Musical Practices and Mobility in Asunción - (Music, Culture, and Identity in Latin America) by Laura Fahrenkrog Cianelli (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book focuses on the musical practices of Indigenous musicians in colonial Asunción (Paraguay). By transcending the city limits imposed by urban approaches, it enables a novel reading of musical practices in a city connected with its hinterland, revealing the different musical physiognomies of the empire in distant contexts.

Book Synopsis

The Indigenous musicians from the surrounding pueblos de indios took on a leading role in urban musical activity. Musical Practices and Mobility in Asunción: Indigenous Musicians in Colonial Paraguay sheds light on dynamics that go beyond the studies centered on the doing of Jesuits in missionary contexts and provides a more thorough comprehension of the urban musical models that were imposed and adapted. Indigenous musicians were transferred to the city from the Jesuit reductions and the pueblos under the care of secular and Franciscan priests for festivals and celebrations. Without them, and without the mobilities that placed them in both contexts, Laura Fahrenkrog Cianelli argues the urban institutional-musical model would not have been possible to maintain in that distant corner of the empire. By transcending the city limits imposed by urban approaches, this book enables a novel reading of musical practices in a city connected with its hinterland, revealing the different musical physiognomies of the empire in distant contexts.

Review Quotes

""In a work of deep and rigorous historiography, and with an agile and precise writing, the author shows us a new dimension of key actors and processes to understand colonial Latin America. The conceptual axis of the indigenous mobility enables Fahrenkrog to link cultural practices and territorial connections that linked the Paraguayan missionary hinterland with the city of Asunción. It gives us a rich and original panorama on the missionary imprint of the Jesuits and the experience of indigenous circulation in the practices of urban singing and music, through a long period of history."" --Jaime Valenzuela Márquez, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

ldquo;In a work of deep and rigorous historiography, and with an agile and precise writing, the author shows us a new dimension of key actors and processes to understand colonial Latin America. The conceptual axis of the indigenous mobility enables Fahrenkrog to link cultural practices and territorial connections that linked the Paraguayan missionary hinterland with the city of Asuncioacute;n. It gives us a rich and original panorama on the missionary imprint of the Jesuits and the experience of indigenous circulation in the practices of urban singing and music, through a long period of history.rdquo;

About the Author

Laura Fahrenkrog Cianelli is associate professor of History at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile).