Music, consumption and cultural critique: Towards a historical and theoretical framework for the study of festivals in Latin America (1990-2020)

Authors

  • Christian Spencer Espinosa

Keywords:

festival, music, consumption, culture, Latin America

Abstract

The following article explains the importance of cultural and musical festivals in Latin America after the end of the period of dictatorships. The text proposes a historical and theoretical framework for the study of festivals in the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking regions, with the aim of contributing to the consolidation of this subfield as an object of study in musical research. First, I offer a genealogy of the concepts of “festival” and “fiesta”. Then, I describe what I consider the approaches to and themes of this phenomenon and how it has been studied in the world. In a third part, I analyze music festivals in terms of their musical/cultural actors, globalization processes and forms of participation. Later, I expound how cultural and musical festivals have been studied in Latin America, to finally offer some basic conclusions. As a final point, I propose that festivals are a legitimate object of study with an increasing interest worldwide and the future of which is promising in the light of current research, especially within the field of musical studies.

Author Biography

Christian Spencer Espinosa

Christian Spencer Espinosa es titulado en Sociología (1997) y Licenciado en Música (2001) por la Universidad Católica de Santiago de Chile. Obtuvo su doctorado en Historia y Ciencias de la Música en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid en régimen de co-tutela con la Universidad Nova de Lisboa. Sus líneas de investigación contemplan aspectos de espacio, cultura popular y música tradicional chilena. Entre sus últimas publicaciones figuran textos sobre la Sociedad del Folklore Chileno y revisiones históricas sobre los estudios Folclóricos Chilenos. Figuran también los libros Made in América Latina: Studies in Popular Music (Routledge 2016, editada con J. Mendívil) y ¡Pego el grito en cualquier parte! Historia, tradición y performance de la cueca urbana en Santiago de Chile (1990-2010) (2017), Premio Fidel Sepúlveda 2016 a la mejor investigación sobre patrimonio inmaterial (DIBAM). Ha sido docente de la Universidad de Chile, Universidad Católica, UNAM, Universidad Iberoamericana y Universidad de Guanajuato. Actualmente es director del Centro de Investigación en Artes y Humanidades (CIAH) de la Universidad Mayor, donde desarrolla  los proyectos “Hacia una sociología de la cultura popular ausente” (Fondecyt Nº1161532) e “Historia, estéticas y procesos del folclore en Chile (1909-1973)” (Fondecyt 11180946).  

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Published

2020-10-15

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 2 (2020): Dossier: The festivalization of music in Latin America (1990-2020)

Section

Dossier

License

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