ISLANDS OF HISTORY

Nineteenth-century engraving of a parading cabildo. Havana, Cuba, photo courtesy of María Teresa Linares.

WELCOME!

Taking a socio-cultural and human-centered approach, music in Latin America and the Caribbean gathers the best scholarship from writers all over the world to cover in-depth the musical legacies of indigenous peoples, creoles, African descendants, Iberian colonizers, and other immigrant groups that met and mixed in the new world. From these texts, music emerges as the powerful tool that negotiates identities, enacts resistance, performs beliefs, and challenges received aesthetics. More than two decades in the making, this work privileges the perspectives of cultural insiders and emphasizes the role that music plays in human life.