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37
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Introduction
My research currently focuses on music education and social action in Latin America, principally the programs El Sistema (Venezuela) and the Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín (Colombia).
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Publications
Publications (37)
A partir de veintitrés entrevistas con profesionales, este artículo examina críticamente el campo de la práctica musical de orientación social en Colombia. Comienza analizando la noción del impacto social del hacer musical, centrándose en los términos “música” e “impacto”, ambos considerados insuficientes para los complejos procesos en juego. A con...
Supuestamente, las orquestas infanto-juveniles tienden a comprometerse con la justicia social, pero ha surgido evidencia que acusa que aquello responde mas a la construccion de un mito. El presente estudio propone como objetivo explorar las visiones institucionales que exponen los directores titulares de las orquestas propias de la Fundacion de Orq...
Findings and reflections from the Colombia branch of the project “Music for social impact: practitioners’ contexts, work and beliefs,” funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. See the project website at https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/MFSI.
A paper that I gave at the 2021 SIMM (Social Impact of Making Music) conference on the ethics of studying El Sistema and similar programs.
A discussion of social action through music through the lens of Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community, by Kenneth J. Gergen
The Afterword offers a critical perspective on the linking of music with the notion of social inclusion. It looks at lessons from research on the world's largest and most famous music and social inclusion programme, the Venezuelan youth orchestra scheme El Sistema. It also examines theoretical critiques of social inclusion from several geographical...
This article offers a critical response to the special issue of Music & Arts in Action on youth orchestras and Sistema-inspired programs (Vol. 8 No. 2, 2023). I argue that the editorial's framing of the field and its proposed research agenda are based on a mischaracterization of books by Tricia Tunstall and myself, and fail to take account of impor...
Further reflections on rethinking social action through music, two and a half years after the publication of my book on this topic
Critical perspectives on El Sistema and Social Action through Music (SATM) have been accumulating since 2014. This topic appears complex and the research supports considerable ambivalence, yet at the level of policy and public discussion, simple, positive narratives of SATM continue to dominate. Why does El Sistema continue to be regarded as a worl...
Overview of my book Rethinking Social Action Through Music: In Search of Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín's Music Schools. Includes link to free download (open access).
Pre-proof version - please do not cite.
Published version available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/717148/pdf
For the published version, see “Citizens or Subjects? El Sistema in Critical Perspective.” In Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis, edited by David Elliott, Wayne Bowman, and Marissa Silverman, 313–338. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Within the growing field of publications on El Sistema and Sistema-inspired programmes around the world, a marked divide can be observed between the findings of critical academic studies and commissioned evaluations. Using evaluations of El Sistema in Venezuela and Aotearoa New Zealand as our principal case studies, we argue that this gulf can be e...
A powerful and eulogistic narrative has evolved around the Venezuelan National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras, better known as El Sistema. Recently, however, critical perspectives have begun to emerge from the academic sphere. Nevertheless, researchers have faced an acute shortage of documentary resources relating to the programme's hist...
A lo largo de su historia, el Sistema Nacional de Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela, mejor conocido como El Sistema, ha sido el punto focal de una narrativa poderosa y encomiástica. No obstante, recientemente han comenzado a surgir más perspectivas críticas del mundo académico. Sin embargo, los investigadores se han enfrentado a una con...
Some thoughts on the recently published book "Playing for Their Lives: The Global El Sistema Movement for Social Change Through Music"
Este articulo es una compilacion de reflexiones con respecto a las investigaciones sobre El Sistema y a la recepcion del primer (y hasta la fecha unico) libro academico sobre este programa. Resalta la incertidumbre en el ambito internacional de El Sistema frente a la informacion que esta saliendo sobre el programa en Venezuela, y propone varios arg...
This is a translation of an article published in Spanish in the Revista Internacional de Educación Musical 4 (2016): http://www.revistaeducacionmusical.org/index.php/rem1.
This article consists of a series of reflections on research on El Sistema and the reception of the first (and to date only) academic book on the program. It underlines the unce...
This article focuses on three recent manifestations of cumbia in Buenos Aires, Argentina: digital cumbia released by ZZK Records; retro cumbia orchestras; and a newer strand of digital cumbia,
música turra.
The first two are identified with the middle class, whereas the third emerged from the
clases populares
(‘popular classes’).
Música turra
is un...
Between 1997 and 2010, the Havana hip hop scene was the subject of some two dozen documentaries, the majority by non-Cubans. This article considers how the act of film making may participate in the dual process of transnational connection and division, and explores the politics and ethics of transnational cultural production, reception, and represe...
The terms underground, alternative and commercial are widely used in discussions of popular music scenes in Havana and around the world. In Cuba, the words alternative and underground are often used interchangeably, in critical as well as popular discourse. I propose a working definition of, and a distinction between, these terms in Havana, since t...
Cuba Rebelión: Underground Music in Havana (2008) is billed as a "documentary about the musical underground of Cuba, and their struggle against the present regime." The trailer describes "an underground scene of young musicians who, despite their creative suppression and censorship, have the courage to make a statement." This article questions thi...
Vernacular villancicos featuring African characters, such as A siolo fl asiquiyo by the Mexican composer Juan Gutirrez de Padilla (1590-1664), have become staples highlights, even of the Latin American Baroque repertory. Yet there has been little consideration of the historical meanings of these colonialist representations of African slaves or of t...
Studies of Cuban rap have focused on issues of race and resistance, but have paid less attention to hip hop as urban discourse and practice. Through a combination of ethnographic study of Havana's “underground” rap scene and textual analysis, this article explores rap as a response to recent changes in the physical and social fabric of the Cuban ca...
