Latinx Music Culture

Catalog description

This course traces the origins and evolutions of genres and styles of Latinx music in the United States during the 20th and 21st centuries. Through its chronological approach, the course places a significant emphasis on the geographies of Miami, San Antonio, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco as key sites of cultural production. Students consider the commercial appeal of crossover performers and independent musicians’ approaches to folk and underground music. Throughout the course, students interpret the aesthetic, semantic and symbolic properties of genres and styles, such as Latin rock, salsa and reggaeton, often in political and economic contexts. In the process, they are exposed to the stories of musicians, album producers, record shop owners, music critics and radio DJs involved in the creation and circulation of Latinx music—all cultural workers with their own transnational, generational, socioeconomic, racial-ethnic and gender-sexual identities.