Experimentalisms in Practice ― Music Perspectives from Latin America

Experimentalisms in Practice explores the multiple sites in which experimentalism emerges and becomes meaningful beyond Eurocentric interpretative frameworks. Challenging the notion of experimentalism as defined in conventional narratives, contributors take a broad approach to a wide variety of Latin@ and Latin American music traditions conceived or perceived as experimental. The conversation takes as starting point the 1960s, a decade that marks a crucial political and epistemological moment for Latin America; militant and committed aesthetic practices resonated with this moment, resulting in a multiplicity of artistic and musical experimental expressions.

Experimentalisms in Practice responds to recent efforts to reframe and reconceptualize the study of experimental music in terms of epistemological perspective and geographic scope, while also engaging traditional scholarship. This book contributes to the current conversations about music experimentalism while providing new points of entry to further reevaluate the field.

Ana R. Alonso- Minutti is associate professor of music and faculty affiliate of the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico. She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of California, Davis. Her teaching and research endeavors blend musicological and ethnomusicological inquiry into the study of contemporary musical practices across the Americas. Her scholarship focuses on experimental and avant- garde expressions, music traditions from Mexico and the US- Mexico border, and music history pedagogy. She has published in Latin American Music Review, Revista Argentina de Musicologia, Journal of Music History Pedagogy, Pauta, and elsewhere and her book Mario Lavista and Musical Cosmopolitanism in Late Twentieth- Century Mexico is under contract with Oxford University Press. As an extension of her written scholarship she directed and produced the video documentary Cubos y permutaciones: Plastica, musica y poesia de vanguardia en Mexico. Prior to joining the University of New Mexico, she was assistant professor of music at the University of North Texas.

Eduardo Herrera is assistant professor in ethnomusicology and music history at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He received a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign and specializes in contemporary musical practices from Spanish- and Portuguese- speaking Latin America. His book, Elite Art Worlds: Philanthropy, Latin Americanism, and Avant- garde Music (under contract with Oxford University Press), considers the history of the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (1962- 1971) as a meeting point of US and Argentine philanthropy, framings of pan- regional discourses of musical Latin Americanism, and local experiences in transnational currents of artistic experimentation and innovation. His second book project explores participatory music making in Argentine soccer stadiums and is titled Sounding- in- Synchrony: Masculinity, Violence, and Soccer Chants. He has delivered papers and guest lectures in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina. He is a board member of the Society for American Music and council member of the American Musicological Society.

Alejandro L. Madrid is author or editor of more than half a dozen books and edited volumes about the intersection of modernity, tradition, globalization, and ethnic identity in popular and art music, dance, and expressive culture of Mexico, the US- Mexico border, and the circum- Caribbean. His work has received the Mexico Humanities Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association, the Robert M. Stevenson and Ruth A. Solie awards from the American Musicological Society, the Bela Bartok Award from the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/ Virgil Thomson Awards, the Woody Guthrie Book Award from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music- U.S. Branch, the Casa de las Americas Award for Latin American musicology, and the Samuel Claro Valdes Award for Latin American musicology. He is also the recipient of the 2017 Dent Medal, given by the Royal Musical Association and the International Musicological Society. Madrid is frequently invited as an expert commentator on national and international media outlets and most recently acted as advisor on the use of Mexican music to filmmaker Peter Greenaway, whose latest film, Eisenstein in Guanajuato, is set in 1930s Mexico. He is professor of musicology and ethnomusicology at Cornell University.