Soundscapes of Narco Silence
Journalists protest in silent march in Mexico City, Courtesy of the Knight Foundation
Since the drug war began, the lives of approximately 95,000 people have been claimed, with an estimated total of 26,000 disappearances (“Continued Humanitarian Crisis at the Border” June 2013 Report). At the University of Texas, Pan American – an institution located 25 miles north of Reynosa, Mexico (a Mexican city that has been hard hit by drug violence in recent years) – I teach students who have been dramatically impacted by drug war violence. Many have close relatives affected or hear horrific stories of those who have been kidnapped by the cartels; many fear traveling to Mexico to visit loved ones as a result and, in some cases, they report having relatives involved in the drug cartel business. Dinorah Guerra, psychotherapist and head of the Red Cross in Reynosa, describes the devastating psychological and physical toll: “There is a huge risk for people’s self esteem. They cannot speak about what they have seen or what they have heard. [They] lose [themselves] and lose [their] identity” (qtd. in Pehhaul 2010).
I name the space of the drug war and its resulting terror in the U.S.-Mexico border the “soundscape of narco silence.” This soundscape includes death and intimidation, from the brutal killings of news reporters by cartel members to the decapitation of citizen-activists who use online media to alert communities of narco checkpoints. It also consists of those powerful acts that call attention to silence as a tactic of terror. The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, for instance, brought together tens of thousands of people in Mexico to speak out against drug violence through silent marches. Cultural productions, such as narcocorridos, or contemporary drug ballads that document the cross-border drug economy, also become part of the soundscape. The narcocorridos function as a powerful critical response to silence and fear because they enable those in Mexican society, as Jorge Castañeda, author of El Narco: La Guerra Falllida, explains, “to come to terms with the world around them, and drug violence is a big part of that world. The songs are born out of a traditional Mexican cynicism: This is our reality, we’ve gotten used to it” (Qtd. in Josh Kun 2010).
In this blog post, I focus on the role of U.S. Latina/o theater produced in the South Texas border region as it responds to the soundscape of narco silence. Building on David W. Samuels, Louis Meintjes, Ana Maria Ochoa, and Thomas Porcello’s definition of “soundscapes” in “Soundscapes: Towards a Sounded Anthropology” as “the material spaces of performance and ceremony that are used or constructed for the purpose of propagating sound” (330), I suggest that soundscapes of silence in theater function as material spaces of performance that focus the public’s attention on silence – with the intent of intervening in acts that propagate silence and fear. Soundscapes of narco silence are characterized not only by violence and terror, but by cultural productions that function as forms of critical resistance – those works that focus the publics’ attention on the economy of silence and fear that fuels the drug war, and in the process, enable communities to cope with narco violence.
Journalists protest in silent march in Mexico City, Courtesy of the Knight Foundation
To closely listen to the soundscape of narco silence, I engage with the play script and production of Tanya Saracho’s play El Nogalar at South Texas College Theatre (STC) under the direction of Joel Jason Rodriguez in McAllen, Texas in June 2013. The play was first produced at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in April 2011, with a West Coast premiere at the Fountain Theater in Los Angeles in January 2012. I critically analyze the STC Theatre production’s incorporation of a multi-genre soundtrack that included narcocorridos, rancheras, and nortec (norteño + techno). I argue that this soundtrack focused audiences’ attention not only on the devastating effects of silence, but also the function of silence as a form of capital for those most excluded in society. I also offer a brief critical listening of the script’s rendering of silence through character dialogue and stage directions.
El Nogalar tells the story of an upper-class Mexican family comprised of three generations of women (Maité, Valeria, and Anita) whose land and home in the fictionalized estate of Los Nogales in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and its adjacent nogalar (pecan orchard), are under threat by the maña (drug cartels) moving into the region. The play focuses on the women’s responses to the drug war economy as a result of their different relationships to home (both their estate and the space of Mexico). It also centers the experiences of Dunia, their maid, and López, a former field worker who now works for the maña.
STC Theater Production of El Nogalar. Photo Credit: Miguel Salazar
Cecilia Ballí, in her article “Calderón’s War: The Gruesome Legacy of Mexico’s Antidrug Campaign,” explains the particular circumstances of marginalized men in this society: “The worst casualties of this ‘civil war’ were the estimated 7 million young men to whom society had closed all doors, leaving them the options of joining a drug gang or of enlisting in the military, both of which assured imprisonment of death” (January 2012, 48). With the characters López and Dunia, the play asks audiences then to listen to the impact of the drug war on the most vulnerable populations in Mexico and the US-Mexico border region.
The play script conveys how “narco silence” can be used by those who either seek to preserve traditional class hierarchies (the story of the matriarch Maité) or to survive and profit in the new drug economy (the story of López). “Narco silence,” a term coined by reporter Jonathan Gibler in his book To Die in Mexico, refers to “not the mere absence of talking, but rather the practice of not saying anything. You may talk as much as you like, as long as you avoid the facts. Newspaper headlines announce the daily death toll, but the articles will not tell you anything about who the dead were, who might have killed them or why. No detailed descriptions based on witness testimony. No investigation” (2011, 23). In an early exchange between López and Dunia, López defends “narco silence” as a strategy of survival:
STC Theater Production of El Nogalar. Photo Credit: Miguel Salazar
DUNIA: Why are you the only one they leave alone, Memo?
