza
A Sensual Mulatta Called the Plena
Desiring the Racial Other: Rosario Ferré's Feminist
Reconstructions of Danza and Plena
PART II THE PLURAL SITES OF SALSA
A Postmodern Preface
Situating Salsa
Ideological Negotiations: Between Hegemony and Resistance
Cultural (Mis)Translations and Crossover Nightmares
PART III DISSONANT MELODIES: SINGING GENDER, DESIRE, AND CONFLICT
Theoretical Pretexts: Listening (as) Woman
Woman as Absence: Hetero(homo)sexual Desire in the Bolero
Patriarchal Synecdoches: Of Women's Butts and Feminist Rebuttals
Singing the Gender Wars
Singing Female Subjectivities
PART IV ASÍ SOMOS, ASÍ SON: REWRITING SALSA
Listening to the Listeners: An Introduction
Así Son: Construction Woman
Así Somos: Rewriting Patriarchy
Afterword
Notes
Index of Songs and Recordings
General Index

What People are Saying About This

Peter Manuel

"Destined to be a landmark in the study of Latin music, gender studies, and of modern popular culture in general."
— Peter Manuel, City University of New York

From the Publisher

"Destined to be a landmark in the study of Latin music, gender studies, and of modern popular culture in general."—Peter Manuel, City University of New York

""Destined to be a landmark in the study of Latin music, gender studies, and of modern popular culture in general.""—Peter Manuel, City University of New York

Editorial Reviews

"Deftly explores the cultural politics of Puerto Rican music, revealing how salsa illuminates the complexities of class, race, and gender identity among Puerto Ricans at home and in the continental United States."—ISAM Newsletter

"Destined to be a landmark in the study of Latin music, gender studies, and of modern popular culture in general."—Peter Manuel, City University of New York

""Destined to be a landmark in the study of Latin music, gender studies, and of modern popular culture in general.""—Peter Manuel, City University of New York

From the Publisher

Two new books on popular music present contrasting approaches to the diverse world of Hispanic music. Aparicio's (Spanish and American culture, Univ. of Michigan) work, aimed at an academic audience, deals with salsa and Puerto Rican culture in a feminist context. McGowan, targeting a general audience, presents a comprehensive history of popular music in Brazil. Aparicio analyzes salsa, boleros, and other popular musical forms in terms of cultural issues (race, gender, class), drawing on her own experiences, and those of typical listeners, to explore these issues. Readers may find their views on salsa altered by reading this book. A recommended choice for academic Hispanic studies collections and for music collections with a strong Hispanic emphasis. McGowan and Pessanha here update their original edition (Billboard Bks., 1991), bringing their extensive experience writing on Brazilian popular music for Billboard and other magazines to this extensive survey covering local jazz and rock as well as better-known forms. The accessible writing style and lavish use of illustrations help achieve the authors' goal of inspiring interest in this music. Updates cover recent music and musicians, provide more social analysis, and expand the discography to 1000 titles, adding much to the original edition. The best work on the topic, this is recommended for both academic and public library music collections.James E. Ross, WLN, Seattle

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