Alejandro L. Madrid
Alejandro L. Madrid is the Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music at Harvard University. He is a cultural theorist of sound and music working in Latin American and Latinx studies. His eight books –five monographs, a textbook, and three edited volumes– and a host of distinguished articles, have established him as one of the foremost musicologists of his generation and one of the leading scholars in Ibero-American music studies. His five monographs, Tania León’s Stride. A Polyrhythmic Life (University of Illinois Press, 2021), In Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13 (Oxford University Press, 2015), Danzón. Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance (with Robin Moore; Oxford University Press, 2013), Sounds of the Modern Nation. Music, Culture, and Ideas in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Temple University Press, 2009), and Nor-Tec Rifa! Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World (Oxford University Press, 2008), as well as his edited volume Transnational Encounters. Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border (Oxford University Press, 2012), have all received top awards from organizations like the American Musicological Society (AMS), the Latin American Studies Association, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM), the ASCAP Foundation, the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), and the International Latino Book Awards. He has been awarded the Humboldt Forschungspreis, the Dent Medal, given by the International Musicological Society and the Royal Musical Association for “outstanding contributions to musicology,” as well as Cuba’s Premio de Musicología Casa de las Américas, and Chile’s Premio de Musicología Samuel Claro Valdés.
His work has been described as a “model for future works that aim to cross boundaries between musicology and ethnomusicology” and as “scholarship that intervenes in a number of important critical conversations.” Madrid’s scholarly output includes innovative and influential work on technology and cyber-communities, alternative modernisms, postcolonial musical interventions, nationalism and postnationalism, embodied culture, the materiality of musical instruments, and the musical performance of masculinities. His work engages popular, folk, and art musics from multi-methodological perspectives, making him one of today’s most effective scholars crossing over and often blurring the disciplinary boundaries between historical musicology, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, and cultural studies.
His research has been funded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board, and the Ford Foundation, among other institutions.
Apart from his remarkable and extensive award-winning publication record, Professor Madrid has served the scholarly community as editor of Oxford University Press’s Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music series, co-editor of Cambridge University Press’ journal Twentieth-Century Music, as well as in the Executive Committee of IASPM, the Board of Directors of the AMS and the SEM, and in the editorial board of several international scholarly journals and publishing projects. Furthermore, Professor Madrid is frequently invited as an expert commentator to national and international media outlets, and acted as music advisor to acclaimed filmmaker Peter Greenaway, whose film, Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015), is set in early 1930s Mexico.
His work has been described as a “model for future works that aim to cross boundaries between musicology and ethnomusicology” and as “scholarship that intervenes in a number of important critical conversations.” Madrid’s scholarly output includes innovative and influential work on technology and cyber-communities, alternative modernisms, postcolonial musical interventions, nationalism and postnationalism, embodied culture, the materiality of musical instruments, and the musical performance of masculinities. His work engages popular, folk, and art musics from multi-methodological perspectives, making him one of today’s most effective scholars crossing over and often blurring the disciplinary boundaries between historical musicology, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, and cultural studies.
His research has been funded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board, and the Ford Foundation, among other institutions.
Apart from his remarkable and extensive award-winning publication record, Professor Madrid has served the scholarly community as editor of Oxford University Press’s Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music series, co-editor of Cambridge University Press’ journal Twentieth-Century Music, as well as in the Executive Committee of IASPM, the Board of Directors of the AMS and the SEM, and in the editorial board of several international scholarly journals and publishing projects. Furthermore, Professor Madrid is frequently invited as an expert commentator to national and international media outlets, and acted as music advisor to acclaimed filmmaker Peter Greenaway, whose film, Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015), is set in early 1930s Mexico.
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Books by Alejandro L. Madrid
Nuanced and multifaceted, Tania León's Stride looks at the life, legacy, and milieu that created and sustained one of the most important figures in American classical music.
Experimentalisms in Practice responds to recent efforts to reframe and reconceptualize the study of experimental music in terms of epistemological perspective and geographic scope, while also engaging traditional scholarship. This book contributes to the current conversations about music experimentalism while providing new points of entry to further reevaluate the field.
Confronting this paucity of scholarship on Carrillo and his music, Alejandro L. Madrid goes above and beyond "filling in" the historical record. Combining archival and ethnographic research with musical analysis and cultural theory, Madrid argues that Carrillo and Sonido 13 are best understood as a cultural complex: a network of moments, spaces, and articulations in which Carrillo and his music continuously re-acquire significance and meaning. Thus, Madrid explores Carrillo's music and ideas not only in relation to the historical moments of their inception, but also in relation to the various cultural projects that kept them alive and re-signified them through the beginning of the twenty-first century. Eschewing traditionally linear historical frameworks, In Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13 employs an innovative transhistorical narrative in which past, present, and future are explored dialogically in order to understand the politics of performance and self-representation behind Carrillo and Sonido 13.
In Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13 transforms the traditional genre of the composer study, treating it not as a celebration of "masters" and "masterworks," but as a pointed postcolonial intervention that offers invaluable insight into the politics of cultural exchange, experimentalism, marginality, and cultural capital in twentieth century Mexico.
Co-authors Alejandro L. Madrid and Robin D. Moore take an ethnomusicological, historical, and critical approach to the processes of appropriation of the danzón in new contexts, its changing meanings over time, and its relationship to other musical forms. Delving into its long history of controversial popularization, stylistic development, glorification, decay, and rebirth in a continuous transnational dialogue between Cuba and Mexico as well as New Orleans, the authors explore the production, consumption, and transformation of this Afro-diasporic performance complex in relation to global and local ideological discourses. By focusing on interactions across this entire region as well as specific local scenes, Madrid and Moore underscore the extent of cultural movement and exchange within the Americas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, and are thereby able to analyze the danzón, the dance scenes it has generated, and the various discourses of identification surrounding it as elements in broader regional processes. Danzón is a significant addition to the literature on Latin American music, dance, and expressive culture; it is essential reading for scholars, students, and fans of this music alike."
Tijuana has media links to both Mexico and the United States, with peoples, currencies, and cultural goods--perhaps especially music--from both sides circulating intensely within the city. Older residents and their more mobile, cosmopolitan-minded children thus engage in a constant struggle with identity and nationality, appropriation and authenticity. Nor-tec music in its very composition encapsulates this city's struggle, resonating with issues felt on the global level, while holding vastly different meanings to the variety of communities that embrace it.
With an impressive hybrid of musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural and performance studies, urbanism, and border studies, Nor-tec Rifa! offers compelling insights into the cultural production of Nor-tec as it stems from norteña, banda, and grupera traditions. The book is also among the first to offer detailed accounts of Nor-tec music's composition process."
Madrid challenges the view that Latin American modernist music and other art were mere imitations of European trends, advancing instead the argument that Latin American artists resignified European ideas according to their specific historical and cultural circumstances. His work shows how microtonal and futurist music, modernist and avant-garde aesthetics, as well as indigenist and indianist ideas, entered a process of negotiation that ultimately shaped the ideological framework of twentieth-century Mexico.""
"Hybridity," "postnationalism," "transnationalism," "globalization," "diaspora," and similar buzzwords have not only informed scholarly discourse and analysis of music but also shaped the way musical productions have been marketed worldwide in recent times. While the construction of identities occupies a central position in this context, there are discrepancies between the conceptualization of music as an extremely fluid phenomenon and the traditionally monovalent notion of identity to which it has historically been incorporated. As such, music has always been linked to the construction of regional and national identities. The essays in this collection seek to explore the role of music, networks of music distribution, music markets, music consumption, music production, and music scholarship in the articulation of postnational sites of identification."
Articles by Alejandro L. Madrid
«archivo de código abierto» como una noción para explorar estas intervenciones instrumentales como interfases archivísticas de futuridad, que nos muestran cómo los individuos pueden reinventar estos instrumentos de acuerdo con nuevas fantasías sobre sus propios presentes y futuros. Aun cuando estos instrumentos fueron diseñados de acuerdo con objetivos musicales específicos, cuentan con el potencial anárquico de convertirse en fuentes de nuevos sonidos y procesos creativos en línea con las posibilidades que su materialidad almacena. Si un instrumento puede ser considerado un archivo, uno debe preguntarse qué es lo que preservan, cómo es que podemos recuperarlo y, si es posible, recobrar algo diferente de ellos. En el espíritu de buscar formas que le permitan a un archivo decir algo diferente a lo que fue diseñado a decir, este trabajo explora la noción de archivo de código abierto con relación a la poesía como una experiencia
estética que permite la recuperación afectiva de aquello que el archivo invisibiliza y silencia.
Nuanced and multifaceted, Tania León's Stride looks at the life, legacy, and milieu that created and sustained one of the most important figures in American classical music.
Experimentalisms in Practice responds to recent efforts to reframe and reconceptualize the study of experimental music in terms of epistemological perspective and geographic scope, while also engaging traditional scholarship. This book contributes to the current conversations about music experimentalism while providing new points of entry to further reevaluate the field.
