Author Archives: randal lindsell

Hybridity and also the possible ‘end of popular culture’

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Again, I apologise for the lateness of this blog, and having not done last week’s either I just thought it might be easier for all you keen readers out there to do one more substantial post on 3 pieces…

The Velazquez piece is intriguing – especially for me as a music student – she quickly references Susan McClary’s ideology that music has the power to ‘make us our experience our bodies in accordance with its gestures and rhythms’ in a unique and unparalleled way – something which I would entirely agree with. For me, music taps into an emotional and sensual stimuli in our brains which in a completely unique way. She then goes on to discuss how the relationship between body and music can differ from culture to culture, which again is something I would agree with – salsa is the focus of this: The first thing she points out is the different ways instruments are used in performance of music from different cultures, for example how a guitar is used in rock, compared to how it is used in salsa (p118) – she notices how in rock music, guitar rhythms are more linear in terms of the way that they tend to follow the rhythm of the bass/kick drum, whereas in salsa guitar rhythms tend to swing across barlines (known as ‘anticipated rhythm) – this helps to create syncopation – which is probably the most characteristic trait of salsa music (and also of other types of music such as jazz/blues which have a lot in common with salsa). McClary would seem to agree with me here: she mentions near the end of the same page (118), how salsa has come to be known as an extremely musically flexible genre, because its musical structure is derived from African rhythms and more European style melodies. Similarly, blues originated from African rhythms, but because it was originally promulgated by Black Americans, there was the Western influence of the USA. As blues spread to Europe, and was adopted by many white Westerners (notably George Gershwin), this style of music was what some might call ‘polystylistic’, as it incorporated a range of different cultures.

Anyhow, back to the article (apologies for the tangent here!): page 119 is also very interesting as it touches upon how different forms of music are assimilated into different cultures, and then become developed in different ways – with salsa, it was exported to the UK, and took on a different form there, as it was developed by a different culture. Velazquez points out how people who learn salsa in the UK would have a different experience to people learning the musical form in Columbia, or other parts of Latin America, to which salsa is indigenous.

p123 – Velazquez discusses how ‘one of the ways a Latin musical identity is established is through the use of the Spanish language’ – however, this needs to be modified within the context of an English audience (in England) – most of whom will not understand Spanish, or just some very basic terms, such as ‘hola’, ‘amigo’ and ‘hermano’ (hermano means brother in Spanish for those who don’t know 😉 ).

 

Gomez-Pena reading

This reading is particularly interesting as it discusses the strategic use of the media by the guerrilla takeover in Mexico City – unlike any other takeover seen before! (all on p223) – he mentions how it has been unlike any other guerrilla seizure of power before because of the way in which they recognised the importance and power of the media. On p223, Gomez-Pena recognises how ‘from the outset, the ZLN was fully aware of the symbolic impact of their largely conceptual military actions’ – The ZLN stands for the Zapatista Liberation National Army. He then goes on to note how one of the leaders of the revolt ‘Subcomondante Marcos’ turned out to be a consumate ‘performancero’ – and went on to become ‘the latest pop hero in a noble tradition of pop activists’ (223) – this seems to me like a far more peaceful revolution than Mexico, and many other Latin American countries had received before!

Marcos, or ‘el Sup’ would then go on to become a sex symbol as leader, mainly because of his g ‘hazel eyes’ and also because no one had really seen him behind the ski mask! – the women all fell in love with him because of his mystery. However, p226 shows how he wasn’t really known at an international level – ‘though Marcos became the most famous Mexican celebrity in the world, no one knew who he really was’.

The Garcia Canclini reading on hybridisation is very interesting. The central theme of this piece is essentially that hybridisation is a consistent cycle (and an everlasting cycle) – it’s not a teleological process as was suggested by Vasconcelos in his theory of hybridisation in the his piece, ‘The Cosmic Race’, concerning mestizaje. Furthermore, he discusses how it is a process, and not a product and also how it is an extremely complex term: he believes that hybridisation defines distinction between what is popular culture and what IS NOT popular culture. Hybridisation avoids the levels of hierarchy which occur in transculturation and mestizaje, which I think is a very important conceptual point. On p223 he discusses what might be ‘the end of popular culture’ – however, what I think he is trying to get at is that it is impossible to define popular culture nowadays as it no longer has a fixed meaning. This might partly be due to how hybridisation affects the relationship between high/low/popular/not popular culture.

