This book begins from the premise that we are living in an age in which the social is in a continuous process of reinvention. The book is also grounded in the assumption that music is a perennial key player in the processes of reinventing the social since music holds the power to stimulate and transport visions of change through its appeal to all human senses. Chapters address the intersection of music and identity politics, the role of music in social movements, music¿s presence in commodity and tourist culture, music in the context of museum culture, music¿s presence in literature and the visual arts, and music documentaries as alternative sonic historiography. The intention behind this book is to open the reader¿s eyes to music¿s omnipresence in our social life beyond the muzak sound in shopping malls, the background music in bars and restaurants, and the spatially marked distance of music from the audience in exclusive concert halls. It further wants to illustrate how music from the Americas keeps reinventing the social within and beyond the American hemisphere.
1 MUSIC AND THE SOCIAL (INTRODUCTION) ................................ 1
1.1 Music in the Americas ........................................................ 4
1.2 The social and social movements ....................................... 5
1.3 Traveling sounds ................................................................. 8
2 MUSIC AND IDENTITY POLITICS ............................................... 15
2.1 Entangling and entangled music-produced identities ......... 15
2.2 Black power and black diasporic identity circuits .............. 18
2.3 Citation practices and fluid identities
between North and South .................................................... 20
2.4 Zooming in: diaspora, ethnic, postethnic,
and postblack dimensions of sonic identities ...................... 22
2.5 Las Krudas (Cuba), Chocquibtown (Columbia),
Janelle Monáe (USA): creating new sonic networks and
expanding twenty-first century sonic identity politics ........ 28
3 SONIC POLITICS FROM ABOVE, BELOW, AND
WITHIN MARKET CIRCUITS .................................................... 39
3.1 Prelude ................................................................................. 39
3.2 Sonic cosmopolitics from above ......................................... 41
3.3 Sonic cosmopolitics from below ......................................... 47
3.4 Sonic cosmopolitics from within market circuits ............... 57
3.5 Conclusion ........................................................................... 62
4 TOURISM, NOSTALGIA, AND THE FABRICATION
OF `AUTHENTICITY¿: `SONIC URBAN¿ IDENTITIES ..................... 71
4.1 Tourism and local and global music circuits ...................... 71
4.2 Reinventing the city, reinventing music ............................. 72
4.3 Ethnicity in the context of global commodity culture ........ 75
4.4 Exploring the intersection of cultural
and economic politics .......................................................... 76
4.5 Contemporary Chicago blues scene: politics of
authenticity and Chicago as `Home of the Blues¿ city ....... 77
4.6 Chicago¿s creation as ¿authentic blues city¿
and the transnational tourist ................................................ 80
4.7 Politics of authenticity: politicization and
commodification of blues music/differences between
African American and mainstream perceptions .................. 82
4.8 New agency in the process of commodification:
black cultural politics in Chicago ........................................ 86
4.9 Reggae tourism in Jamaica ................................................. 87
4.10 Brazil¿s rock at home and samba tourism ........................... 91
5 MUSIC GOES MUSEUM: CULTURAL HERITAGE POLITICS AND
MUSEUMS OF POPULAR MUSIC IN BRAZIL, JAMAICA,
AND THE U.S. DEEP SOUTH ................................................... 99
5.1 The Museo do Samba in Rio de Janeiro ............................. 103
5.2 The Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica ................ 106
5.3 The Peter Tosh Museum in Kingston, Jamaica .................. 108
5.4 The blues museums in the Mississippi Delta ...................... 110
5.5 The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi ......... 115
5.6 The B.B. King Museum in Indianola, Mississippi ............. 121
5.7 Heritage in local and global commodity culture ................. 125
5.8 Coda .................................................................................... 129
6 MUSIC IN LITERATURE AND THE ARTS:
BLACK HISTORIOGRAPHIES ..................................................... 135
6.1 Black modernism and music-inspired historiography ........ 137
6.2 Black modernism: Music in Aaron Douglas¿s
and Langston Hughes¿s rendering
of temporality and history ................................................... 139
6.3 Revisiting music and history in black literary
postmodernism: Ishmael Reed and Ntozake Shange .......... 147
6.4 Contemporary dub poetry and diasporic historiographies:
Afua Cooper and Lillian Allen ............................................ 156
6.5 Lillian Allen¿s body politics:
dub poetry as a social force ................................................. 163
6.6 Music and history in contemporary mural and street art
in Toronto, Canada, and Kingston, Jamaica ....................... 169
7 SONIC AMERICA(S): POLITICS OF RECOGNITION
AND RECENT TRENDS IN MUSIC DOCUMENTARY TO
RETHINK THE RELATION BETWEEN MUSIC AND THE SOCIAL ..... 183
7.1 Buena Vista Social Club (1999) .......................................... 188
7.2 Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002) ....................... 191
7.3 20 Feet from Stardom (2014) .............................................. 194
7.4 Searching for Sugar Man (2012) ........................................ 197
7.5 Flor de Muertos (2011) ....................................................... 202
7.6 Conclusion ........................................................................... 204