LÓPEZ:….
DUNIA: All the men your age. Killed. Why Memo? (Beat).
LÓPEZ: Because I know when to keep my mouth shut which is not something I can say for you….
DUNIA: So that’s all it takes to be best of friends with the Maña? That doesn’t seem so hard to do? (American Theatre Magazine July/August 2011, 74).
Later in the play, Dunia, heeding López’s advice, offers a powerful observation of how “narco silence” enables her community to cope with death: “We all just walk around like we’re a movie on mute. You can see people’s mouths moving but all you hear is the static (my italics)” (American Theatre Magazine July/August 2011, 73-74).
The STC Theatre production enhanced the script’s soundscape of narco silence through its sound design, with a soundtrack that included rancheras, narcocorridos, norteño and nortec. This music provided audiences with a connection to the world of Los Nogales and captured each character’s process of coping with narco violence. For example, Maité’s soundtrack consists of several rancheras, such as Lola Beltran singing “Los Laureles” and Chavela Vargas’s powerful rendition of “Que te vaya Bonito.” Beltran’s “Los Laureles” – a cancion ranchera that includes Beltran’s powerful female vocals and mariachi orchestra instrumentation – invites audiences to hear Maité’s nostalgia and desire for an idealized Mexican society and her wish to preserve traditional class hierarchies.
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Vargas’s powerful rendition of “Que te vaya Bonito” captures Maite’s pain and suffering as she loses her home to the cartels. In Vargas’s version of “Que te Vaya Bonito” – a song about love and abandonment – audiences hear Vargas’s choking and sobbing voice, accompanied by a single guitar.
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Vargas’s voice conveys, what Lorena Alvarado powerfully argues, is “the body’s dilemma between the hysteria of sobbing and the intelligibility of words, between resignation and retribution” (2010, 4). Vargas’s powerful singing also conveys, as Alvarado further describes, “un nudo en la garganta,” a common expression in Spanish that describes “the knot in the throat, when one cannot speak because words will not come out, but the desperate, or quiet, breath of tears” (Alvarado 2010, 5).
To sonically register the drug cartel economy and lifestyle underlying the “new” Los Nogales, the soundtrack also included narcocorridos. The first sounds we hear in the play are from the narcocorrido “El Carril Número Tres” – which includes two acoustic guitars and an electric bass – by Los Cuates de Sinaloa.
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“El Carril Número Tres” – tells the story of a secret “lane number three” that allows a Mexican drug lord to freely go back and forth between the US and Mexico because he makes a deal with the CIA and DEA. With this focus on the US government’s involvement in the drug trade, the song centers how silences north of the US-Mexico border have perpetuated drug violence.
The music also included nortec, with songs by the Mexican Institute of Sound, particularly the track “Mexico,” which is a critique of the Mexican government’s complicity with the narcos.
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With “Mexico,” audiences hear a fusion of norteño, electronic, and hip-hop with lyrics that use the symbols of Mexican national identity and culture to focus the public’s attention on violence and terror. With the lyrics “green like weed, white like cocaine, red your blood” (referencing the Mexican flag) and “at the sound of the roar of the cannon” (alluding to the national anthem), the song powerfully invokes the visual and sonic soundscape of violence that terrorize Mexican residents. With this charged critique of government corruption, “Mexico” momentarily interrupts the soundscape of narco silence rendered in the play script and rest of the soundtrack.
Ultimately, the production’s combination of rancheras, narcocorridos, and nortec captured the class tensions in Mexican society and emphasized the play’s critique of class structures that have enabled drug war violence to persist. With this range of music, the director explains he wanted to “maneuver between the [various] aspects of [the story]: the nostalgia, the corridos, the narcocorridos, and also this fusion of saying ‘we want something more,’ and so that was the whole aspect of it; the blending of the old, the new, and what the present is” (Interview with author July 2013).
The production also deliberately incorporated the sound of silence, particularly in the final scene. By the end, López buys the Los Nogales estate, thereby increasing his class status and social power. Saracho’s stage directions in this final moment indicate “an interpretive sound of trees falling. Now don’t go cueing chainsaws because it’s not literal. Just make me feel trees are falling. Along with the upper class” (87). The play’s reference to the staging of “an interpretive sound of trees falling” brings to mind the philosophical question: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” We might then interpret the final sounds of El Nogalar as inviting audiences to listen attentively to the soundscape of narco silence, implicating audiences as social actors in the politics of the drug war that continue to devastate Mexican society.
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Featured Image: Journalists Protest against rising violence during march in Mexico, Courtesy of the Knight Foundation
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Marci R. McMahon received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California with affiliations in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. She is an assistant professor at the University of Texas, Pan American, where she teaches Chicana/o literature and cultural studies, gender studies, and theater and performance in the Departments of English and Mexican American Studies. She is the author of Domestic Negotiations: Gender, Nation, and Self-Fashioning in US Mexicana and Chicana Literature and Art published by Rutgers University Press’ Series Latinidad: Transnational Cultures in the United States (May 2013). Her essays on Chicana literature and cultural studies have been published in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies; Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of MALCS; and Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. Her second book project, Sounding Latina/o Studies: Staging Listening in US Latina/o Theater explores how contemporary Latina/o drama uses vocal bodies and sound to engage audiences with recurring debates about nationhood, immigration, and gender.