Discussion of Bellos/Ortega Readings

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These readings were very interesting (especially the Bellos, partly because I will probably write my paper on similar material, and because of my deep set love for the beautiful game (football, never soccer, please…).

The Nelson Ortega reading was intriguing, for a few reasons…the most important being the importance of the TV, and TV programming in Latin America. However, he importantly emphasises ‘telenovelas’. As he doesn’t directly define what a ‘telenovela’ is, I did some research on it. Indeed, they are very similar to what the Western world would define as soap operas, however they are importantly NOT the same as soap operas. They are much shorter than soap operas (they rarely run for longer than a year), but they are still much longer than most serials. A telenovela is best described as a ‘serial’ drama. On p64, Ortega notes how telenovelas have become ‘much more permeable to the changes in the genre, in the country, and in the audience’ since Radio Caracas Television revolutionised the genre with ‘Por estas calles’ (by Ibsen Martinez) in the early 1990s. Ortega implies that the first wave of telenovelas were slightly less serious than late waves. He notes on p65, how at first, telenovelas customarily ‘avoided references to to contemporary social life and current history’. Ortega then goes on to discuss how these 2 phases of telenovela: the cultural phase, which started in 1973, and the urban phase, which began in 1977. Essentially there isn’t a huge amount of change between the 2 waves, and there is a lot of overlap between the two, which he duly notes. Certainly the 2nd phase built from the first as it contains a lot of the same drama of the first (things such as love, sex, violence, relationships etc.).  He emphasises how melodrama is central to telenovelas on p68 too!

What I love about the Bellos reading, is the amount of emotion that is conveyed. Many people will say, football is just a game: I would say to that try going to one of the biggest derbies in the world: for example, Arsenal v Tottenham, Man United v Liverpool, Barcelona v Real Madrid, AC Milan v Inter Milan, Boca Juniors v River Plate: the list goes on and on. For the real, hardcore fans, football is more than just a culture: it’s a religion (to quote one of my heroes Skepta there). Unfortunately I don’t have time to go into more detail here (much as I would love to!) but rest assured I will be writing a football-based paper, so there will be plenty much more to come!

 

 

Thoughts on Ortiz/Millington pieces concerning ‘Transculturation’

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Apologies for the lateness on this one firstly!

I thought both of these pieces were extremely interesting, because they each provide their own slightly differing theories on what transculturation is and what the term can imply.

From the very start of his piece, Mark Millington is quick to point out how overuse of the term ‘transculturation’ can easily render the term ineffective; mainly due to how overuse shows an ‘inattention to precise definition’. Millington then discusses the difference between transculturation and hybridisation. This mainly occurs at the end of p256, and the beginning of p257.  Importantly, he recognises how hybridisation is a global term, and ‘has associations with post-structuralist postcolonialism because of the widespread acceptance of Homi Bhabha’s view of it’ (p257). I think it is important to know that Homi Bhabha himself is an Indian philosopher (and also current Director of Humanities at Harvard), who essentially defined the term in his own words in his book Narrative & Narration, published in 1990.  Bhabha views colonialism as something which continues to consistently pervade present day life, rather than an ideology which is locked in the past. This theory is drawn from Edward Said’s works, and insists that we our understanding of cross-cultural relations must be transformed. It is also possible to say that his work has transformed the study of colonialism by applying post-structuralist methodologies to colonial texts.

With this in mind, other possible ways of describing transculturation are discussed, for example, Millington says on p258 how ‘transculturation stands alone as a description of a process of mixing’.

It is worth mentioning how Millington’s piece was only written a few years ago, whereas Ortiz’s theories are taken from nearly 100 years ago! Hence Millington’s piece actually references Ortiz’s theories a fair bit!

