Musical Migrations

A dynamic and original collection of essays on the transnational circulation and changing social meanings of Latin music across the Americas. The transcultural impact of Latin American musical forms in the United States calls for a deeper understanding of the shifting cultural meanings of music. Musical Migrations examines the tensions between the value of Latin popular music as a metaphor for national identity and its transnational meanings as it traverses national borders, geocultural spaces, audiences, and historical periods. The anthology analyzes, among others, the role of popular music in Caribbean diasporas in the United States and Europe, the trans-Caribbean identities of Salsa and reggae, the racial, cultural, and ethnic hybridity in rock across the Americas, and the tensions between tradition and modernity in Peruvian indigenous music, mariachi music in the United States, and in Trinidadian music.

"Musical Migrations maps the amazing mobility and incredible dynamism of today's "Latin" music. This whirlwind tour of the dynamic, fast changing, and increasingly eclectic musical fusions of the American hemisphere demonstrates that the same processes that so often produce conflict can also generate unprecedented new forms of cultural creativity, cooperation, and coalescence."

- George Lipsitz, author of Dangerous Crossroads