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REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:
Listening to the Border: “’2487’: Giving Voice in Diaspora” and the Sound Art of Luz María Sánchez–D. Ines Casillas
Quebec’s #casseroles: on participation, percussion and protest–Jonathan Sterne
Deejaying her Listening: Learning through Life Stories of Human Rights Violations— Emmanuelle Sonntag and Bronwen Low
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Sound at ASA 2012
This year, #ASA2012 is being held in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the Puerto Rico Convention Center from November 15-18. San Juan provides a historic opportunity for the interdisciplinary scholars working under the banner of “American Studies” to ponder the theme, “Dimensions of Empire and Resistance: Past, Present, and Future,” from a site that has been an “unincorporated territory” of the United States since it was seized from Spain (its former imperial occupiers) after the Spanish American War in 1898. According to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Insular Cases an “unincorporated territory” is “a territory appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States.” Puerto Ricans have been citizens of the United States since 1917, despite not having voting representatives in Washington D.C. and being unable to vote in mainland presidential elections. Just a few days ago, Puerto Ricans voted on yet another referendum to become a state—there have been 3 such votes, one in 1967, 1993, and 1998, but this is the first where statehood won a majority of the votes—an issue that both U.S. presidential candidates were all but silent on in their recent campaigns. This vote suggests a sea change in Puerto Rican-U.S. relations–what an exciting time to hold ASA in San Juan!–and I’d also like to think this particular meeting portends an exciting shift in sound studies as well.
For one thing, sound studies scholars in particular will be discussing power and imperialism loudly and clearly at this meeting. Sounding Out!’s Managing Editor, Liana Silva, will be participating in a roundtable at 8:00 a.m Sunday morning entitled “Doing Disciplinarity: Puerto Rican Studies is/as/with American Studies” where she, along with Marta S. Rivera Monclova (Framingham State College), Leonardo L. Flores Feliciano (University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez), and Sara Poggio (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) will discuss the fraught relationship between the two fields of study, particularly in relation to America’s imperial history.
And then, the fully signed-sealed-and delivered ASA Sound Studies Caucus hosts two official panels that explicitly consider the politics of sound and listening. The first is on on Friday from 4:00-5:45: “Resisting Silences: Re-sounding Race, Gender, and Empire” chaired by Sherrie Tucker (University of Kansas) and featuring the research of Marci McMahon (University of Texas, Pan American), Genevieve Yue (University of Southern California and yours truly, Jennifer Stoever-Ackerman (SUNY Binghamton); and the second on Saturday from 4:00-5:45: “Sound and the State: The Politics of Acoustic Power” chaired by Jonathan Sterne (McGill University) and featuring the research of David Suisman (University of Delaware) and Peter Tschirhart (University of Virginia) with a comment by Mara Mills (New York University). From the racial dynamics of postwar New York City’s noise laws to “Noise Exposure Maps,” Sonic Booms to the technics of female silence, ASA’s sound studies scholars continue the sociopolitical interventions of last year’s “Sound Clash: Listening to America Studies” special issue of American Quarterly. This issue, edited by Josh Kun and Kara Keeling, explicitly focused on issues of race, gender, class sexuality, and nation (by the way, if you misplaced your copy, Johns Hopkins press has just released the issue in book volume form).
The Sound Studies Caucus also continues its very important organizational role this year by bringing scholars together for its second annual Sound Studies Caucus Meet-and-Greet, which will be co-hosted by none other than Sounding Out! !!! We have been thrilled to work with co-organizers Inés Casillas (UCSB), Roshanak Kheshti (UCSD) and Deb Vargas (UCR) to plan a get together at the District Bar of the nearby Sheraton (200 Convention Way, 787-993-3500, Map) where we will solicit volunteers and chat about the activities of the caucus this year and next. Sounding Out! will be officially welcoming the members of its new advisory board at the meet-and-greet, as well as sharing details about current and future Calls for Posts, and pumping up the crowd for what’s ahead in the blog for 2013. If you are in San Juan for the conference, please join us!
“Grupo Mania and My Puerto Rican Flag,” by Flickr User Photo Prodigy
Overall, while sound studies work is somewhat lighter than in years past—a trend I also noted at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies meeting earlier this year—the research on sound, listening, and aurality at this year’s #ASA2012 is, more than ever before, focused on questions of race, gender, and sexuality in ways that, as Keeling and Kun stated in their introduction to Sound Clash: “can enable an interdisciplinary American studies in which knowledges and insights that have not been perceptible to our dominant intellectual paradigms might be heard or heard anew” (453). I am particularly enthused about what promises to be excellent new research in African American Studies—especially the panels “Ask Your Mama: The Sound(ed) Poetics and Politics of Black Feminist Internationalism” (Saturday, 12:00-1:45) and “Blackness and the Sacred Performative” (Thursday 4:00-5:45, featuring SO! writer Ashon Crawley [Duke]—and Chican@/Latino Studies—notably roundtables on “The Talking Cure for Empire? Oral History and Testimonio in the Twenty-first Century” (Friday, 10:00-11:45) and “Subjectivity and Sound: Rethinking Genre in Chicano/a Music” (Friday, 2:00-3:45). There are also multiple panels that elicit transnational conversations about audio culture—“Resisting Silences: Re-sounding Race, Gender, and Empire” (Friday 4:00-5:45) and “Jazz and the Voices of Empire and Resistance” in particular (Saturday, 10:00-11:45)—and enable transmedia comparisons—especially “Terrains of Modernity, Aural Research, and Critique” (Sunday, 2:00-3:45).