Confronting this paucity of scholarship on Carrillo and his music, Alejandro L. Madrid goes above and beyond "filling in" the historical record. Combining archival and ethnographic research with musical analysis and cultural theory, Madrid argues that Carrillo and Sonido 13 are best understood as a cultural complex: a network of moments, spaces, and articulations in which Carrillo and his music continuously re-acquire significance and meaning. Thus, Madrid explores Carrillo's music and ideas not only in relation to the historical moments of their inception, but also in relation to the various cultural projects that kept them alive and re-signified them through the beginning of the twenty-first century. Eschewing traditionally linear historical frameworks, In Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13 employs an innovative transhistorical narrative in which past, present, and future are explored dialogically in order to understand the politics of performance and self-representation behind Carrillo and Sonido 13.
In Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13 transforms the traditional genre of the composer study, treating it not as a celebration of "masters" and "masterworks," but as a pointed postcolonial intervention that offers invaluable insight into the politics of cultural exchange, experimentalism, marginality, and cultural capital in twentieth century Mexico.
Co-authors Alejandro L. Madrid and Robin D. Moore take an ethnomusicological, historical, and critical approach to the processes of appropriation of the danzón in new contexts, its changing meanings over time, and its relationship to other musical forms. Delving into its long history of controversial popularization, stylistic development, glorification, decay, and rebirth in a continuous transnational dialogue between Cuba and Mexico as well as New Orleans, the authors explore the production, consumption, and transformation of this Afro-diasporic performance complex in relation to global and local ideological discourses. By focusing on interactions across this entire region as well as specific local scenes, Madrid and Moore underscore the extent of cultural movement and exchange within the Americas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, and are thereby able to analyze the danzón, the dance scenes it has generated, and the various discourses of identification surrounding it as elements in broader regional processes. Danzón is a significant addition to the literature on Latin American music, dance, and expressive culture; it is essential reading for scholars, students, and fans of this music alike."
Tijuana has media links to both Mexico and the United States, with peoples, currencies, and cultural goods--perhaps especially music--from both sides circulating intensely within the city. Older residents and their more mobile, cosmopolitan-minded children thus engage in a constant struggle with identity and nationality, appropriation and authenticity. Nor-tec music in its very composition encapsulates this city's struggle, resonating with issues felt on the global level, while holding vastly different meanings to the variety of communities that embrace it.
With an impressive hybrid of musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural and performance studies, urbanism, and border studies, Nor-tec Rifa! offers compelling insights into the cultural production of Nor-tec as it stems from norteña, banda, and grupera traditions. The book is also among the first to offer detailed accounts of Nor-tec music's composition process."
Madrid challenges the view that Latin American modernist music and other art were mere imitations of European trends, advancing instead the argument that Latin American artists resignified European ideas according to their specific historical and cultural circumstances. His work shows how microtonal and futurist music, modernist and avant-garde aesthetics, as well as indigenist and indianist ideas, entered a process of negotiation that ultimately shaped the ideological framework of twentieth-century Mexico.""
"Hybridity," "postnationalism," "transnationalism," "globalization," "diaspora," and similar buzzwords have not only informed scholarly discourse and analysis of music but also shaped the way musical productions have been marketed worldwide in recent times. While the construction of identities occupies a central position in this context, there are discrepancies between the conceptualization of music as an extremely fluid phenomenon and the traditionally monovalent notion of identity to which it has historically been incorporated. As such, music has always been linked to the construction of regional and national identities. The essays in this collection seek to explore the role of music, networks of music distribution, music markets, music consumption, music production, and music scholarship in the articulation of postnational sites of identification."
«archivo de código abierto» como una noción para explorar estas intervenciones instrumentales como interfases archivísticas de futuridad, que nos muestran cómo los individuos pueden reinventar estos instrumentos de acuerdo con nuevas fantasías sobre sus propios presentes y futuros. Aun cuando estos instrumentos fueron diseñados de acuerdo con objetivos musicales específicos, cuentan con el potencial anárquico de convertirse en fuentes de nuevos sonidos y procesos creativos en línea con las posibilidades que su materialidad almacena. Si un instrumento puede ser considerado un archivo, uno debe preguntarse qué es lo que preservan, cómo es que podemos recuperarlo y, si es posible, recobrar algo diferente de ellos. En el espíritu de buscar formas que le permitan a un archivo decir algo diferente a lo que fue diseñado a decir, este trabajo explora la noción de archivo de código abierto con relación a la poesía como una experiencia
estética que permite la recuperación afectiva de aquello que el archivo invisibiliza y silencia.