Revista Venezolana De Folklore

"Oscar Chamosa's book is an ambitious foray into largely uncharted intellectual waters. Chamosa writes well, knows how to drive a narrative forward, knows how to integrate his theory into the story he is telling, and never loses sight of the forest for the trees."---Daniel James, author of Dona Maria's Story: Life History, Memory, and Political Identity Oscar Chamosa brings forth the compelling story of an important but often overlooked component of the formation of popular nationalism in Latin America: the development of the Argentine folklore movement in the first part of the twentieth century. This movement involved academicians studying the culture of small farmers and herders of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent in the distant valleys of the Argentine Northwest, as well as the artists and musicians who took on the role of reinterpreting these local cultures for urban audiences of mostly European descent. Oscar Chamosa combines intellectual history with ethnographic and sociocultural analysis to reconstruct the process by which mestizo culture---in Argentina called criollo culture---came to occupy the center of national folklore in a country that portrayed itself as the only white nation in South America. The author finds that the conservative plantation owners---the "sugar elites"---who exploited the criollo peasants sponsored the folklore movement that romanticized them as the archetypes of nationhood. Ironically, many of the composers and folk singers who participated in the landowner-sponsored movement adhered to revolutionary and reformist ideologies and denounced the exploitation to which those criollo peasants were subjected. Chamosa argues that, rather than debilitating the movement, these opposing and contradictory ideologies permitted its triumph and explain, in part, the enduring romanticizing of rural life and criollo culture, which are essential components of Argentine nationalism. The book not only reveals the political motivations of culture in Argentina and Latin America but also has implications for understanding the articulation of local culture with national politics and entertainment markets that characterizes cultural processes worldwide today.

The foremost authorities in the field of music from around the world have contributed twenty original essays for this volume, edited by Elizabeth May. Only European musics have been omitted, except insofar as they affect other musics discussed here. North American music is represented by the musics of the Native Americans and the Alaskan Eskimos. The essays are profusely illustrated with maps, drawings, diagrams, photographs, and music examples. There are extensive glossaries, bibliographies, and annotated film lists. The book is directed to readers seriously interested in acquainting themselves with musics beyond the confines of Western musicology. Contributors include Bruno Nettl, Kuo-huang Han and Lindy Li Mark, Kang-sook Lee, William P. Malm, David Morton, Bonnie C. Wade, Margaret J. Kartomi, Adrienne L. Kaeppler, Trevor A. Jones, Atta Annan Mensah, John Blacking, Alfred Kwashie Ladzekpo and Kobla Ladzekpo, Cynthia Tse Kimberlin, Jozef M. Pacholczyk, Ella Zonis, Abraham A. Schwadron, David P. McAllester, Lorraine D. Koranda, and Dale A. Olsen. Please note: this book was originally published with records. The edition available now does not include the records. We are hoping to make the original recordings available in some other way.

Javier F. León and Helena Simonett curate a collection of essential writings from the last twenty-five years of Latin American music studies. Chosen as representative, outstanding, and influential in the field, each article appears in English translation. A detailed new introduction by León and Simonett both surveys and contextualizes the history of Latin American ethnomusicology, opening the door for readers energized by the musical forms brought and nurtured by immigrants from throughout Latin America. Contributors: Marina Alonso Bolaños, José Jorge de Carvalho, Maria Ignêz Cruz Mello, Gonzalo Camacho Díaz, Claudio F. Díaz, Rodrigo Cantos Savelli Gomes, Juan Pablo González, Javier F. León, Rubén López Cano, Angela Lühning, Jorge Martínez Ulloa, Julio Mendívil, Carlos Miñana Blasco, Raúl R. Romero, Iñigo Sánchez Fuarros, Carlos Sandroni, Carolina Santamaría Delgado, Helena Simonett, Rodrigo Torres Alvarado, and Alejandro Vera.

Ecology is an attempt to understand the reciprocal relationship between living and nonliving elements of the earth. For years, however, the discipline either neglected the human element entirely or presumed its effect on natural ecosystems to be invariably negative. Among social scientists, notably in geography and anthropology, efforts to address this human-environment interaction have been criticized as deterministic and mechanistic. Bridging the divide between social and natural sciences, the contributors to this book use a more holistic perspective to explore the relationships between humans and their environment. Exploring short- and long-term local and global change, eighteen specialists in anthropology, geography, history, ethnobiology, and related disciplines present new perspectives on historical ecology. A broad theoretical background on the material factors central to the field is presented, such as anthropogenic fire, soils, and pathogens. A series of regional applications of this knowledge base investigates landscape transformations over time in South America, the Mississippi Delta, the Great Basin, Thailand, and India. The contributors focus on traditional societies where lands are most at risk from the incursions of complex, state-level societies. This book lays the groundwork for a more meaningful understanding of humankind's interaction with its biosphere. Scholars and environmental policymakers alike will appreciate this new critical vocabulary for grasping biocultural phenomena.