Rockin' las Americas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America (review)

Abstract

Rockin' las Americas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America. Edited by Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Hector Fernandez-L'Hoeste, and Eric Zolov. (Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas.) Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004. [ix, 420 p. ISBN 0822958414. $24.95.] Illustrations, map, discography, bibliography. There can be no overstating the considerable impact of Latin-American culture on the U.S. and global pop music scene-just observe the widespread success and frequent appearance in record sales charts of artists such as Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Carlos Santana, and Los Lobos. Additionally, Latin rhythms such as tango, cha cha cha, mambo, and merengue have enlivened dancehalls in North America and Europe for decades. Although scholarly literature has long explored the cultural and social implications of these musical transmigrations, comparatively little attention has been given to rock music coming out of Latin American nations and among concentrated Hispanic populations in the United States-in short, Latin/o America. The rapid growth and vast popularity of rock music in Central and South America originates from aftereffects of Western hegemony-the marketing of popular recordings as a by-product of a dominant capitalist culture. Yet the authors of the seventeen essays in this collection contend that after the original influx of U.S.- or U.K.-derived music, authentic individual rock music cultures have sprouted and become energized as collective forces in Latin/o American areas, with far-reaching complexities pertaining to class, race, gender, and politics. Being an offshoot of a 2002 conference in Bellagio, Italy with the same name, Rockin' las Americas features articles by authors in both academic and musical spheres. The authors have backgrounds in ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology, languages and literature, Latin-American studies, history, and critical theory. Rock as an expression of youth identity and anti-authoritarian spirit has led to some fascinating conflicts, transcending ideology in many cases. In right-wing or traditional societies, rock concerts were frequently broken up by police, and numerous fans were jailed or beaten by police. Deeming that traditional values were under siege by those perceived as left-wing subversives, purveyors of promiscuity, and drug abusers, the punitive efforts of the government merely drove rockers further underground where new expressions of rock emerged as a result. This spirit of resistance to oppressive conditions is exemplified in the essay by co-editor Eric Zolov on Mexico's La Onda Chicana movement. This countercultural movement lasted roughly from 1968 until 1971 as a form of social protest and identification by middle-class youth, thereby challenging not only the repressions of authorities but also the conformities of the university student movement, which was more in tune with activities in the United States and abroad. Thus, harassment of rock musicians and fans was not only limited to the political right. In many societies, most acutely in that of Fidel Castro's Cuba, leftist thinking held that popular music should represent traditional folk style, or people's music, with lyrics extolling the values of socialist society. Rock instruments, English lyrics, and rock-related lifestyles were labeled products of cultural imperialism from the 1960s to 1980s, and hence were censured, and records coming from the north were banned outright. Since the late 1980s, this strict anti-rock stance has relaxed, and as a direct result a surge in the popularity of rock and rap musics has occurred. Deborah Pacini Hernandez and Reebee Garofalo outline the censorship and gradual mainstreaming of Cuban rock in Between Rock and a Hard Place, Negotiating Rock in Revolutionary Cuba, 1960-1980. Other forms of rock rising out of politically turbulent societies are described in articles about Chile and Argentina. Pablo Semon, Pablo Vila, and Cecilia Benedetti, in Neoliberalism and Rock in the Popular Sector in Contemporary Argentina discuss a recent phenomenon called rock chabon that, unlike the more mainstream rock national, arose from the poverty-stricken classes. …