Ortiz’s piece, concerns a more authentic view of transculturation, albeit far more dated than Millington’s, who has the advantage of foresight. One gets the general impression that Ortiz believes that everything is foreign in Cuba, ie its an amalgamation of other cultures. On p102, Ortiz defines transculturation as transition from one culture to another. Essentially he implies loss of culture on both sides as each culture is absorbed. So it’s different from acculturation, which has traditionally been a process of simply acquiring an another culture and possibly a more complex understanding. Indeed, he mentions how transculturation is process without end and constantly has room for new possibilities to be expressed. There is room for increasing complexity, rather than decreasing complexity.

Ideas concerning Campbell piece on Mexican Murals

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Firstly, there was a lot of material covered in this article, and I did not manage to analyse it all; however, the material surrounding this article, and also the background research I did made it significantly more interesting and also made it more understandable, as I could relate it to a political and historical context of the main people in this discourse.

The article written by Campbell discusses the problems, and decline of Mexican muralism, and the culture surrounding it. It seems to focus on a few names, but one most important name, that of Siqueiros. His full name was David Alfaro Siqueiros . With the help of Rivera and Orozco, he is thought to have been one of the three founders of Mexican muralism. Being a Marxist, he often encountered struggles with the law, as the USA sought to stifle any traits of Communism during WWII/Cold War afterwards, during the time of when he was painting.

What interested me most about this, was how much of an issue politics could be in the production of art, and how political discourse, in the case of Mexican muralism, has dominated it for the last half-century or thereabouts. One of the things which interested me greatly was how many of the original Mexican murals were, albeit not strictly, constructed in the vision of Jose Vasconcelos, who was the Minister of Education in Mexico during the years 1921-21, President Alvaro Obregon. He was a revolutionary minister who initiated massive educational reforms in both school and university contexts. Equally importantly, he helped Mexican muralism to flourish for the next 5 decades.

The political significance of muralism is referenced multiple times during this article, for example on p31, where Octavio Paz noted that by the late 1970s Mexican mural painting belonged to what might be called the the wax museum of Mexican nationalism. Furthermore, on p39, the political significance of the mural is then re-emphasised, as the act of signing one specific mural causes outrage within the artistic community, and overall popular community. Also on p29, with the destruction of Mexican muralism; one feels like it is the centre point of urban Mexican culture and it’s almost like people aren’t even interested that it’s disappearing/lack of care for it?

I would argue that the paradox here is that muralism needed Mexican nationalism in order to dominate Mexican art culture, but simultaneously many people felt that this nationalism undermined and even restricted any possible counter-culture within the art form.

The decline of the ‘Mexican school’ after Siqueiros shows how important he was in Mexican muralism, but also perhaps how much of the culture revolved around him, and really relied on him – without Siqueiros, we might not be studying about muralism today!

 

 

 

 

Thoughts on the Peter Wade article conerning ‘mestizaje’

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Another week, another load of work, unfortunately only got to read the mestizaje article by Peter Wade which was very interesting. Firstly, what took my interest was by how malleable the term ‘mestizaje’ is; on p240 he tells us how scholars acknowledge that ‘mestizaje’ does not have a single meaning within the Latin American context, and can have meanings of sameness and difference. This strikes me, as it appears that this is one of many terms which are extremely malleable and open to interpretation in this course. Naturally this creates a great amount of discussion surrounding the term – which makes up a significant part of this piece.

Due to the all inclusiveness of the term, the mestizo is seen to be someone who can incorporate or even inherit elements of other cultures alien to their cultural origins (discussed on p249). However, Wade is quick to point out that elements of original race aren’t disbanded in mestizoness – they are meant to be represented in the fusion of the mestizo (p245).

