In Latin America, there has been a strong and lasting relationship between music and literature. In this course we will explore how the relationship between the sonic and the written has been constitutive of a Latin American public sphere, marked by different moments of musical recontextualization. The course is historically structured. It begins by exploring travelers’ accounts in the region in the late nineteenth century and how they “heard” Latin America. From there, we will explore developments in the early twentieth century and contrast how different countires – particularly Colombia, Brasil, Cuba and Argentina – mediated the relationship between the lettered word, ethnography, sound circulation technologies and music.

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