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LS10: Music as a tool to forward political movements

Music is 

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Halloween and Appropriation

Every year we continue to allocate a day promoting identity theft and vomit inducing and egregious levels of sugary sweets. However its also a day where people indulge themselves in their most inappropriate of fantasies. The lines between sex and PC are blurred, where any career can be fetishized if only for an evening. Children seem exempt from committing any sort of cardinal or moral sin, because it can be argued that their malleability would make them susceptible to adorning any variety of ludicrous outfits. And yet this makes them the prodigal children for exemplifying appropriation without seemingly malicious intent, given that their cuteness defends or shields away any accusatory fingers attempting to snuff out any semblance of moral corruption. The typical cultures that we find appropriated are our Native American predecessors, whom have already endured the rape of their land and people , and now the remaining communities have to tolerate the sight of being able to purchase “authentic” “indian” headdresses’ and kaftan suede dresses at a local Halloween bargain barn.

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Thoughts about class so far

My favorite part of class so far: Every class i’ve taken with Oberlin’s ethnomusicology department has never failed to be both incredibly informative and equally amusing. My first experience studying ethnomusicology, was incredibly centered more on the “music” side of things, as most of our tasks requested that we transcribe songs we engaged with in class, in a manner that truly validated that this was a class at the Oberlin College conservatory, a space where I know I didn’t belong, as I never quite mastered a music craft well enough to exhibit the level of proficiency mandatory to be a musician of that caliber. However, I attempted to find a loophole to finagle my way into being a member of the conservatory community, without having to be the next Yo-Yo Ma, and it came to me in the form of ethnomusicology. Though my first course took a direction that might have deterred me from continuing to pursue this field of studies, on a whim I enrolled in a second ethno course with Professor Fredara Hadley. Hadley was flown in by Oberlin bi-weekly, and spent the greater portion of her week as a resident of Brooklyn and thrived with her local tourism business and accompanying radio podcast. Her course on popular music and urban identities was the perfect conflation of historic monumentalism, and the intersections of history and music. This was where my love for ethno grew a size that could only be equated to the Grinch after he threw in the malicious towel. And so that brings us up to speed to the present day, regarding my involvement in ethno. This course was a match made in registration heaven. Not only did it support my interests that correlate to my academic concentration with Latin American studies, but would allow me to return to the beautiful Kohl building. So far, we’ve read interesting and enriching texts that have shape shifted preconceived notions of popular music traditions in different countries , such as the distinction between samba, bossa, and tropicalia in Brazil, as well as altering preconceived notions and accepted definitions of nation and state. Our class is full of people from different disciplines and areas of study which in sum turns our classroom into an interesting incubator for close engagement of our readings and the concepts they address.

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Precis of Between Nostalgia and Apocalypse

Dan Sharpe, in “Between Nostalgia and Apocalypse”, argues that Brazilian music in Arcoverde cradles a fine line between originality, and prescribed/consumed music traditions, that appeal to a western audience. An example of Sharpe’s thesis can be found on page 43. “ From this time forth, questions of authorship and intellectual property became highly contested among Arcoverde’s traditional musicians. The split and feud took place during the broader neoliberal developments in Brazil which included a drive to classify most forms of expressive and material culture and then stringently protect them. Anxious responses to the merging centrality of piracy could be found throughout Brazil, as well as much of the rest of the world. But for the samba de coco families, a push to secure legitimate avenues of circulation for their recordings, rather than having the product of their labor be consumed royalty-less pirated wares sold on the street, coincided with their efforts to emerge out of the anonymous periphery of the Brazilian backlands. ” It’s also important to consider that in matters of marketing Brazilian culture, there is always an embedded element of nostalgia or reminiscence for either the time that the piece is evoking or an aspirational hope for a condition that does not exist. And Sharpe further supports this claim with a number of case studies that are perfectly integrated/interwoven with an introspective awareness of his role in observing music practices in Arcoverde, as they are compared to highly popularized Brazilian music traditions.  In the case of the musician Ivo Lopes, her legacy , and the memorialization of her life and career were manifested in the creation of the commemorative museum. The museum details her upbringing, and uses her life as a case study of life in the backlands of Brazil, which dilutes her experience into being something pedagogical. And interestingly enough, Sharpe also goes into detail regarding the way in which her legacy was manipulated or manicured by her family in such a way that would assuage any denial that she wasn’t invested in tradition. And that parlays into another integral parallel in the work, which is the modernization of tradition, as a means to increase to claim originality and preservation of culture, and yet with the addition of a modern take it becomes inherently more marketable.   In sum, one could argue that the project of Sharpe’s ethnography isn’t presenting this consumers paradox as a means to skew the readers thought, or instill some sort of hyper awareness or sensitivity to the content we are ingesting. But rather, as something that is emblematic of a larger global issue which concerns the incorporation of the audience and their likes and dislikes, in the efforts to make the most money, and the exploitation of bodies to be incorporated as vessels to signify elevated cultural significance.  Other notes; on both sides of a dynamic folk , pop boundary musicians in arcoverde reworked tradition to combat being discursively distanced from the Brazilian here and now, genres of music poetry and theater overlapped within cultural fields producing a sense of contemporary northeasternness. Rewriting or redoing the rules to accommodate//appealto tourists.  Culture vs. meta culture

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Tropicalia by Caetano Veloso : a Haiku

The beat was swingin’ Transport to a carnaval experimental

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High Stakes Assignment #1

Bossa and the national consciousness in Brazil                                                              

In the case of Latin American music practices, it can be argued that music has been and continues to be implemented as a subversive political tool. Additionally the ways in which music attempts to serve as a cultural and national unifier, is an incredibly utopic misconception of the reality of music and it’s functionality at the national level.  Using the texts of Gerard Behague, and artist Caetano Veloso I am going to address the ways in which Bossanova and Tropicalismo are examples of cultural anthropophagy and consumer washing music traditions as a means to to establish a national identity that can help peripheral nations better comprehend Brazil. Furthermore, I will investigate the ways in which revered musician Jorge Ben Jor is a poster child for Veloso’s cultural anthropophagy , and how his corporal arena was morphed into a vessel for the embracement and establishment of a national sound encompassing all facets of musical terminology in Brazil. To the western listener, samba, tropicalia, bossanova, are all synonyms for music created and equivocated with Brazilian life. This misconception is emblematic of a problem that Brazil faced internally with regards to establishing a national identity for the sake of unifying a fragmented nation, or attempting to finally place Brazil on the map of international music authority. The transformation from samba, to bossa to tropicalia is a notable and impactful one for Brazilian musicians who were attempting to be considered as international landmarks. Another integral distinction between these genres are regarding the marginalization of indigenous instrumentation and styles of music that are signifiers of the Brazil’s African roots. And yet their fundamental role is not entirely glossed over, just merely forcibly relocated to the background. Interestingly enough, this concept could potentially be equivocable to that of metizaje, or chicanx culture. The term Mestizo derives from th This is key to understanding the concept of anthropophagy, or cultural cannibalism. This movement was pioneered in the 1960’s when cultural hybridity and Using Jorge Ben Jor as a case study to examine the hybridity of cultural anthropophagy. Ben Jor is highly regarded as one of the most revered of Samba’s . Ben Jor’s personal history not only is a cultural cacophony or a mix of different styles and cultural practices, but the genre he would later be “classified” into would perfectly encapsulate this sort of identity cradling. While Ben Jor was trained in the pandeiro, performing this skill at carnaval annually, he would later have this work translate into his success in the genre better known as Tropicalia. It is an unfortunate reality that with the washing over of indigenous culture , comes the reality of race. The main consumers, or we can also call appropriators,  of the music will be perceivably white, with the musicians themselves, and the styles they are adopting not of the same. However as Behague, says in Bossa and Bossa’s, that from a Brazilians standpoint, Bossanova is a way to cut through racial barriers and tensions , as it embraces and celebrates Brazil’s socio-economic dichotomy of economic privilege. Interestingly enough, urban growth and the unfortunate urban sprawl has resulted in a larger more economically privileged social class to support the development of the arts. And so Behague argues that to the non Brazilian eye , what is perceived as exploitation is in fact the embracement of Bossa is a term that could be best defined as astuteness or ‘special ability,’ which is an interesting description given that when juxtaposed next to Samba, Bossa tends to have more instrumental solos, and could even be described as a succession of showcasing musicians specialities while still interweaving perfectly back into a cohesive song. While on the other hand, Samba is rooted in the sense of establishing a community, having sounds that function in a round of triplets, giving it a dancing swing feel. Behague even elaborated on this phenomena by stating that this was a result of the instruments playing in a duple meter, with a prolonged or emphasized third note. In brazil, the first world and the third world exist side by side. Brazil is highly industrialized in some areas and absolutely medieval in others. It is wealthy and miserable, chic Ipanema and mud-and-stick hut, high-tech engineer and Stone Age indian, computers and bananas. As a common joke goes: if there were no brazil, someone would have to invent one. Another argument for Brazil’s singularity is that nowhere else on earth do different races, cultures, and religions coexist as peacefully as they do there. That is partly because intermarriage has been common in Brazil for centuries, creating a truly mixed society: most everyone has ancestors from two or three continents. There is prejudice among Brazilians more on this later, but it is rare to encounter over racial or religious hatred of the kind that is common in many other countries. When cabral first came to Brazil, the indigenous population probably exceeded two millioin. In their music, they sang songs solo and in chorus, accompanying themselves with flutes whistles and horns. They beat out rhythms with hand clapping, foot stamping, rattles, sticks and drumls. Their music did not, ohwever, play a major role in the development of Brazilian popular music. In part, this is because so many tribes were devasted by Portuguese invaders, and the Inidans that survived often lost their cultural traditions whe… There is Indian influence in some The significance of music in the role of forming or commenting on the nation is a versatile one. It can either further nationalist political agendas that support fascist regimes which generally produces music that has a symphonic anthem that serves to instill patrimony in its nation’s citizens, especially when the concept of nationhood is called into question. However, conversely it can be implemented to insert or promote a subversive agenda that critically examines the form of governance that might survive on the continued oppression of their inhabitants. And yet an important distinction between American popular rap music and narcocorridos is that you don’t hear the Bloods or Crips forming their own music label or hiring biggie to write their new anthem, unlike how narco cartels can actually endorse and financially support the production of narcocorridos.

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Narco Corridos: Good or Bad?

The concept of Narcos as a cultural phenomena achieved national recognition and social media acclaim on this side of the border with notable occurrences not limited to Sean Penn’s meetings with El Chapo and the well crafted Netflix series Narcos. Gang violence is not a new concept, in fact the ways in which music has been able to serve as a platform to bridge the gap of the absence of narratives regarding gang violence is most equivocal or representative in the rap music genre. When Kendrick released To Pimp a butterfly , the albums objective wasn’t to endorse or glamorize gang violence, but was merely to submerge his listeners into a narrative where the we would be participants rather than bystanders of gang violence and police brutality. However in the case of narcocorridos it is important to recognize that while they aren’t blatantly support drug trafficking and violence related to these acts, they aren’t not not supporting it… To put it simply, the industry to which they are commenting on is entirely contingent on the economic prosperity of a select group of individuals, and these songs are a product that can only exist vis-a-vis funding from the groups that are the focal points of these songs. While these songs might exist based on a paradox between sound and lyrics, it is important that this paradox exists. If the tone of the piece were to match the raw emotions or bleak futures of people who are imprisoned by cycles of crime and incarceration then the music would sound more like a forlorn Verde concerto, rather than a catchy , multi-layered and therefore multifaceted complex music frankenstein complete with paid homages to Motown music and other predecessors that contributed to the intergenerational appeal and complexity of rap. Interestingly enough, Narcocorrido music is able to achieve a similar hybrid or to use my favorite Spanish verb “mezclar”, it is a mezcla of traditional norteno undertones, combined artfully with current events and social politics. And so Narcocorridos, while some may value them or consider them to be narcos propaganda, it is important to distinguish subject matter and art, and in this case to make it more synonymous with rap music culture in the USA, each word is not to be taken as an example but merely as a historical archive.

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the politics behind despacito

When a song achieves global notoriety after adding a Canadian turned American teen pop sensation, it's practically begging to catalyze a conversation about cultural appropriation for capital gain. Despacito was originally created by Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi , with their track being released in January of this year. However it didn’t reach to number 1 on the billboard top 100 until Justin Bieber was given a verse in April. Both performers of the hit track are residents of Puerto Rico, and when combined with the golden boy bieber they form a hyper americanize, digestible track for even the most gringa of gringas to slow jam to. Additionally, it remains fact that Puerto Rico isn’t considered a state of our supposedly United States, but is our “territory”, something that has been conquered, reclaimed, repurposed, and can be exploited to benefit our economy, without having any synergistic benefit for both nations. Interestingly enough, while Despacito is considered a classic slow jam and is now revered as a radio hit, it now has a political meaning subscribed to it when the president of Venezuela reworded the lyrics and placed them into the political context of Venezuela’s dictatorship. Daddy yankee was especially appalled by this equivocation stating: "That you illegally appropriate a song [Despacito] does not compare with the crimes you commit and have committed in Venezuela," he wrote. "Your dictatorial regime is a joke, not only for my Venezuelan brothers, but for the entire world." And so interestingly enough, while it

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Perceptions of authenticity in Latin America

Authenticity is a tricky term to conflate to be synonymous with nationhood. To determine or deem what is authentic as it pertains to a nation’s identity, is to set precedent or place a certain musical movement on a pedestal , which functions in two ways. One is that if there is a music movement that is deemed a sort of a standard then it creates space for counter cultures or subversive forms of music to emerge. However when a nation has a music that is centralized, one can assume that once a nation has a work of art or a cultural practice such as forms of music, then it is easier for periphery/external nations to identify or assimilate these music styles with this particular nation, and therefore, turn culture into a marketable item. Using Brazil as a case study, we can see that this concept of consumer consumption shifting and shaping culture and vice a versa, is something that determines cultural movements based on what foreign consumers expect from or desire from individual nations.

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Implications or complications of state sponsored music radio? What does nationalist music do for the latin american state?

It is important to recognize the fragmented nature of nation states in Latin American countries, and the concept of their unity with disunity. And yet , flipping the script for a minute, who is to say that even when nations are perceived as having achieved total unity that they could be equated to having been  To attempt to encapsulate a country's alma, or everything the country stands for in one song, sounds like quite a daunting task. Most “nationalist anthems” end up becoming propaganda themed fight songs that sound like people are being drafted to war. In Thomas Turino’s “Nationalism and Latin American Music,” Turinos thesis can best describe this phenomena which I can only amateurly describe. “In these cases populist nationalism was the attempt to create broad based nations in places where they did not exist, and to firm up the crucial nation-state linkage whereby governments could attempt to better direct the activities and attitudes of state populations. ‘ To establish a national standard for music that is sponsored by the government is to homogenize the experience of individual states, and the continued inter-nation prejudices that distinguish and ostracize namely, indigenous groups from the “This statement blatantly justifies the state’s need of, and role in, cultural nationalism for the sake of national distinction , ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’

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