Music and Social Movements in Latin America

Issue editor: Jonathan Ritter, University of California Riverside

This thematic issue will analyze the role of music in contemporary social movements in Latin America. Long a feature of overt political action throughout the continent, from songs performed by striking workers and students in localized contexts to the international popularity of the nueva canción and the tropicália movements in the 1960s and 70s, musical participation in and contributions to political engagement in Latin America nevertheless remain understudied and undertheorized, particularly in reference to current political mobilizations around environmental activism, indigenous and womens’ rights, and anti-globalization movements. Recent scholarship on the subject, including several broad but necessarily partial overviews, as well as historical case studies focused primarily on Chile and the Southern Cone, only highlight the need for further research on current manifestations of musical activism in the Americas.

Scholarship and journalistic coverage of music and politics in Latin America since the 1960s has been dominated by the “protest song” paradigm, focused on the appealing image of individual artists, popular music groups, and social movement activists peacefully “singing truth to power.” That paradigm is not without merit: the role of topical songs in raising awareness of critical social problems and protesting particular events and atrocities in Latin America is undeniable, from Atahualpa Yupanqui’s elegies for indigenous loss in Argentina in the early twentieth century to Mexican student songs protesting the disappearance of normalistas in Ayotzinapa today. Nonetheless, the almost singular focus on protest or militant songs and their textual analysis has obscured the many other ways that participation in musical activities—performing, listening, dancing, disseminating, consuming, composing, reinterpreting, promoting, and more, what musicologist Christopher Small has collectively called “musicking”—may also contribute to or constitute political action, particularly in the era of social media and digital streaming. As the political scientist Mark Mattern has argued, the “acting in concert” that frequently characterizes musical activities is inherently political, with powerful consequences for community engagement and social movement mobilization when directed toward those ends. Recent examples, from flash mobs convened by the Chilean student movement in 2010-11 that garnered international media attention, or the recurrent turn to traditional forms of music and dance as part of indigenous political protest throughout the Americas, point to the need for new models for understanding musical protest and mobilization that go beyond lyrics and songwriter biographies.

At the same time, the instrumentalization of cultural practices within a neoliberal political and economic framework today demands a careful and critical approach to understanding music as a component of political action. As George Yúdice has argued, the “expediency” of culture and its consequent use as a resource for political and economic ends extends across the political spectrum, with consequences that are often difficult to predict. For example, international press coverage of “El Sistema,” Venezuela’s famed program for musical education founded by Jose Abreu in the 1970s, often emphasizes its potential for fomenting social change and addressing poverty in terms of moral uplift, rooted in its promotion of Western art music, while scholars and critics have contested that narrative by underscoring the ahistorical, Eurocentric foundations and outright fabrications of the “El Sistema myth” as breathlessly promoted by its champions. Similarly, transitional justice and peace-building initiatives in various post-conflict contexts in Latin America have often included musical activities—concerts, song contests, workshops, and more—whose laudable goals do not always translate into positive outcomes given the complicated dynamics of collective memory, trauma, and reconciliation, especially when these challenges are not built into the models for applied research and human rights activism from the outset.

Consequently, this thematic issue seeks to broaden scholarly understanding of diverse musical engagements with political struggle in Latin America through both content-driven case studies as well as theoretical approaches to musicking as a political activity. We invite submissions on all relevant topics addressing such intersections between music, politics, and social movements in Latin America. While priority will be given to articles focused on contemporary musical/social movements, especially those that have received scarce attention in current scholarship, we welcome a broad range of submissions. Subjects of interest include but are not limited to:

• How has the digital era—the rise of social media, video sharing sites, streaming music platforms, and more—changed the ways that music is mobilized by social movements and individuals in pursuit of political change in Latin America?
• How have governments, international NGOs, and grassroots movements promoted musical initiatives as part of transitional justice processes in regions and countries recovering from periods of intense political violence? What are the promises and limitations of such initiatives?
• What are the semiotics of musical sound and particular instruments/genres in political terms in Latin America today? How are such sounds promoted or referenced, particularly by social movements as defined by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, region, and nation?
• How are indigenous and afrodescendiente groups mobilizing and/or renewing their own musical and cultural traditions in pursuit of political goals, particularly in light of ongoing struggles over resource extraction, land rights, and (de)colonization?
• Given long histories of musical and political activism in Latin America by well-known figures ranging from Rubén Blades to Mercedes Sosa, Gilberto Gil to Victor Jara, what is the political impact and importance of activism by contemporary popular music stars in Latin America today? What genres are such artists drawing upon, and what audiences do they intend to reach?
• What are the legacies of earlier musical/political movements such as nueva canción or nueva trova? To what extent does the repertoire and historical memory of those musical movements continue to inspire and/or limit the musical activity of social movement actors today?

SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS

To avoid duplication of content, please contact the issue editors to let them know of your interest in submitting and your proposed topic. We encourage submission as soon as possible, preferably by March 30, 2020, but this call will remain open as long as it is posted on the LAP web site.

Manuscripts should be no longer than 8,000 words of paginated, double-spaced 12 point text with 1 inch margins, including notes and references, using the LAP Style Guidelines available at  www.latinamericanperspectives.com under the “Submit” tab where the review process is also described.   Manuscripts should be consistent with the LAP Mission Statement available on the web site under the “About” tab.

Manuscripts may be submitted in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. If you do not write in English with near native fluency, please submit in your first language.  LAP will translate manuscripts accepted in languages other than English. If you are not submitting in English, please indicate if you will have difficulty reading reviews and/or correspondence from the LAP office in English.

Please feel free to contact the issue editor with questions pertaining to the issue but all manuscripts should be submitted directly to the LAP office, not to the issue editor. A manuscript is not considered submitted until it has been received by the LAP office.  You should receive acknowledgment of receipt of your manuscript within a few days.  If you do not receive an acknowledgment from LAP after one week, please send a follow-up inquiry to be sure your submission arrived.

E-mail Submissions: send to lap@ucr.edu

Subject Line: Author name – Manuscript for Music issue

Please attach your manuscript as a Word Document (doc or docx)

Include: Abstract (100 words), 5 Keywords, and a separate cover page with short author affiliations (less than 130 words) and complete contact information (e-mail, postal address, telephone).

Postal correspondence may be sent to: Managing Editor, Latin American Perspectives¸ P.O. Box 5703, Riverside, California 92517-5703.

For an article with more than one author, provide contact information for all authors but designate one person as the Corresponding Author who will receive correspondence from the LAP office.  If any contact information changes while your manuscript is under consideration, please send the updated information to LAP promptly.

Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in the journal. Authors should not submit a manuscript that has been previously published in English in identical or substantially similar form nor should they simultaneously submit it or a substantially similar manuscript to another journal in English.  LAP will consider manuscripts that have been published in another language, usually with updating.  Prior publication should be noted, along with the publication information.

Issue editor contact information:

Jonathan Ritter: jritter@ucr.edu