Whereas the downturn in sound studies work at SCMS 2012 was due primarily to a scheduling snafu—doublebooked with the 2012 EMP—I think the ASA’s is perhaps due to the beginnings of a sea change (a new wave?) in sound studies. It is certainly not attributable to a lack of interest or scholarship—the emails I get for Sounding Out! alone can attest to growing numbers of truly enthusiastic scholars working on sound and listening—therefore, I put forth that sound studies is entering a moment of reflection. It is no longer enough to breathlessly sound out new sonic terrain; we are moving beyond the period when sound alone could be the binding theme in a conference panel. The work is getting more nuanced, robust sub-fields are developing—voice studies, for example—vocabularies are becoming shared, and more than ever, scholars are engaging with each other’s work on a deeper level, complicating and texturing the just-established histories, narratives, and canons of the field. Whereas Michele Hilmes’s foundational 2005 review essay in American Quarterly “Is there a Thing Called Sound Culture Studies? And Does it Matter?” noted that “various venues of academic work on sound phenomena so rarely speak to or take heed of each other” (252), I noted no fewer than twelve sound-related roundtables at #ASA2012 where scholars will be doing the difficult-but-rewarding work of acknowledging conflicts, hashing out shared interests, and forging what comes next. Please take good notes, sound studies folks, because ASA has enacted an official ban on recording:
The papers and commentaries presented during this meeting are intended solely for the hearing of those present and should not be tape-recorded, copied, or otherwise reproduced without the consent of the authors. Recording, copying, or reproducing a paper/presentation without the consent of the author(s) may be a violation of common law copyright and may result in legal difficulties for the person recording, copying, or reproducing (ASA Program PDF, 17).
Unfortunately, this means that the 2012 sound roundtables will be one-time-only, be-there-or-be-square affairs. But as we know from so much research in our vibrant field, even while the vocal grains and tones will fade away into the air of San Juan, these unscripted scholarly performances can’t help but have lasting reverberations.
The Liner Notes for the ASA Sound Studies Caucus “Cassette” Flyer. This and Featured Image by Frank Bridges, fbridges@eden.rutgers.edu
Scroll down for the sound-related conference listings. For the virtual experience, look for my live tweets via our Facebook and Twitter pages, Liana Silva’s live tweets (@literarychica) or on the official ASA backchannel: #ASA2012. Please comment to let SO! know what you think–both before and after ASA 2012. Finally, If I somehow missed you or your panel in this round up, please let me know!: jsa@soundingoutblog.com
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Jennifer Stoever-Ackerman is co-founder, Editor-in-Chief and Guest Posts Editor for Sounding Out! She is also Assistant Professor of English at Binghamton University and a former Fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University (2011-2012).
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Jump to THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2012
Jump to FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012
Jump to SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2012
Jump to SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012
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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2012
THURSDAY, November 15, 2012
10:00 am – 11:45 am
007. Crimson and Clover: Hope and Dread in the Musical Countercultures of the 1960s
Puerto Rico Convention Center 102C
CHAIR: Eric Avila, University of California, Los Angeles (CA)
PAPERS: Rachel Rubin, University of Massachusetts, Boston (MA), “I Think That Maybe I’m Dreaming: Music, Counterculture, and the Renaissance Pleasure Faire”
Andrew Green Hannon, Yale University (CT), “Huey Digs Bob Dylan: The Black Panthers, Highway 61 Revisited, and Making Revolutionary Meaning”
Jeffrey Melnick, University of Massachusetts, Boston (MA), “The Ballad of Terry Melcher: Famous and Rising Sons in the LA Counterculture”
Will Spires, Santa Rosa Junior College (CA), “The Musical Holdouts of Colby Street: Formation and Legacy of an Old Time Music Community”
COMMENT: Eric Avila, University of California, Los Angeles (CA)
INDIVIDUAL PAPERS:
Shane Vogel, Indiana University–Bloomington (IN), “Being a Fad: Black Performance and the Calypso Craze,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 104A
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12:00 pm – 1:45 pm
031. Invisible Structures and the Experience of Music
Puerto Rico Convention Center 103B
CHAIR: Lisa Brawley, Vassar College (NY)
PAPERS: Carlo Rotella, Boston College (MA), “The Home of the Blues”
Eric Weisbard, University of Alabama, Birmingham (AL), “Structuring the Eclectic: Radio and Entertainment Formats (Not Genres)”
Hua Hsu, Vassar College (NY), “Sounds of Confusion: H. T. Tsiang and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Protest Music”
COMMENT: Lisa Brawley, Vassar College (NY)
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037. Blogging as Public Pedagogy: A Roundtable with GayProf, Historiann, Roxie, and Tenured Radical
Puerto Rico Convention Center 202B
CHAIR: Martha Nell Smith, University of Maryland, College Park (MD)
