Sorry for the late posting! It’s been a hectic end of term, but here some of my thoughts on  “the end of  popular culture” readings. The readings from this week all particularly take up the construction of cultural identity and its embodiment, quite literally in the text by Mary C. Beltrán, The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle and Patria Román-Velázquez’s The Embodiment of Salsa. Each texts takes its own approach to understanding hybridity and the negotiation that happens in the process. I particularly too up Patria Román-Velázquez’s text. This piece examines the construction of identity, specifically Latin American identities in London, through the embodiment of salsa. The author describes embodiment in this context as “the way in which body and music are informed by specific ideas of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity” and engages with “two theoretical explanations: one which considers the relationship between the body and music, and one which considers the cultural construction of bodies in the sense in which bodies are not neutral biological essences.” The author grounds the relationship between music, body and place, by turning to Raymond Williams and Susan McClary citing that, “the embodiment of salsa is approached as a two-fold process whereby bodies are experienced through music, when present, and whereby music (again, when present) is experienced through our bodies.” Velásquez notes, again referencing McClary, that this model is highly contextual and is contingent upon “socially constructed meanings” and “genre specific codes.” This highlights the importance of cultural practices and social norms that help inform the practice and performance of this relationship (between body and music) beyond “corporal movements and rhythms.” It is here the author reiterates their concern with the construction of the “Latinised body in relation to salsa” through these cultural and social contexts rather than just musicality. The author frames these contexts as historically constructed and lacking in “fixedness” to locale. Or more generally that cultural identities are constructed and therefor can exist and be experienced anywhere. Velázquez “attempts to highlight that ‘Latin’ is not a fixed category, but open to change and transformation, whilst acknowledging its continuity.” The author makes the argument for those performing the genre who have no natural, direct, or indirect “link with Latin America.” The author disputes the use of the word “natural” especially when it comes to who can inherently play or perform salsa, describing the genre as having to be “learned. “Despite assumptions about a ‘natural’ Latin affinity for dance and rhythm, in playing salsa, as in dancing, the rhythms have to be learnt.” Further deviating from any definition of the genre as natural or inherent to a single cultural identity, Velázquez frames salsa as a product of hybridization, so to speak, as it pulls from African rhythms and European melodic patterns. I found this to be interesting way to examine hybridity, as not specific to locale, and therein subject to evolving and redefining popular culture.