“Notes and Letters”: Music of the City in Flight / Trans-Migratory Poetry. By Antonio Monte Casablanca. Translated by Crystal Neill, with Amanda Minks and Lila Ellen Gray.

Abstract

In this essay I draw from memory studies and Latin American cultural studies to reflect on Notas y Letras (Notes and Letters), a collaboration by the Nicaraguan band Nemi Pipali and the poet Adolfo Beteta. I analyze these artistic expressions, music and poetry, at their place of convergence—the city of Managua—making audible some of the mechanisms that combine symbolic universes in Nicaraguan culture. This transdisciplinary reading allows me to propose that 1) music becomes a social marker of performative memory, transmitted by sounds present in hybrid Latin American cities, and 2) the migrant subject is displaced and divided between the center and the periphery. Citation: Monte Casablanca, Antonio. “Notes and Letters”: Music of the City in Flight / Trans-Migratory Poetry. Translated by Crystal Neill, with Amanda Minks and Lila Ellen Gray. Ethnomusicology Translations no. 11. Bloomington, IN: Society for Ethnomusicology, 2021. Originally published in Spanish as “‘Notas y Letras’: Música de la ciudad en fuga / Poesía transmigratoria.” Revista de Historia (Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica) 33/34 (2015): 108-129.