PANELISTS: Marilee Lindemann, University of Maryland, College Park (MD)
Ann Little, Colorado State University (CO)
Anthony Mora, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (MI)
Claire Bond Potter, New School University (NY)
Martha Nell Smith, University of Maryland, College Park (MD)
INDIVIDUAL PAPERS:
Jack Hamilton, Harvard University (MA), “House Burning Down: Jimi Hendrix, Race, and the Limits of Sixties Music,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 104A
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, University of Pennsylvania (PA), “Feeling Colors and Seeing Speech: Black Women’s Choreopoetic Diasporas of Difference,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 209C
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
INDIVIDUAL PAPERS:
Nadja Millner-Larsen, “Black Synaesthesia: The Anarcho-Aesthetics of Black Mask,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 104B
Mary Beltrán, University of Texas, Austin (TX), “Blacking Up for Laughs: Televisual Blackface and ‘Post-Racial’ Cultural Memory,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 208B
4:00 pm – 5:45 pm
077. Blackness and the Sacred Performative
Puerto Rico Convention Center 104A
CHAIR: Michelle D. Commander, University of Tennessee, Knoxville (TN)
PAPERS: Amey Victoria Adkins, Duke University (NC), “‘Ain’t I A Woman’: Black Madonnas, Mammys, and the Performative Aesthetics of Darkness”
Ashon Crawley, Duke University (NC), “Breathing Towards Lynching Critique: Whooping in Black Pentecostal Praying and Preaching”
Terrion L. Williamson, Michigan State University (MI), “Black Sacred Dance and the Reverberations of Christian Sexuality”
COMMENT: Johari Jabir, University of Illinois, Chicago (IL)
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INDIVIDUAL PAPERS:
Molly McGlennen, Vassar College (NY), “Re-imagining “Domestic Dependency”: The Transnational Motivations of Rebecca Belmore’s Sound Performances,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 209C
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Memorial to Salsa Composer Catalino (Tite) Curet Alonso (1926-2003) in the Plaza de Armas, Image by Flickr User roger4336
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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012
8:00 am – 9:45 am
105. Mixtape Logics: Listening to Empire and Resistance
Puerto Rico Convention Center 104B
CHAIR: Matthew Carrillo-Vincent, University of Southern California (CA)
PANELISTS: Priya Jha, University of Redlands (CA)
Van Truong, Yale University (CT)
Chris Nielsen, University of Pittsburgh (PA)
COMMENT: Joshua Guild, Princeton University (NJ)
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108. Caucus: Digital Humanities: What Can the Digital Humanities Bring to American Studies, and Vice Versa?
Puerto Rico Convention Center 202A
CHAIR: Susan Garfinkel, Library of Congress (DC)
PANELISTS: Natalia Cecire, Yale University (CT)
Alex Gil, University of Virginia (VA)
Matthew K. Gold, City University of New York, Graduate School (NY)
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Modern Language Association (NY)
Lauren Klein, Georgia Institute of Technology (GA)
Miriam Posner, University of California, Los Angeles (CA)
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117. Performance as Power and Critique: Social Change in African Diasporic Performance
Puerto Rico Convention Center 208C
CHAIR: Jennifer Devere Brody, Stanford University (CA)
PAPERS: Tisha Brooks, Tufts University (MA) ,“Performing Power and Privilege: The Spiritual Itinerant Practice of Amanda Berry Smith”
Shanesha R. F. Brooks-Tatum, Interdenominational Theological Center (GA), “Sonic Bridges: Conversion Narratives in Diasporic Christian Hip-Hop Performance”
Tanya Saunders, Lehigh University (PA), “Global Hip Hop, Black Feminism, and the Queer of Color Critique: An Analysis of Women-Centered Arts-Based Activism in Cuba and Brazil”
Lori Lynne Brooks, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (MI), “It’s Empire Time!: Black Popular Performance and the Temporality of Imperialism”
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10:00 am – 11:45 am
125. The Talking Cure for Empire? Oral History and Testimonio in the Twenty-first Century
Puerto Rico Convention Center 102B
CHAIR: Theresa Delgadillo, Ohio State University, Columbus (OH)
PANELISTS: Tami Albin, University of Kansas (KS)
Maylei Blackwell, University of California, Los Angeles (CA)
Thuy Vo Dang, University of California, Irvine (CA)
Theresa Delgadillo, Ohio State University, Columbus (OH)
Linda Garcia Merchant, Artist
Joseph Rodríguez, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (WI)
Sonia Saldívar-Hull, University of Texas, San Antonio (TX)
Janet Weaver, University of Iowa (IA)
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127. ASA Program Committee: Dimensions of Empire and Resistance: Speculation, Futurity, New Materialisms
Puerto Rico Convention Center 103A
CHAIR: Tavia Nyong’o, New York University (NY)
PANELISTS: Jayna Brown, University of California, Riverside (CA)
Tavia Nyong’o, New York University (NY)
Dana Luciano, Georgetown University (DC)
José Esteban Muñoz, New York University (NY)
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131. Caucus: Science and Technology: What is the Future of Technology in American Studies?: A Roundtable
Puerto Rico Convention Center 104C
CHAIR: Jason Weems, University of California, Riverside (CA)
PANELISTS: Carolyn de la Pena, University of California, Davis (CA)
