Music, Race, and Nation: From Música Tropical to Rap
Date: Monday, March 20, 2006
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Troy Moore Library
General Classroom Building -939
Georgia State University
Corner of Decatur Street and Peachtree Center Ave.
(2 Blocks from Five Points Marta Station)
Event Notes
This talk will explore changing constructions of "Africa" and "blackness" in Colombian popular music from the middle decades of the twentieth century, when "música tropical" became fashionable, to the turn of the millennium, when rap music has become popular in the country's urban barrios.
Additional Event Notes
Peter Wade (Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, Cambridge University, 1981-1985) is professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester in Manchester, UK.
From 1985 to 1988, he held a Research Fellowship at Queens' College, Cambridge, focusing on black migrants from the Pacific coastal region of Colombia to the city of Medellín, Colombia.
His academic interests center on race and ethnicity in Latin America, with particular reference to black populations. He has done fieldwork in Colombia, looking at processes of racial discrimination, black cultural identities, and the black social movement and constitutional reform. He has also traced the social history of Colombian popular music in the twentieth century and its connections with ideas about nation and race.
Recent publications include:
- Race and Ethnicity in Latin America. (London: Pluto Press, 1997).
- Music, Race and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
- Race, Nature and Culture: An Anthropological Approach. (London: Pluto Press, 2002).
- 'Globalization and Appropriation in Latin American Popular Music (review essay)'. Latin American Research Review 38(1), Feb 2004.
- 'Race and Human Nature'. Anthropological Theory 4(2): 157-172. 2004.
- 'Images of Latin American Mestizaje and the Politics of Comparison'. Bulletin of Latin American Research 23(1), 2004.
- 'The Colombian Pacific in Perspective'. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 7(2): 2-33, 2002.
- 'Understanding “Africa” and “Blackness” in Colombia: Music and the Politics of Culture'. In Afro-Atlantic Dialogues: Anthropology in the Diaspora. Edited by Kevin Yelvington. (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press). In press.
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information, please contact Prof. Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste at 404.651.2265.