Search

An essay is presented on the localization of the bolero trio style and the mestizo panpipe tradition in La Paz, Bolivia after the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) in 1952. It summarizes Bolivia's economic goals, political agendas, and the initiatives to folklorize music. It also examines the activities and performances of the panpipe groups who received state support and public exposures during the MNR years such as the Los Choclos and Los Cebollitas.

The article discusses the social implications of bolero music. It states that bolero is a music of seduction and that this music accompanied Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in their movie "In the Mood of Love." Wong Kar-wai also explored the beauty of this music in his film "Happy Together" which starred Leslie Cheung and Leung as two gay male Hong Kong expatriates in Buenos, Aires, Argentina. The author also mentions that the tango, in its many erotic and sentimental ways, is the Buenos Airean equivalent of the Mexican-Caribbean bolero.

This essay analyzes Mexican American subjectivity and music to propose that musical forms associated with nonnormative gender and sexual subjectivities disrupt the conventional borders of canonical Mexican American music narratives, offering critical counter-histories that complicate accounts of gender and sexuality in the borderlands. It offers an argument that bolero—its form, lyrics, and performance—dramatizes nonnormative genders and sexualities, expanding the meaning of borderlands music beyond race and class resistance.

Aiming to overcome the characteristic sentimental discourse used in the literature on bolero in Colombia, this article explores this musical genre as a cultural product linked to the phonographic industry, radio broadcasting, and the film industry. Combining archival research and data collected in various interviews, the author explores the reception and consumption of bolero in Medellín between 1930 and 1950 with the purpose to analyze the listening practices that bring about bolero's deep root in popular tastes. The article's central hypothesis is that at the beginning bolero's consumption articulated local society's values and biases, because for middle classes—radio broadcasting's targeted audience—bolero represented a model of Latin American cosmopolitanism. Notions of modernity, elegance, and decorous were used to delimit the frontiers with subordinate classes by giving emphasis to differences of race and gender. In spite of this, some constitutive elements of bolero and the transformation of the listening practices opened ways to challenge and to modify social frontiers, giving rise to the expansion of the bolero's audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies (Canadian Association of Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CALACS)) is the property of Canadian Association of Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CALACS) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the development of the popular musical genre, the bolero, within the Hispanic Caribbean from the late 19th century to the 21st century. Issues addressed include: the particular cultural heritage of the Hispanic Caribbean; Creolisation, hybridity, syncretic cultural forms and the formation of pan-Caribbean discourses of identity; the dynamic importance of popular music within national cultural patrimony. Transnationality does not necessarily indicate deterritorialisation; the bolero clearly exemplifies, simultaneously, the contradictory double pull towards globalisation and the local. Its common location by critics as originating as an Afro-Hispanic vocal synthesis in the “trova” of Santiago de Cuba necessitates a debate of the notions of authenticity and origin. Whilst the bolero rapidly seems to be adopted as a representative form for Latin American culture as a whole, it can be argued that the key countries for its development are Cuba, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Although more than 100 years old, the bolero continues to enjoy popular success – a testimony to its capacity to evolve and fuse through dialogic processes rooted in its particular history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's experience of a cantina. He was seated with two favorite companions. At his left elbow is a juke-box which is playing what he seriously believes to be the most beautiful of all musical compositions, a bolero called Amor Perdida. At his right elbow was Mr. Orrin Beebe who is a confessed cousin of Lucius and has just opened a rival cantina on the other side of the square. They are blinking and squinting into the strong yellow sunlight of the square, and the dark natives are drifting meaninglessly about them like figures in a dream. Not far from their table is a wretched old dog, slowly dying.

This article focuses on "Amor Perdida," a script written by Tennessee Williams. "Amor Perdida" is titled after "Amor Perdido," a bolero written by Pedro Flores. According to the author, if in some respects "Amor Perdida" offers a version of the truth, then it is a version that elides some facts while embroidering others. The most that can be said with some confidence is that "Amor Perdida" was written between the end of September 1940 and the summer of 1945, when Williams made his second trip to Mexico.

The author studies the reference points from which the bolero has traditionally been studied and investigates its origin, the ways in which it is represented and symbolic consumption from a theoretical point of view, that is, as a cultural phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Analyzes some of the stylistic changes associated with Cuban `bolero' during the process of its transculturation to Mexico and its commercialization in the songs of Agustin Lara. Cuban bolero, as one of the first syntheses of vocal Cuban music in which European and African elements were mingled; Rhythmic transformation of the traditional bolero; Subsequent functions and meanings.

The article focuses on scholar and researcher Vanessa Knights. It discusses her contributions to Hispanic literature and music as well as the evolution of bolero in Spain, Latin America and the Caribbean. She held a doctor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and was a Spanish post lecturer in Newcastle University. Knights founded the association Women in Spanish and Portuguese Studies (WiPS) and was a co-organizer of VAMOS! Latin and Lusophone Cultural Festival. She served on the advisory and editorial board of "Music, Sound, and the Moving Image" and "Radical Musicology" journals.