Lisa Nakamura, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (IL)
Joshua Shannon, University of Maryland, College Park (MD)
Elena Razlogova, Concordia University (Canada)
Joel Dinerstein, Tulane University (LA)
COMMENT: Jason Weems, University of California, Riverside (CA)
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133. Caucus: Digital Humanities: Digital Shorts: New Platforms of Knowledge Production and Resistance
Puerto Rico Convention Center 202A
CHAIR: A. Joan Saab, University of Rochester (NY)
PANELISTS: Susan Smulyan, Brown University (RI)
Stewart Varner, Emory University (GA)
A. Joan Saab, University of Rochester (NY)
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INDIVIDUAL PAPERS
Thomas George Sowders, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge (LA), Puerto Rico Convention Center 208C, “Martin Delany’s Sonic Transnationalism: Genres of Poetry and Sound in Blake; or, the Huts of America”
12:00 pm – 1:45 pm
146. Ask Your Mama: The Sound(ed) Poetics and Politics of Black Feminist Internationalism
Puerto Rico Convention Center 101A
CHAIR: Farah Griffin, Columbia University (NY)
PAPERS: Daphne Ann Brooks, Princeton University (NJ), “‘A Woman is a Sometime Thing’: Leontyne and Sarah’s Sonic Temporalities’
Salamishah Tillet, University of Pennsylvania (PA), “Hush and Listen: Mama Africa and Nina Simone’s Global Civil Rights Sound”
Imani Perry, Princeton University (NJ), “Sounding Like a Movement: The Advance of Miriam Makeba’s Retreat Song”
COMMENT: Farah Griffin, Columbia University (NY)
12:00 pm – 1:45 pm
168. Business Meeting of the Digital Humanities Caucus
Puerto Rico Convention Center Foyer A
2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
182. ASA Committee on Graduate Education: Digital Dimensions of Graduate Education in American Studies (co-sponsored by the Digital Humanities Caucus and ASA Students’ Committee)
Puerto Rico Convention Center 202A
CHAIR: Robert W. Snyder, Rutgers University, Newark (NJ)
PANELISTS: Clarissa J. Ceglio, Brown University (RI)
Douglas Lambert, State University of New York, Buffalo (NY)
Sharon Leon, George Mason University (VA)
John Carlos Rowe, University of Southern California (CA)
Stephen Brier, City University of New York, Graduate School (NY)
187. Subjectivity and Sound: Rethinking Genre in Chicano/a Music
Puerto Rico Convention Center 208A
CHAIR: Tyina Steptoe, University of Washington, Seattle (WA)
PANELISTS: Anthony Macias, University of California, Riverside (CA)
Marie Miranda, University of Texas, San Antonio (TX)
Michelle Habell-Pallan, University of Washington, Seattle (WA)
INDIVIDUAL PAPERS
Marisol Negrón, University of Massachusetts, Boston (MA) “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Fania Records, Intellectual Property Rights, and Royalties,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 104B
Isabel Porras, University of California, Davis (CA) “Hypersexual and Excessive: Carmen Miranda and Sofia Vergara and Performing Latinidad,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 203
4:00 pm – 5:45 pm
208. Caucus: Sound Studies: Resisting Silences: Re-sounding Race, Gender, and Empire
Puerto Rico Convention Center 204
CHAIR: Sherrie Tucker, University of Kansas (KS)
PAPERS: Marci McMahon, University of Texas, Pan American (TX), “Tanya Saracho’s El Nogalar: Staging Soundscapes of Silence and Imperialism”
Genevieve Yue, University of Southern California (CA), “Technics of Female Silence”
Jennifer Lynn Stoever-Ackerman, State University of New York, Binghamton (NY), “‘Just Be Quiet Pu-leeze’: New York’s Black Press Fights the Postwar ‘Campaign Against Noise’
COMMENT: Sherrie Tucker, University of Kansas (KS)
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213. I’m a MuthaFking Monster: Alter Egos, New Media, and Black/Queer Performativity
Puerto Rico Convention Center 209B
CHAIR: Gabriel Peoples, University of Maryland, College Park (MD)
PAPERS: Treva Lindsey, University of Missouri, Columbia (MO), “I Am… Sasha Fierce: Resistive Alterity and African American Respectability Politics”
Uri McMillan, University of California, Los Angeles (CA), “Gone Campin’: The Campy Paradox of Nicki Minaj”
Kismet Nunez / Jessica Marie Johnson, University of Maryland, College Park (MD), “On Alter Egos and Infinite Literacies, Part 2 (An #AntiJemimas Imperative)”
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INDIVIDUAL PAPERS:
Omi/Joni Jones, University of Texas, Austin (TX); Sharon Bridgforth, DePaul University (IL), “Conjuring Jazz”
Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián, San Juan, Puerto Rico, by Flickr User Jorge Rodriquez
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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2012
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2012
8:00 am – 9:45 am
237. Empires of Funk: U.S. Colonialism, Filipina/o Resistance, and Hip Hop
Puerto Rico Convention Center 202A
CHAIR: Victor Hugo Viesca, California State University, Los Angeles (CA)
PAPERS: Mark Villegas, University of California, Irvine (CA), “From Indios to Morenos: Exploring the Poetics and Memory of Postcolonial Racial Positioning”
Lorenzo Perillo, University of California, Los Angeles (CA), “Maganda at Malakas: Gendered Choreographies in Manila”
Roderick Labrador, University of Hawai‘i, Manoa, (HI) “Agitation Propaganda: Toward a Filipina/o Revolutionary Internationalism”
COMMENT: Brian Chung, University of Notre Dame (IN)
