The Exotic Self

Mexican and Brazilian Modernists Abroad and at Home

Chelsea Burns (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

324 Seiten

2025
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-779286-5 (ISBN)

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When Europeans and North Americans listen to music by Latin American composers, what do they hear? What, for that matter, do these composers' compatriots hear? The answer, historically, has been the sound of the nation. Scholars, critics, patrons, and audiences have often suggested that Latin American music either does or ought to reflect an aesthetic supposedly inherent in Latin American cultures and even bodies.

Marshaling historically informed close readings of musical text, The Exotic Self reveals the voluminous meanings of works historically pigeonholed by identity-driven assumptions. Chelsea Burns focuses on Brazilian and Mexican modernists from 1920 to 1940, arguing that the national sound of Heitor Villa-Lobos, Carlos Chávez, Silvestre Revueltas, and others is as readily traceable to market pressures as it is to artistic commitments. These composers embraced, knowingly and sometimes reluctantly, exoticist stereotypes of Indigeneity and Blackness as the price of access to metropolitan audiences. At home, intellectuals and politicians also demanded sonic fantasies of "folk" life, here understood as the authentic voice of a national culture rivaling those of the global north.

Recognizing that the authentic and the exotic are two sides of the same tarnished coin, Burns analyzes the works of Mexican and Brazilian modernists anew. What emerges are singular artists with much to say beyond the framework of identity.

Chelsea Burns is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Affiliate Faculty of the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has appeared in Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, Súmula, Music Theory Online, and Twentieth-Century Music. In 2023 she was honored with the Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory.

Introduction
1: Negotiating Identities: Carlos Chávez and the Trouble with Musical Nationalism
2: False Choices: The Elusive Promise of Música Universal
3: Subversion and Polysemy
4: Popular Music as National Music
5: Canción as Case Study: The Domestic Politics of Vernacular Music in Mexico
6: Indigeneity and Fantastical Distance
Epilogue: On Incompleteness

Erscheinungsdatum	17.10.2025
Reihe/Serie	Oxford Studies in Music Theory
Zusatzinfo	94 music examples, 15 figures
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	178 x 244 mm
Gewicht	748 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Musiktheorie / Musiklehre
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
ISBN-10	0-19-779286-3 / 0197792863
ISBN-13	978-0-19-779286-5 / 9780197792865
Zustand	Neuware