It was interesting to notice that more specifically in Columbia, the idea that the body is shaped by biological and cultural process is related to origins with racial associations …the example of Penaloza (composer) who witnessed an argument between band director/player – essentially said that to play the style of the region you had to consume the food of the region and be part of it as a whole. A further example of this is on p248 – where sambrosa/sexual fission is associated with blackness in dancing. This slightly ties in to what he is saying on p243 – where he argues that the idea of ‘mestizoness’ needs black people (often referred to as ‘los negros’) in order to exist – is this similar to how Peronism paradoxically needed the wealthy elite to exist?

Conversely, Stutzman ‘famously defined mestizaje as an ‘ all-inclusive ideology of exclusion’, a system of ideas that appeared to include everyone as a potential mestizo, but actually excluded black and indigenous people’ (p241). Quite different to what follows on p243: ‘the very idea of mixture depends fundamentally on the idea not only of whiteness, but also of blackness and indigenousness.’

What interested me most was the notion of how mestizaje can be enhanced through popular music which can simultaneously encourage diversity. This fundamentally shows how powerful music is (which becomes increasingly apparent through discussion later into the article), and how much of a cornerstone music continues to be for ‘mestizaje’ – music is very fluid, as it is often considered a language without words which everyone can understand.

 

 

Arguedas/Asturias Readings – some thoughts…

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In my opinion, I think that these sets of readings have probably been the most interesting yet, simply because I found them the most captivating, especially through the colourful use of language, specifically in the piece by Miguel Asturias.

The tale written by Asturias, is I assume meant to be representing Guatemalan myths, and seems like somewhat of an attempt to preserve Guatemalan culture. This is consistently displayed by the gushing use of colourful language throughout, for example, as early as page 3, Asturias talks about ‘magic resins’, ‘coloured earth’ and ‘dust of stones magnetic with thoughts of music’. This certainly keeps in line with mythical and magical purpose of this piece.

Simply because of the context of the Asturias and Guatemalan culture, it is easy to draw connotations out of this work. Asturias was most famous for his work ‘El Señor Presidente’, which was effectively an outright vilification of then dictator president Manuel Estrada Cabrera though a representation of life under a savage dictator. For example, in this piece, adjectvies such as ‘petrified’ and ‘cautious’ might evoke the mood of a frightened country, being ruled by an imposing dictator.

It is slightly ironic in some senses, given the context of Latin American and South American politics; the 20th Century, especially for South America has been mired in political violence and dictatorships, with notable examples under Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the 1970s and under Fidel Castro in Cuba around a similar time.

The legend of the Crystal Mask (2nd part of the Asturias), takes on a very different tone. The repeated use of ‘yes’, on the first page of this piece creates a very insistent tone, even a stab like quality, which makes one think that this could be a charged up politician, or president addressing a large crowd. In general, I feel like the legend of the crystal mask is more of a celebration of stone works and different rock types more than anything else.

The Arguedas reading is very different. The Pongo’s dream is extremely biblical, and draws on traditional religious ideals that the in the afterlife the poor man becomes one of God’s angels, whereas the rich man doesn’t enjoy such benefits, as it is seen that he has already enjoyed these benefits on earth. I guess in a way it also tries to preserve traditional Peruvian culture. However, it is more a celebration of a plight of the poor man, ‘the pongo’ and how the story completely flips on its head in the very last paragraph. Certainly for me it was one of those feel good stories that not only had a positive moral message, but also had a nice ending!

Thoughts on the Rowe/Schelling reading

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(N.B. I had an extremely busy week – including an essay I had to hand in for my home uni (Manchester) so my comments and thoughts are only really on the first half of the reading – sorry for it being a couple of hours late too Jon!)

Well firstly let me start by saying what struck me the most on the first page of this: ‘neither the colonial nor republican regime could expunge the memory of an Andean, Aztec, and a Mayan civilisation’. This automatically reveals to me the power of Latin American culture, and the longevity of it.

