Music And Identity In Venezuela

Venezuelan music has remained largely unnoticed in the academic English literature. Boasting a tremendous wealth of traditions, it displays influences from the Spanish, indigenous, and enslaved African communities that populated the territory from the “conquest” on and offers a tremendous diversity of genres and styles that vary by region, occasion, time, and sometimes ethnic influences. This book presents critical discussions of some of these traditions in connection with the issue of identity. The discussions capture country and city life, illustrate foundational myths, bring secular traditions closer to Christianity, explore surviving cultural strategies, et cetera. They also analyze the interface between Venezuelan identity and European classical music. The book displays diversity of perspectives in terms of (a) subject matter, as it includes traditional and concert musics; (b) disciplines on which the inquiries are grounded, as it includes essays by scholars and artists from musicology, performance, composition, history, cultural history, and education; and (c) epistemological approaches, as it includes critical, historical, and ethnographic research.

The music of the peoples of South and Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean is treated with unprecedented breadth in this multi-volume work. Taking a sociocultural and human-centered approach, Music in Latin America and the Caribbean gathers the best scholarship from writers all over the world to cover in depth the musical legacies of indigenous peoples, creoles, African descendants, Iberian colonizers, and other immigrant groups that met and mixed in the New World. From these texts, music emerges as the powerful tool that negotiates identities, enacts resistance, performs beliefs, and challenges received aesthetics. More than two decades in the making, this work privileges the perspectives of cultural insiders and emphasizes the role that music plays in human life. Volume 2, Performing the Caribbean Experience, focuses on the reconfiguration of this complex soundscape after the Conquest and on the strategies by which groups from distant worlds reconstructed traditions, assigning new meanings to fragments of memory and welding a fascinating variety of unique Creole cultures. Shaped by an enduring African presence and the experience of slavery and colonization by the Spanish, French, British, and Dutch, peoples of the Caribbean islands and circum-Caribbean territories resorted to the power of music to mirror their history, assert identity, gain freedom, and transcend their experience in lasting musical messages. Essays on pan-Caribbean themes, surveys of traditions, and riveting personal accounts capture the essence of pluralistic and spiritualized brands of creativity through the voices of an unprecedented number of Caribbean authors, including a representative contingent of distinguished Cuban scholars whose work is being published in English translation for the first time in this book. Two CDs with 52 recorded examples illustrate the contributions to this volume.

The Encyclopedia's coverage ranges from the Bahamas to Tierra del Fuego and from Baja California to Uruguay as it describes the extraordinarily rich and varied music of people from all the countries south of the Rio Grande river.

Since its origins in 1967, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival has gained worldwide recognition as a model for the research and public presentation of living cultural heritage and the advocacy of cultural democracy. Festival curators play a major role in interpreting the Festival's principles and shaping its practices. Curatorial Conversations brings together for the first time in one volume the combined expertise of the Festival's curatorial staff--past and present--in examining the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage's representation practices and their critical implications for issues of intangible cultural heritage policy, competing globalisms, cultural tourism, sustainable development and environment, and cultural pluralism and identity. In the volume, edited by the staff curators Olivia Cadaval, Sojin Kim, and Diana Baird N'Diaye, contributors examine how Festival principles, philosophical underpinnings, and claims have evolved, and address broader debates on cultural representation from their own experience. This book represents the first concerted project by Smithsonian staff curators to examine systematically the Festival's institutional values as they have evolved over time and to address broader debates on cultural representation based on their own experiences at the Festival.

Juan Bautista Plaza (1898-1965) was one of the most important musicians in the history of Venezuela. In addition to composing in a variety of genres and styles, he was the leading figure in Venezuelan music education and musicology at a time when his compatriots were seeking to solidify their cultural identity. Plaza's compositions in the emerging nationalist style and his efforts to improve musical institutions in his home country parallel the work of contemporaneous Latin American musicians including Carlos Chávez of Mexico, Amadeo Roldán of Cuba, and Camargo Guarnieri of Brazil. Plaza's life and music are little studied, and Labonville's ambitious book is the first in English to be based on his extensive writings and compositions. As these and other documents show, Plaza filled numerous roles in Venezuela's musical infrastructure including researcher, performer, teacher, composer, promoter, critic, chapel master, and director of national culture. Labonville examines Plaza's many roles in an attempt to assess how the nationalist spirit affected art music culture in Venezuela, and what changes it brought to Venezuela's musical landscape.

The Garland Handbook of Latin American Music is comprised of essays from The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: Volume 2, South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Carribean, (1998). Revised and updated, the essays offer detailed, regional studies of the different musical cultures of Latin America and examine the ways in which music helps to define the identity of this particular area. Part One provides an in-depth introduction to the area of Latin America and describes the history, geography, demography, and cultural settings of the regions that comprise Latin America. It also explores the many ways to research Latin American music, including archaeology, iconography, mythology, history, ethnography, and practice. Part Two focuses on issues and processes, such as history, politics, geography, and immigration, which are responsible for the similarities and the differences of each region’s uniqueness and individuality. Part Three focuses on the different regions, countries, and cultures of Caribbean Latin America, Middle Latin America, and South America with selected regional case studies. The second edition has been expanded to cover Haiti, Panama, several more Amerindian musical cultures, and Afro-Peru. Questions for Critical Thinking at the end of each major section guide focus attention on what musical and cultural issues arise when one studies the music of Latin America -- issues that might not occur in the study of other musics of the world. Two audio compact discs offer musical examples of some of the music of Latin America.

Do you know where the largest lake in South America is? Venezuela. Readers will be captivated by this vibrant book about the cultural traditions, festivals, music, art, dance, and cuisine of Venezuela. The culture of Venezuela is as multi-faceted as the people living there. The thorough text analyzes how its diverse landscape, with the tallest waterfall in the world, resources like oil, which Venezuela has the largest reserve in the world, and history have shaped the cultural identity of its people. The high-interest subject matter and accessible language help clarify advanced social studies concepts. Stunning photographs enhance each chapter.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Music and Culture presents key concepts in the study of music in its cultural context and provides an introduction to the discipline of ethnomusicology, its methods, concerns, and its contributions to knowledge and understanding of the world's musical cultures, styles, and practices. The diverse voices of contributors to this encyclopedia confirm ethnomusicology's fundamental ethos of inclusion and respect for diversity. Combined, the multiplicity of topics and approaches are presented in an easy-to-search A-Z format and offer a fresh perspective on the field and the subject of music in culture. Key features include: Approximately 730 signed articles, authored by prominent scholars, are arranged A-to-Z and published in a choice of print or electronic editions Pedagogical elements include Further Readings and Cross References to conclude each article and a Reader’s Guide in the front matter organizing entries by broad topical or thematic areas Back matter includes an annotated Resource Guide to further research (journals, books, and associations), an appendix listing notable archives, libraries, and museums, and a detailed Index The Index, Reader’s Guide themes, and Cross References combine for thorough search-and-browse capabilities in the electronic edition