The Online Program of events for the 2023 AMS & SMT Joint Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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Taking Stock: The Ibero-American Music Study Group Turns Thirty
Time:
Thursday, 09/Nov/2023:
8:00pm - 10:00pm
Location:Vail
Session Topics:
Latin American / Hispanic Studies, AMS
Presentations
Taking Stock: The Ibero-American Music Study Group Turns Thirty
Chair(s): Carol A. Hess (University of California, Davis), Bernard Gordillo Brockmann (University of California, Los Angeles)
Presenter(s): William J. Summers (Dartmouth College), Walter A. Clark (University of California, Riverside), Ana Alonso-Minutti (University of New Mexico), Alejandro L. Madrid (Harvard University), M. Myrta Leslie Santana (University of California, San Diego), Jacqueline Avila (University of Texas at Austin), Cesar D. Favila (University of California, Los Angeles), Rafael Torralvo da Silva (Cornell University), Sergio Ospina-Romero (Indiana University)
Organized by the AMS Ibero-American Music Study Group
In 1993, the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society took place in Montreal. On that occasion, a small group of Hispanist musicologists—the then-current term for scholars who research music of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world—launched a new Study Group under the Society’s auspices. They recognized that with the exception of medieval and Renaissance studies, Iberian and Latin American repertories were largely marginalized in the broader musicological community. To be sure, a handful of pioneers such as Gilbert Chase, Robert M. Stevenson, Gerard Béhague, and Robert Snow, defied the status quo. But beginning scholars interested in this repertory surveyed a dismal landscape. For example, the Journal of the American Musicological Society featured only five full-fledged articles on Iberian or Latin American music between its inaugural issue, in 1948, and 1991. As recently as 2000, some Ph.D. programs in musicology refused to accept Spanish for the language requirement.
In 1992, the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas was widely observed. Yet not a single paper on encounter-related music was accepted for that year’s Annual Meeting. Galvanized by this omission, Study Group founders organized the session in Montreal under the able leadership of William J. Summers. Thirty years later, it is still flourishing. More important is the broader picture: a plethora of new scholarly perspectives, several textbooks, course offerings in postsecondary U.S. institutions, concert series, and additional study groups in the Americas and Europe attest to the impact of Ibero-American music research and the vitality of transnational exchange.
The proposed session will mark this anniversary by (1) surveying the historical context of the Study Group’s founding, (2) addressing new scholarly trends, and (3) looking to the future. Participants will include founding members such as Professor Summers, who will detail the group’s initial objectives, and Walter A. Clark, who will focus on Robert M. Stevenson and his numerous contributions to our sub-discipline. Alejandro L. Madrid will detail the enormous growth in publications on this repertory. Representatives of a younger generation will illuminate a wide range of topics: convent life in New Spain, trans and drag musical performers in Cuba, music and politics in Brazil, and digital musicology in Spain. Moderators will be Carol A. Hess and Bernard Gordillo.
