Surveys the music and music making of different world cultures outside the United States, with a focus on current issues in the arts, culture, and society. Such issues can include the impact of government polices on the arts, transnational circulation, intellectual property rights, as well as the current movements in the arts ranging from popular styles to cutting-edge contemporary experimentation. The particular culture to be studied will vary.

Taught by Juan David Rubio Restrepo Professor of Ethnomusicology University of California, Berkeley Joining us from The University of Texas at El Paso https://www.utep.edu/liberalarts/music/people/juan-david-rubio-restrepo.html This course considers select musical practices stemming from Latin America and its diasporic communities. Focusing on the 20 th and 21 st centuries, but tracing longer historical threads that afford understanding how sound, identity, and difference intertwine, we will study musics that go from the “folkloric” to the “popular,” the local to the transnational, and from south to north of the American continent. We will address these practices at the intersection of the “musical” (i.e., form, instrumentation, rhythmic structures, melodies, lyrics/narratives, etc.) and “cultural” (i.e., circulation networks, sound technologies, spaces/geographies, political economies, etc.). Along the way, we will delve into historically- and site-specific issues of race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, migration, capital, and power. Considering Latin America and the communities this signifier includes/excludes as a loaded signifier, we will query the fundamental role music has played in processes of identity formation and un/belonging.

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Requirements class fulfills