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242. Aesthetics in the Belly of the Beast: Reading American Carceral Art
Puerto Rico Convention Center 208A
CHAIR: Doran Larson, Hamilton College (NY)
PAPERS: Alessandro Porco, State University of New York, Buffalo (NY), “The ‘And’ After Every Sentence: Hip-Hop, Incarceration, and Creativity”
Imani Kai Johnson, New York University (NY), “B-Boying Behind Bars: A Profile of Batch from The Bronx Boys Rocking Crew”
Marcella Runell Hall, New York University (NY), “Assessment Data on ‘Lyrics from Lockdown,’”
COMMENT: Doran Larson, Hamilton College (NY)
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INDIVIDUAL PAPERS:
Sarah Perkins, Stanford University (CA), “‘Bound to trabble’: The Circulation of ‘Dixie,’ 1880–1910,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 201A
Nicholas Bauch, California State University, Los Angeles (CA), “Practicing Geography Through Art Performance: Urban Interventions and the Renaissance of the Vernacular,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 209B
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10:00 am – 11:45 am
263. ASA Program Committee: Dimensions of Empire and Resistance: Language Ideologies, Spanish in the U.S., and Latinidad
Puerto Rico Convention Center 202B
CHAIR: Ana Celia Zentella, University of California, San Diego (CA)
PAPERS: Lourdes Maria Torres, DePaul University (IL), “Spanish in Chicago: Dialects in Contact”
Jonathan Daniel Rosa, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (MA), “Racializing Language, Regimenting Latinidad:Latina/o Ethnolinguistic Emblems in Diasporic Perspective”
Lillian Gorman, University of Illinois, Chicago (IL). “The (New) Mexican Familia: Ethnolinguistic Contact Zones in Northern New Mexico”
COMMENT: Ana Celia Zentella, University of California, San Diego (CA)
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12:00 pm – 1:45 pm
278. Black Independent Cinema Before and After Pariah
Puerto Rico Convention Center 101B
CHAIR: Kara Keeling, University of Southern California (CA)
PANELISTS: Jennifer DeClue, University of Southern California (CA)
Yvonne Welbon, Bennett College (NC)
Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, Northwestern University (IL)
Roya Z. Rastegar, University of California, Los Angeles (CA)
Kara Keeling, University of Southern California (CA)
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287. West Side Story: A Roundtable Discussion
Puerto Rico Convention Center 202A
CHAIR: Julia Foulkes, New School University (NY)
PANELISTS: Julia Foulkes, New School University (NY)
Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, Mount Holyoke College (MA)
Deborah Paredez, University of Texas, Austin (TX)
Elizabeth Wells, Mt. Allison University (Canada)
Brian Eugenio Herrera, Princeton University (NJ)
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INDIVIDUAL PAPERS:
Rashida K. Braggs, Williams College (MA), “From Limited to Alternate Citizenship: How Image and Song Perform Historical Resistance in Bayou,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 208A
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2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
2nd Annual Sound Studies Meet and Greet! Co-Sponsored by the ASA Sound Studies Caucus and Sounding Out!: The Sound Studies Blog
The District Bar
SHERATON PUERTO RICO HOTEL & CASINO
200 Convention Center Boulevard, San Juan, PR 00907
Cash Bar
Appetizers! Drink Specials! VIP area!
303. Musical Movements
Puerto Rico Convention Center 102B
CHAIR: Ulrich Adelt, University of Wyoming (WY)
PAPERS: John Cline, University of Texas, Austin (TX), “Familiar Islands: The U.S., the Bahamas, and the Permeable Boundaries of ‘Folk’ Music”
Mikiko Tachi, Chiba University (Japan), “Folk Music and the Racial Imaginary in the U.S. and Japan”
Shana Goldin-Perschbacher, Stanford University (CA), “‘I need another world’: Queer Singer-Songwriters in Transnational Collaboration Post-9/11”
COMMENT: Ulrich Adelt, University of Wyoming (WY)
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314. Re-thinking Red, Yellow, Black, and Chicana/o Power through Oral History
Puerto Rico Convention Center 204
CHAIR: Rhonda Williams, Case Western Reserve University(OH)
PAPERS: Lorena Oropeza, University of California, Davis (CA), “He Said, She Said, But Who’s Right?: Oral History Unlocks Anti-Colonialism in 1960s New Mexico”
May Fu, University of San Diego (CA), “Oral History and the Asian American Radical Tradition”
Elizabeth Castle, University of South Dakota (SD), “Talking Back: Native Women’s Oral Histories in the Red Power Movement”
Lauren Araiza, Denison University (OH), “Oral Histories and Multiracial Coalitions in the UFW and the Black Freedom Struggle”
COMMENT: Rhonda Williams, Case Western Reserve University, (OH)
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INDIVIDUAL PAPERS
Rachel Donaldson, Vanderbilt University (TN), “Seeking the ‘Sensual’ and the ‘Significant’: Alan Lomax in Haiti”
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4:00 pm – 5:45 pm
325. Chavela Vargas, La Bamba, and Morrissey: Mapping Queer Musical Diasporas and Desires
Puerto Rico Convention Center 102A
CHAIR: Stacy Macias, University of Texas, Austin (TX)
PAPERS: J. Frank Galarte, University of Arizona (AZ), “‘Que soy muy canalla dice la gente’: The Pleasure of Queer Love, Desire, and Dolor in Chavela Vargas’ Repertoire”
Micaela Díaz-Sánchez, Mount Holyoke College (MA), “Yo también quiero bailar la bamba”: The Policing of Gender in the Chicana/o Son Jarocho Diaspora”
