Experiencing Latin American Music - by Carol A Hess (Paperback)

About the Book

"In Exploring Latin American music, Carol A. Hess offers a completely new approach to the human experience as a point of departure for musical and cross-cultural understanding. Students explore topics such as music and identity, music and the body, music and religion, and other broad themes. Guided by Hess's brisk and engaging writing, they gain fluency with musical concepts and cultural-historical contexts. A detailed instructor packet contains sample quizzes, clicker questions, and creative, classroom-tested assignments. Experiencing Latin American music empowers instructors from a variety of disciplines to offer a class that is increasingly relevant in today's diverse society"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Experiencing Latin American Music draws on human experience as a point of departure for musical understanding. Students explore broad topics--identity, the body, religion, and more--and relate these to Latin American musics while refining their understanding of musical concepts and cultural-historical contexts. With its brisk and engaging writing, this volume covers nearly fifty genres and provides both students and instructors with online access to audio tracks and listening guides. A detailed instructor's packet contains sample quizzes, clicker questions, and creative, classroom-tested assignments designed to encourage critical thinking and spark the imagination. Remarkably flexible, this innovative textbook empowers students from a variety of disciplines to study a subject that is increasingly relevant in today's diverse society.

In addition to the instructor's packet, online resources for students include:

• customized Spotify playlist
• online listening guides
• audio sound links to reinforce musical concepts
• stimulating activities for individual and group work

From the Back Cover

"An enormously significant, timely, rigorous, and engaging textbook that empowers students to simultaneously explore a great diversity and wealth of musical practices and genres, study musical concepts and aesthetics, and understand complex socio-political contexts. Encompassing global histories, in-depth case studies, and carefully created sets of practical activities (with excellent accompanying sound files and images), Hess invites and challenges students to listen deeply to multiple soundscapes, to think carefully about stereotypes, and to experience music as a way of knowing."--Ruth Hellier-Tinoco, author of Embodying Mexico: Tourism, Nationalism & Performance

"Carol Hess's Experiencing Latin American Music is a much needed and innovative textbook for the twenty-first century college student and educator. The textbook engages students of the Americas in interrelated areas of music study from film, religion, and identity to dance, politics, and globalization. We need this textbook!"--David F. Garcia, author of Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music's African Origins

"Expertly balancing geographic and historical approaches with musical detail and close attention to many well-chosen examples, Hess's Experiencing Latin America Music offers a superb introduction to the region and its musical cultures. Faculty and students alike will appreciate the clear writing, the consideration given to both conceptual ideas as well as descriptive materials, and the sheer breadth of the volume's coverage. A welcome addition to the still-sparse body of pedagogical works on Latin America and its extraordinary musics."--Jonathan Ritter, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, UC Riverside

"By sidestepping individual national histories in favor of important shared themes that have shaped the Latin American experience, Carol Hess's Experiencing Latin American Music offers a fascinating account that pays attention to how music works and how people make it work in a variety of personal, cultural, and historical moments. Written by one of the most influential Latin American music scholars of her generation, this much-needed textbook highlights the cultural dialogues that make a wide variety of music traditions meaningful transnationally and transhistorically."--Alejandro L. Madrid, author of In Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13

About the Author

Carol A. Hess teaches in the Department of Music at the University of California, Davis. She has published award-winning books on Latin American and Iberian music. Twice a Fulbright lecturer, she has taught in Spain and Argentina.