The Transnational Formation of Latin American Musicology

Abstract

This chapter tells the history of the German-born Uruguayan musicologist Francisco Curt Lange and the Latin-American Music Bulletin he created, a musicological project intended as a forum for musicians and music-related figures from all over Latin America, and the United States, interested in creating a regional field of musicological studies and musical promotion. It examines policies about disc collection, score printing and distribution, musical ethnographies, folklore, musical analysis, conferences, concerts, and regional institutions promoted by the Bulletin, and traces relevant aspects of Lange’s professional journey between Germany, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and the United States, among other places. The chapter also highlights the changing place of the United States, both as a subject of musicological study and as a site of music-related hemispheric initiatives, in the history of this Latin Americanist project.

Transatlantic LatinX studies, Iberian studies, and the Global South

“…Spain's "hispanoamericanos" become a LatinX electorate through the peninsula's sonic "Hispandering." Speaking Castilian Spanish to Spanish-speaking Latin Americans is not the issue in these contests for power, as much as depending on a medley of tropicalizing sounds-"Latin American music" (Palomino, 2020)-to reproduce an exalted sense of a Spanish nation and Spanish citizen-subjects vis-à-vis non-Spanish citizen-migrants tinged with "New Worldness." The unexpected turn-the sudden sounds-of Spanish au courant politics deliver us to LatinXness.…”

Violeta Parra a través de sus viajes por Europa (1955 y 1962)

“…Los intercambios y transferencias artísticas llevadas adelante por Violeta Parra durante sus dos estancias de corta duración en Europa -la primera entre 1955 y 1956, la segunda entre 1962 y 1965-resultaron decisivas para la orientación que ella imprimió a su concepción estética, su práctica musical del folclor y su activismo político. Ambos viajes se realizaron en un momento significativo de redefinición de la música folclórica latinoamericana en diferentes partes del mundo (Palomino 2020), ambiente que favoreció a Violeta Parra, y al que se incorporó en Europa.…”