Melissa Hidalgo, Pitzer College (CA), “Complicated Colonial Legacies: Mapping the Queer Chicano Contours of Morrissey’s Los Angeles Fanscape in “Gay Vatos in Love”
COMMENT: Stacy Macias, University of Texas, Austin (TX)
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326. Marginal Digital Knowledges: A Workshop on Technology, Transformation, and Resistance
Puerto Rico Convention Center 102B
CHAIR: Tara McPherson, University of Southern California (CA)
PANELISTS: Simone A. Browne, University of Texas, Austin (TX)
Fiona Barnett, Duke University (NC)
Amanda Phillips, University of California, Santa Barbara (CA)
Tanner Higgin, University of California, Riverside (CA)
Moya Bailey, Emory University (GA)
Alexis Lothian, Indiana University of Pennsylvania (PA)
327. Caucus: Sound Studies: Sound and the State: The Politics of Acoustic Power
Puerto Rico Convention Center 102C
CHAIR: Jonathan Sterne, McGill University (Canada)
PAPERS: David Suisman, University of Delaware (DE), “Shock Wave Politics: The Battle Over Sonic Booms”
Peter Tschirhart, University of Virginia (VA), “Part 150 ‘Noise Exposure Maps’ and the Closing of the Acoustic Commons”
COMMENT: Mara Mills, New York University (NY)
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329. Between Island and Diaspora: Locating, Creating, and Performing Afro–Puerto Rican Bomba
Puerto Rico Convention Center 104A
MODERATOR: Tamara Roberts, University of California, Berkeley (CA)
This roundtable brings together bomba practitioners, cultural workers, and scholars from Puerto Rico and California. Rafael Maya and Pablo Luis Rivera will discuss their work as the founders of Proyecto Unión and Restauración Cultural. Sarazeta Ragazzi, Tamara Roberts, and Denise Solis will detail their work in the all-women’s performance ensemble Las Bomberas de la Bahia (San Francisco Bay Area). And Jade Power Sotomayor will extend the discussion of cross-cultural connections byconsidering the large Chicano participation in the form in the U.S., underscoring the ways that Latinidad and more specifically, Afro-Latinidad are corporeally articulated through this embodied practice.
Congas, Image courtesy of Flickr User Richard Alexander Caraballo
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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012
8:00 am – 9:45 am
365. Doing Disciplinarity: Puerto Rican Studies is/as/withAmerican Studies
Puerto Rico Convention Center 204
CHAIR: Marta S. Rivera Monclova, Framingham State College (MA)
PANELISTS: Marta S. Rivera Monclova, Framingham State College (MA)
Liana Marie Silva, State University of New York, Binghamton (NY)
Leonardo L. Flores Feliciano, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (PR)
Sara Poggio, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (MD)
INDIVIDUAL PAPERS
Nadia Ellis, University of California, Berkeley (CA), “Dancehall’s Urban Possessions,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 101A
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10:00 am – 11:45 am
377. Jazz and the Voices of Empire and Resistance
Puerto Rico Convention Center 102A
CHAIR: John Gennari, University of Vermont (VT)
PAPERS: Daniel Stein, University of Goettingen (Germany), “Onkel Satchmo Behind the Iron Curtain: The Politics of Louis Armstrong’s Visit to East Germany”
Elliott H. Powell, New York University (NY), “Solidarity in Sound: John Coltrane, Indian Music, and Global Freedom Struggles”
Matthew B. Karush, George Mason University (VA), “Transnational Routes: Argentine Encounters with Jazz, 1959–1972”
COMMENT: John Gennari, University of Vermont (VT)
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INDIVIDUAL PAPERS:
Daphne Lamothe, Smith College (MA), “Trauma, Silence, and the Language of Resistance in Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying”
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12:00 pm – 1:45 pm
INDIVIDUAL PAPERS:
Imani D. Owens, Columbia University (NY), “The Politics of Sound: Race, Space, and Cuban Identity in the Poetry of Nicolás Guillén,” Puerto Rico Convention Center 209A
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2:00 pm – 3:45 pm
420. Terrains of Modernity, Aural Research, and Critique
Puerto Rico Convention Center 104C
CHAIR: Michele Hilmes, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WI)
PAPERS: Art Blake, Ryerson University (Canada), “John Cage’s Voice and New York’s Postwar Urban Sensorium”
Derek Vaillant, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (MI), “The Power of Piaf: Racial Formation and Nostalgia in Postwar U.S.-France Aural Culture”
Jason Loviglio, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (MD), “Radio Localism 2.0”
Benjamin Aslinger, Bentley College (MA), “Listening In to Web 2.0: Subjectivity, Alterity, and Power”
COMMENT: Michele Hilmes, University of Wisconsin, Madison (WI)
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423. Los Nombres: Puerto Rican Popular Music in Lorain, Ohio
Puerto Rico Convention Center 202C
CHAIR: Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VA)
PANELISTS: Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VA)
Eugene Rivera, Jr., Independent Scholar
José Pepe Rivera, Sr., Artist
..
INDIVIDUAL PAPERS:
Mike Amezcua, Northwestern University (IL), “Brown Bop: Mexican American Jazzmen, Race, and the Quest for a Transnational Jazz Movement”
San Juan, Puerto Rico, Image courtesy of Ricymar Fine Art Photography
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