Song and Social Change in Latin America

[This book] is a must-read for all those interested in building an emancipatory politics of the twenty first century. It opens a poetics of possibility which shines new light on the importance of taking seriously the cultural, the popular and the everyday in social change and political transformation. The collection takes us on a journey that crosses geographical, cultural, political and epistemological borders...[The book's] playful use of form, combining traditional scholarly analysis of song with six interviews with musicians ... contributes to its ability to stimulate the critical imagination and to open emancipatory horizons. The thirteen unique contributions highlight some of the generic ways in which song-poetry facilitates social change...This volume is to be actively and tenderly explored. Through an embodied act of reading we can become active interlocutors with the text, listening to the traditions discussed. Through savouring the text in this way, we enter a dialogue of knowledges that engages our head, heart, body and imagination. Song and Social Change in Latin America transgresses borders. For this reason it is a gem. Bulletin of Latin American Research With a light hand, Lauren Shaw and the contributors to her edited collection, Song and Social Change in Latin America, wonderfully interpret the importance of song in postwar Latin American history, linking it to experiences of work, family, protest, and migration. The collection, which includes interviews with a number of musicians, reads like a poem or the liner notes to the soundtrack of a generation that took to heart Emma Goldman's insistence that to be a revolutionary meant to affirm 'life and joy' though music and dance. -- Greg Grandin, New York University This volume presents useful documentation and perspectives on an important dimension of modern Latin American culture. Through song texts, scholarly interpretations, and revealing interviews with articulate artists, it provides much insight into an important chapter in the cultural history of the Americas, from Argentina to the Bronx. -- Peter Manuel, CUNY Graduate Center