Transnational Encounters

Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Edited by Alejandro L. Madrid

Offers a unique perspective on the diversity and complexity of borderland culture
Exploring transnational connections of the U.S.-Mexican border region, the collection redefines key theoretical notions such as "border," "nation," and "diaspora" from a range of disciplinary and multidisciplinary angles.
Covers a wide diversity of musical genres (indigenous, popular, folk, etc)
The interdisciplinary approach of the book as well as the wide range of its coverage would make it appealing to a large scholarly audience in disciplinary fields as well as less traditional and more multidisciplinary fields.

Transnational Encounters

Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Edited by Alejandro L. Madrid

Description

Through the study of a large variety of musical practices from the U.S.-Mexico border, Transnational Encounters seeks to provide a new perspective on the complex character of this geographic area. By focusing not only on norteña, banda or conjunto musics (the most stereotypical musical traditions among Hispanics in the area) but also engaging a number of musical practices that have often been neglected in the study of this border's history and culture (indigenous musics, African American musical traditions, pop musics), the authors provide a glance into the diversity of ethnic groups that have encountered each other throughout the area's history. Against common misconceptions about the U.S.-Mexico border as a predominant Mexican area, this book argues that it is diversity and not homogeneity which characterizes it. From a wide variety of disciplinary and multidisciplinary enunciations, these essays explore the transnational connections that inform these musical cultures while keeping an eye on their powerful local significance, in an attempt to redefine notions like "border," "nation," "migration," "diaspora," etc. Looking at music and its performative power through the looking glass of cultural criticism allows this book to contribute to larger intellectual concerns and help redefine the field of U.S.-Mexico border studies beyond the North/South and American/Mexican dichotomies. Furthermore, the essays in this book problematize some of the widespread misconceptions about U.S.-Mexico border history and culture in the current debate about immigration.

Transnational Encounters

Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Edited by Alejandro L. Madrid

List of Figures
List of Music Examples
Acknowledgements
Map of the U.S.-Mexico Border
Chapter 1. Transnational Musical Encounters at the U.S.-Mexico Border: An Introduction by Alejandro L. Madrid
I. Border Meanings
Chapter 2. Reggae on the Border: The Possibilities of a Frontera Soundscape by Luis Alvarez
Chapter 3. Breaking Borders / Quebrando fronteras: Dancing in the Borderscape by Sydney Hutchinson
Chapter 4. Narcocorridos: Narratives of a Cultural Persona and Power on the Border by Mark C. Edberg
II. Nationalisms
Chapter 5. Mariachi Reimaginings: Encounters with Technology, Aesthetics, and Identity by Donald Henriques
Chapter 6. "This is Our Música, Guy!: Tejanos and Ethno/Regional Musical Nationalism by José E. Limón
III. Indigeneity and Modernity
Chapter 7. Re-localized Rap and its Representation of the Hombre digno by Helena Simonett
Chapter 8. Waila as Transnational Practice by Joan Titus
IV. Cultural Citizenship and Rights
Chapter 9. Transnational Identity, the Singing of Spirituals and the Performance of Blackness among Mascogos by Alejandro L. Madrid
Chapter 10. Transnational Cultural Constructions: Cumbia Music and the Making of Locality in Monterrey by Jesús A. Ramos-Kittrell
Chapter 11. Patriotic Citizenship, the Border Wall, and the "El Veterano" Conjunto Festival by Margaret E. Dorsey and Miguel Díaz-Barriga..
V. Trans-Border Cosmopolitan Audiotopias
Chapter 12. The Tijuana Sound: Brass, Blues, and the Border of the 1960s by Josh Kun
Chapter 13. La avanzada regia: Monterrey's Alternative Music Scene and the Aesthetics of Transnationalism by Ignacio Corona
VI. Contested Identities
Chapter 14. New Mexico and 'Manitos at the Borderlands of Popular Music in Greater Mexico by Brenda M. Romero
Chapter 15. "Todos me llaman El Gringo": Place, Identity, and Erasure within the New Mexico Hispano
Music Scene by Lillian Gorman
VII. Performing Locality and Gender
Chapter 16. From Pistol-Packing Pelado to Border Crossing Mojado: El Piporro and the Making of a "Mexican" Border Space by Cathy Ragland
Chapter 17. Dancing Reggaetón with Cowboy Boots by Ramón H. Rivera Servera
Contributors

Transnational Encounters

Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Edited by Alejandro L. Madrid

Author Information

Alejandro L. Madrid is Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Illinois - Chicago, and author, Nor-Tec Rifa!: Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World (OUP, 2008), and Sounds of the Modern Nation (Temple UP, 2009) and Editor, Postnational Musical Identities: Cultural Production, Distribution and Consumption in a Globalized Scenario (Lexington Books, 2007, with Ignacio Corona).

Contributors:

Luis Alvarez - University of California, San Diego

Ignacio Corona - The Ohio State University

Miguel Díaz-Barriga - University of Texas-Pan American

Margaret E. Dorsey - University of Texas-Pan American

Mark C. Edberg - George Washington University

Lillian Gorman - University of Illinois at Chicago

Donald Henriques - California State University, Fresno

Sydney Hutchinson - Syracuse University

Josh Kun - University of Southern California

José E. Limón - University of Texas at Austin

Alejandro L. Madrid - University of Illinois at Chicago

Cathy Ragland - University of Texas-Pan American

Jesús Ramos-Kittrell - Southern Methodist University

Ramón H. Rivera-Servera - Northwestern University

Brenda M. Romero - University of Colorado at Boulder

Helena Simonett - Vanderbilt University

Joan Titus - University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Transnational Encounters

Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Edited by Alejandro L. Madrid

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the Ruth A. Solie Award, American Musicological Society

Chapter 13, "La avanzada regia: Monterrey's Alternative Music Scene and the Aesthetics of Transnationalism" by Ignacio Corona, co-winner of the 2012 Mexico Section Essay Award in the Humanities, Latin American Studies Association

"Readers of this volume will come away with a richer understanding of how and why music and dance are two of the most potent expressive forms in and around the US-Mexico border. Transnational Encounters is required reading in Latin@ studies, popular music and ethnomusicology."--Latino Studies

"Transnational Encounters will richly reward the diligent reader looking for connections and theoretical frames upon which to build future study."--Ethnomusicology

"Bridging various approaches to border studies, this fascinating and far-ranging collection assembled by Alejandro Madrid is solidly grounded in the aural culture particulars of the US-Mexico transnational soundscape...Transnational Encounters delivers readers equal parts substantial information and original research in sync with insightful social and cultural analysis."--Hispanic American Historical Review

"[T]his volume offers an excellent range of discussions regarding music, dance, and performance in contested spaces in Mexico and the United States. I recommend it for students and scholars of ethnomusicology, cultural studies, and in the broadest sense, American and identity studies."--Latin American Music Review

"[T]his volume provides a significant contribution to the discussion of crucial broad themes in contemporary musicology - music and place, performance, or the old but still very relevant music and nationalism."--Popular Music