Nationalist, Hemispheric, and Global: “Latin American Music” and the Music Division of the Pan American Union, 1939-1947

Abstract

During World War Two, US cultural foreign policy addressed “Latin American music” as part of a Pan-American musical system. Under the direction of musicologist Charles Seeger, the Music Division of the Pan American Union promoted musical and musicological exchanges valorizing both the region’s national traditions and their common hemispheric identity. This imperial initiative had a manifold impact. First, it increased the availability of musical resources across the hemisphere, such as catalogues, which in turn valorized folklore as part of a transnational conversation. Second, it gave legitimacy to the concept of “Latin American music,” and promoted musical pedagogy beyond the borders of each national tradition. Third, it fostered the growth of Latin American musicology as a transnational field, partially subordinating the initiatives of its founding father, Francisco Curt Lange. Finally, the Music Division turned the US-Latin American musical exchanges into a template for the larger global musical exchanges of the postwar under UNESCO, and provided it with a democratic and ultimately populist notion of music as an expression of “the people.”