Reviewed by: Barrio Harmonics: Essays on Chicano/Latino Music by Steven Joseph Loza Sarah Blanton (bio) Steven Joseph Loza, Barrio Harmonics: Essays on Chicano/Latino Music. UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2019. Pp. 240. Barrio Harmonics: Essays on Chicano/Latino Music is a complex, expansive collection of Steven Loza’s writings from 1982 to 2011. Loza introduces this text as a kind of sequel to his 1993 book Barrio Rhythms: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles. Unlike Barrio Rhythms, however, which focuses on specific geographic locations in the Mexican American areas of the Southwest, this twelve-chapter volume examines Chicano/Latino music on the global scale. The essays explore Chicano/Latino musical forms and styles and take into account their historical and sociocultural contexts. Themes such as identity, marginality, reinterpretation, and mestizaje form the foundation of his analysis. The chapters are diverse: some essays consider the lives and careers of individual musicians, while others analyze Chicano/Latino musical production and reception in Los Angeles and in the Northeastern United States. One chapter examines Japan’s fascination with Latino musical expression; two discuss the Cuban son and the Mexican son jarocho. Others focus on the African diaspora, the impact of globalization, intellectual capitalism, and the importance of including non-Western and non-Eurocentric voices into the academic, literary, and musical canon and curriculum. The introductory chapter, comprising nearly a quarter of the volume, regards Chicano/Latino music around the southwestern border of southern California and Arizona, as well as the Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican influence in the northwestern region of the United States. Loza does not often write more than a sentence about many complex and captivating historical moments; however, he constantly references scholars who have dedicated entire books to these subjects and includes thorough bibliographies for anyone interested in delving deeper. In his discussion of la canción mexicana—that is, rancheras and corridos—he analyzes a few songs, pointing to artistic representations of conflict of the Mexican experience on the border. Loza swiftly moves through the twentieth century and discusses the increase of radio broadcasts, mariachi, and the individuals who “became musical leaders and symbolic beacons of hope for Mexican populations in the United States” (16). This formidable introduction is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in the foundations of Chicano/Latino music and its reverberations in the present day. [End Page 263] Chapters 2 and 3 analyze the origins of the Cuban son and the reinterpretation of the Mexican son jarocho from Veracruz to Los Angeles. In his analysis of these sons, a textual theme emerges concerning Latino identity and artistic reinterpretation: Loza states that the Chicano movement in the 1960s “achieved a stronger sense of identity, social power, and cultural legitimacy” among Mexican Americans, which was “accomplished in large part through a collective process of musical appropriation and reinterpretation” (82). This process of moving from tradition to reinterpretation to innovation is repeated in chapters 5 and 9 in the context of Los Angeles’s wave of banda and rap music. These musical forms express identity and are incorporated in different styles and fusions of music. Chapters 4, 7, and 8 look at the musical lives of individual artists Lalo Guerrero, Tito Puente, and Poncho Sánchez. Ethnographic profiles contextualize each figure, and the chapters focus on how identity as a marginalized Latino artist within urban infrastructures is negotiated and gives way to transformative expression and innovation. The essays also trace the ways assimilation, reclamation, and rejection fit the arc of each musician’s life in different ways. This chronology is echoed in chapter 9, which describes these processes in Latinos’ “own role as citizens of the United States” over the course of the last forty to fifty years (162). Chapter 6 addresses the fascination with Chicano/Latino music in countries far removed from Latin America and questions why certain Latino artists do or do not gain traction in different areas around the globe. This section discusses the rise of salsa, mariachi, and trio romantic in Japan and includes excerpts of interviews with five Japanese artists about these trends. Loza concedes that he is only scratching the surface in this brief chapter; though he states...
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