Sonic Politics: Music and Social Movements in the Americas - Paperback

by Olaf Kaltmeier (Editor), Wilfried Raussert (Editor)

This volume analyses the narration of the social through music and the seismographic function of music to detect social problems and envision alternatives.

Beyond state-driven attempts to link musical production to the official narrative of the nation, mass musical movements emerged during the 20th century that provided countercultural and alternative narratives of the prevailing social context. The Americas contain numerous examples of the strong connection between music and politics; Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" envisioned a socialist transformation of the U.S., the Chilean Nueva Canci created a narrative and affective frame for the recognition of popular culture as a central element of the cultural politics of the Chilean way to socialism, and Reggae emerged as a response to British colonialism, drawing inspiration and guidance from the pan-Africanist visions of Marcus Garvey.

Providing a significant contribution to the study of music and politics/social movements from an inter-American perspective, this book will appeal to students and scholars of U.S. and Latin American Cultural Studies, Transnational Studies, History and Political Studies, Area Studies, and Music Studies.

For additional information, please see the authors' Sonic Politics webpage: https: //www.uni-bielefeld.de/cias/sonicpolitics/index.html

Author Biography

Olaf Kaltmeier is Chair and Professor of Latin American History at Bielefeld University, Germany. He is Director of the Centre for InterAmerican Studies (CIAS) in Bielefeld and Director of Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS) at Bielefeld University. His research interests include heritage studies, indigenous movements, and InterAmerican studies. He is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas (2019) and co-editor of the Routledge series InterAmerican Research: Contact, Communication, Conflict.

Wilfried Raussert is Chair and Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies and Co-Director of InterAmerican Studies (CIAS) at Bielefeld University, Germany. He is the founder and general editor of the e-journal fiar (Forum for Inter-American Research, www.interamerica.de), the online journal of the International Association of Inter-American Studies. He is Director of the International Association of Inter-American Studies and Chair of the research project "Entangled Americas/The Americas as Space of Entanglement(s)" at Bielefeld University, funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research. He has held visiting professorships at the University of Mississippi, the Universidad de Guadalajara, Humboldt University in Berlin, and University College Cork. He is the editor of the Routledge Companion to Interamerican Studies (2017).