 

Arguedas suggests that ‘cosmic solitude’ has been the key characteristic of Queeha poetry during the colonial period of occupation – and this is a response to Spanish colonialism. This and other examples from the reading show that more recent Andean culture has been reactionary, and specifically fighting against something. (could this be linked in some form to Peronism?…)

Furthermore, what interested me is how parts of Andean culture have become entirely disconnected from traditional rituals (p59) – especially in terms of the music: for example, he goes on to note how the ‘chicha’ style combines traditional Andean melodic style fused with electric guitar and tropical rhythm. One might mention how this is also common in other types of Latin American music, for example in Mexico, where the narcocorridos movement developed the traditional ‘corrido’.

The discussion of development of musical practice and tradition is then continued on p61 where the notion is posed that updates in technology have created an increased conformity in tonality with Western music. However, I would argue that even though this might be somewhat true, the idea that there is an overlap in musical culture is probably far fetched, simply due to the distinct timbral qualities of Andean music, which are in large part extremely different to those of Western modern music. Yes, there has been a significant amount of fusion between different musical cultures, but there are still clear distinctions to be made – despite the influence of Western music/technology on Andean music.

Sorry for the focus on music but I can’t really help that (being a music student!)…finally, some unanswered questions of mine that I originally kept in the notes part of this but feel that they’re worth including (for discussion purposes!)…

the of Andean culture being the most alternative form of civilisation?

The idea that the past can be used to create an alternative future is very interesting.

Andeans don’t hold similar notions of time and motion that Western civilisation does?

Notion posed on p53 that it is very much a case of ‘their culture processing ours rather than vice versa’ – is this unfair/naive? It might well have been the other way round? And does this initial statement have immediate negative connotations? – ‘it would be wrong to assume that Andean Culture needed Western utopianism in order to create an idea of futurity’?

Thoughts on the Peron/Borges Readings

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The Perón reading interested me significantly – it was intriguing to see how a humble woman had overcome struggles in order to get where she got. Page 52 in particular shows her love, and the also the duty she felt towards her husband. Page 54 is even more interesting, as she describes how ‘nearly all’ of the supposedly influential men surrounding Perón at the time ended up betraying him; so much for loyalty! It is therefore ironic on their part, as they considered he ‘little more than an opportunist’! How can they call her that when they themselves were feigning loyalty…

I feel that her tone throughout is fantastically aggressive and spirited! Indeed, it seems that the idea of passion is at the centrepiece of her ideology, and what she believes should be engrained into the minds of all true Perón supporters! She goes as far as calling herself a fanatic, as she seems to believe that fanaticism is the only way of showing true passion; for example she talks about how fanaticism is ‘the only heart that God gave the heart to win its battles’. She also notes how ‘Quasi-Peronists’ made her feel sick – these people mainly being what she would describe as ‘tepid, the indifferent and the reserved’. I am certainly a fan of the passion with which she writes as it makes for a very entertaining read!

With the Borges – ‘Celebration of the Monster’, I feel like the descriptive language used (especially on the first page at least), is deliberately ugly! Are things like ‘pump a little pasta into the guts’ said to make us feel deliberately sick? Certainly the writing style in this piece is far less formal than Perón’s, with a more casual, slangy (perhaps Americanised) twang to it.

Ultimately, it is tricky to understand who ‘the monster’ actually is? Possibly it might be the every day monster in his life? Probably for Borges, ‘the monster’ is a representation of his poor health? He certainly hints at that, especially on the first page of this article. This Nelly character keeps coming up in discussion too – and one kind of assumes that he is either referring to his wife, or even his sister with this Nelly persona…or maybe Nelly is just a fictional persona….

I feel like in some ways these texts are certainly related – maybe because Borges was famously Anti-Perón; he even refused to hang pictures of both Evita/Juan up in his house (on request of the authorities) after the death of Evita. Perhaps the monster is indeed Juan Perón himself?…

Hi!

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Hi there everyone,

I’m Randal (Lindsell). Actually studying here on exchange – unlike most of you guys I’m from the UK and my home uni is UoM (short for University of Manchester!). I will be here for just this semester till the end of April! My major is Music, so most of the time I will be spent over there, in the Irving, or out skiing at Whistler/Grouse etc. ;). V. interested by this module and what is to come!

See you all in class tomorrow!