From Tejano To Tango

Author of two books on Issac Albeniz, including Issac Albeniz: A Guide to Research (1998), Walter Aaron Clark has compiled thirteen essays that discuss the various aspects of Latin American music. The essays cover the social and political impact the music generated as well as the rhythmic development of the various genres. In this essential book, significant personalities, including Carmen Miranda, are discussed. The scope of the contributors is vast as divergent musical styles such as the Macarena dace craze, Bob Marley's reggae music and the seductive strains of the tango are analyzed.

From its earliest manifestations on the street corners of nineteenth-century Buenos Aires to its ascendancy as a global cultural form, tango has continually exceeded the confines of the dance floor or the music hall. In Tango Lessons, scholars from Latin America and the United States explore tango's enduring vitality. The interdisciplinary group of contributors—including specialists in dance, music, anthropology, linguistics, literature, film, and fine art—take up a broad range of topics. Among these are the productive tensions between tradition and experimentation in tango nuevo, representations of tango in film and contemporary art, and the role of tango in the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges. Taken together, the essays show that tango provides a kaleidoscopic perspective on Argentina's social, cultural, and intellectual history from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Contributors. Esteban Buch, Oscar Conde, Antonio Gómez, Morgan James Luker, Carolyn Merritt, Marilyn G. Miller, Fernando Rosenberg, Alejandro Susti

An innovative resource which shatters tango stereotypes to account for the genre's impact on arts, culture, and society around the world. Twenty chapters by North and South American, European, and Asian contributors, some publishing in English for the first time, collectively cover tango's history, culture, and performance practice.

This definitive two-volume encyclopedia of Latin music spans 5 centuries and 25 countries, showcasing musicians from Celia Cruz to Plácido Domingo and describing dozens of rhythms and essential themes. Eight years in the making, Latin Music: Musicians, Genres, and Themes is the definitive work on the topic, providing an unparalleled resource for students and scholars of music, Latino culture, Hispanic civilization, popular culture, and Latin American countries. Comprising work from nearly 50 contributors from Spain, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, this two-volume work showcases how Latin music—regardless of its specific form or cultural origins—is the passionate expression of a people in constant dialogue with the world. The entries in this expansive encyclopedia range over topics as diverse as musical instruments, record cover art, festivals and celebrations, the institution of slavery, feminism, and patriotism. The music, traditions, and history of more than two dozen countries—such as Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Spain, and Venezuela—are detailed, allowing readers to see past common stereotypes and appreciate the many different forms of this broadly defined art form.

Tracing Tangueros offers an inside view of Argentine tango music in the context of the growth and development of the art form's instrumental and stylistic innovations. Rather than perpetuating the glamorous worldwide conceptions that often only reflect the tango that left Argentina nearly 100 years ago, authors Kacey Link and Kristin Wendland trace tango's historical and stylistic musical trajectory in Argentina, beginning with the guardia nueva's crystallization of the genre in the 1920s, moving through tango's Golden Age (1932-1955), and culminating with the "Music of Buenos Aires" today. Through the transmission, discussion, examination, and analysis of primary sources currently unavailable outside of Argentina, including scores, manuals of style, archival audio/video recordings, and live video footage of performances and demonstrations, Link and Wendland frame and define Argentine tango music as a distinct expression possessing its own musical legacy and characteristic musical elements. Beginning by establishing a broad framework of the tango art form, the book proceeds to move through twelve in-depth profiles of representative tangueros (tango musicians) within the genre's historical and stylistic trajectory. Through this focused examination of tangueros and their music, Link and Wendland show how the dynamic Argentine tango grows from one tanguero linked to another, and how the composition techniques and performance practices of each generation are informed by that of the past.

This collection considers the accordion and its myriad forms, from the concertina, button accordion, and piano accordion familiar in European and North American music to the exotic-sounding South American bandoneon and the sanfoninha. Capturing the instrument's spread and adaptation to many different cultures in North and South America, contributors illuminate how the accordion factored into power struggles over aesthetic values between elites and working-class people who often were members of immigrant and/or marginalized ethnic communities. Specific histories and cultural contexts discussed include the accordion in Brazil, Argentine tango, accordion traditions in Colombia, cross-border accordion culture between Mexico and Texas, Cajun and Creole identity, working-class culture near Lake Superior, the virtuoso Italian-American and Klezmer accordions, Native American dance music, and American avant-garde.

This book develops an original theory of performative beauty. Philosophical aesthetics has largely neglected one’s own actions as a potential experience of the beautiful. Throughout the book, the author uses his own experiences of Argentine tango as a case study; one important incentive for social dancing is to have pleasurable and beautiful experiences. This book begins by investigating the methodological causes for why beauty in modernity has been seen to result only from contemplating external objects. It then builds a theory of performative beauty that incorporates findings from new phenomenology, neuroaesthetics, enactivism, and somaesthetics and that reassesses existing inquiries of beauty. The result is an account that identifies kinaesthetic awareness as the point of emergence of both theory and practice, of creation (poiesis) and perception (aisthesis), and of moving (agency) and being moved (reception). Performative beauty is the pleasure of being moved by the dance where the dancer feels both as a creative improvisor and as an integrated part of the activity itself. A Somaesthetics of Performative Beauty—Tangoing Desire and Nostalgia will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, dance studies, performance studies, and related fields of artistic research. Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

A fascinating exploration of the relationship between American culture and music as defined by musicians, scholars, and critics from around the world. Music has been the cornerstone of popular culture in the United States since the beginning of our nation's history. From early immigrants sharing the sounds of their native lands to contemporary artists performing benefit concerts for social causes, our country's musical expressions reflect where we, as a people, have been, as well as our hope for the future. This four-volume encyclopedia examines music's influence on contemporary American life, tracing historical connections over time. Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between this art form and our society. Entries include singers, composers, lyricists, songs, musical genres, places, instruments, technologies, music in films, music in political realms, and music shows on television.