“Music, Politics and Social Change in Latin America” proposes to offer a journey through the social, cultural and political history of Latin America through the study and critique of its vast, diverse and unique music. In order to do this, we will review musical genres and movements from the time of the war of 1898, the event that ends Spanish colonialism in Latin America and establishes North American neocolonialism, to conclude with the most current rock en español and hip-hop music, and its recuperation of traditional folk Latin American musical sources. Our study will not only look to identify these musical forms, but above all, understand them in their specific sociopolitical context to be able to comprehend their aesthetic value as much as their ethical and social importance.
In this process we will discover that popular music in general, and Latin American music in particular, does not only serve to reflect the social and political changes of a given community, but also puts into motion, and has constantly exercised resistance to protect a cultural inheritance and communitarian values that have been seen to be threatened as much by national as colonial hegemonic interests, and more recently, by transnational hegemonic ones. Despite the appropriation that many forms of popular music are subjected to in order to erase their subversive power (as in recent years has been the case with hip-hop), popular music, like mambo, salsa, rock or Latin pop, are manifestations that serve to observe the tension, and at times the alliances that are generated between popular culture created by 'the people' and popular culture to be consumed by 'the people'. In this sense, observing the negotiations between cultural forms that compete to have access to popular awareness, helps to understand the complex ideological processes that affect not only the way in which we entertain ourselves (assuming that music is only for entertainment), but our whole way of thinking and how we perceive our own identity and that of 'different' others. Inevitably, politics and culture are not fields that function separately in society, because through various cultural forms, distinct political agendas look to transmit, oppose or consolidate socio-ideological programmes.
For these reasons, our study of Latin American musical genres and movements involves at least three important aspects: the historic-political, the aesthetic component of each musical form studied and the theoretical aspects, which allows us to pay attention to political and sociological aspects of what is understood as the field of 'popular culture'. This last aspect will take us to review and work with methodological concepts such as hegemony, discourse, subalternity, colonialism, neocolonialism, otherness and exoticism, among others.