Title: Representing the good neighbor : music, difference, and the Pan American dream /
Authors: Hess, Carol A.
Publisher: Oxford University Press,
Year: 2013
Subjects: Music Latin America History and criticism.; Music United States Latin American influences.; Pan-Americanism.
Abstract: In Representing the Good Neighbor: Music, Difference, and the Pan American Dream, Carol A. Hess investigates the reception of Latin American art music in the US during the twentieth century. Hers is the first study to probe Latin American art music in relation to Pan Americanism, or the idea that the American nations are bound by common aspirations. Under the Good Neighbor policy, crafted by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to cement hemispheric solidarity amid fears of European fascism, Latin American art music flourished and US critics applauded it as "universal." During the Cold War, however, this repertory assumed a very different status. While the United States supported Latin American military dictators to assuage fears that communism would overwhelm the hemisphere, musical works were increasingly objectified through essentializing adjectives such as "exotic," distinctive," or "national"--through the filter of difference.^
Contents: The roots of musical Pan Americanism -- Carlos Chávez and ur-classicism -- The good neighbor onstage : Carlos Chávez's H.P. and dialectical indigenism -- Caliban and unsublimated primitivism : Villa-Lobos at the 1939 World's Fair -- The golden age : Pan Americanist culture, war, and the triumph of universalism -- Alberto Ginastera's Bomarzo in the United States : antinationalism and the Cold War -- Memory, music, and the Latin American Cold War : Frederic Rzewski's 36 variations on "The people united will never be defeated!"