Tropical Riffs: Latin America and the Politics of Jazz by Jason Borge

Abstract

Reviewed by: Tropical Riffs: Latin America and the Politics of Jazz by Jason Borge Carlos E. Peña Tropical Riffs: Latin America and the Politics of Jazz. By Jason Borge. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. [ix, 266 p. ISBN 9780822369875 (hardcover), $99.95; ISBN 9780822369905 (paperback), $26.95; ISBN 9780822372332 (e-book), price varies.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. Reaching a wide audience almost always comes at a price, and the cost of bringing complex art forms to the mainstream can threaten the integrity of the work and its creators. Jazz music is a powerful example. Various historiographies have enabled jazz to penetrate classrooms and collective consciousness in its country of origin. Too often, though, these sources, including standard textbooks—and especially Ken Burns's Jazz documentary—perform a disservice to the music by simplifying or even eschewing vital aspects of its history and identities. Such omissions carry strong sociopolitical implications. This is where we find the impetus for Jason Borge's Tropical Riffs. A persistent shortcoming of many jazz histories is the lack of acknowledgment of Latin American influences on jazz. Much has been written to call out the ignorance of Latin America among US jazz writers and documentarians, and Borge provides examples of such criticism at the outset of his book. But instead of asking "what Latin America meant to the US jazz establishment," Borge subsequently found himself more concerned with the question of "what jazz meant to Latin America" (p. vii). Among the current bibliography of writings on jazz in various parts of the world, Borge's work fills a surprisingly gaping lacuna, especially when one considers that Latin American music and musicians have indelibly contributed to the shape of jazz for practically an entire century of its evolution. [End Page 94] The introduction outlines the astute and compelling premises of Borge's project, setting the stage for the five lengthy chapters that follow. Even in its earliest forms, jazz penetrated the cultural imaginaries of Latin American nations, which, due to relatively close economic and geopolitical ties with the United States, were uniquely positioned to consume, imitate, and integrate jazz. The paradoxes embodied by jazz—being modern and sophisticated but widely perceived as primal, a source of national pride created by poor, disenfranchised people—are in some ways analogous to Latin American forms like samba, tango, and son. But the Latin American nations, wildly diverse in terms of political regimes and their relationships to issues of race, class, culture, and economics, nevertheless shared the circumstance of being far enough removed from US cultural discourse to ensure that their audiences, critics, and artists could forge their own relationships to jazz. From these premises emerge Borge's central questions of how and why jazz resonated with Latin American audiences and his need for a survey of jazz criticism that accounts for the entirety of the Western hemisphere. Chapter 1 describes how awareness of jazz in Latin America, beginning in the 1920s, sprouted from sporadic exposure to US media, resulting in rather warped conceptions of what jazz was and how it sounded. Local musicians were quick to adapt styles they called jazz into their repertoires, and audiences were subjected to controversies in the media and in politics about the morality (or lack thereof) of the music. Plenty of discourse surrounding jazz carried racist overtones. Still, jazz enjoyed an undeniable popularity that was initially concentrated among the more privileged classes of Latin Americans. Borge takes an in-depth look at the reception of Josephine Baker, who toured extensively in Latin America, noting how it is ironic that Baker's popularity in the region foregrounded the prominence of Parisian culture—not that of the US jazz epicenters—in South America and Mexico early in the jazz age. Borge uses journalism of the period to examine Baker's differing reception among Latin American nations, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. The three chapters that follow take closer looks, respectively, at Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba. A patent strength of Borge's work is his reliance on early periodical literature, including specialized jazz magazines, as a foundation. Some of these writings have been anthologized while others have not, but their inclusion gives weight...