The Colonial Legacies of “Fiesta Island”: a Critical Study of Live-Music Events Production in Puerto Rico" (2014)
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Summer November 2014 The Colonial Legacies of “Fiesta Island”: A Critical Study of Live- Music Events Production in Puerto Rico Anilyn Diaz University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Other Legal Studies Commons, Other Political Science Commons, Public Policy Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, and the Sociology of Culture Commons Recommended Citation Diaz, Anilyn, "The Colonial Legacies of “Fiesta Island”: A Critical Study of Live-Music Events Production in Puerto Rico" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 177. https://doi.org/10.7275/6055829.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/177 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE COLONIAL LEGACIES OF “FIESTA ISLAND”: A CRITICAL STUDY OF LIVE-MUSIC EVENTS PRODUCTION IN PUERTO RICO A Dissertation Presented by ANILYN DÍAZ-HERNÁNDEZ Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2014 Communication © Copyright by Anilyn Díaz-Hernández 2014 All Rights Reserved THE COLONIAL LEGACIES OF “FIESTA ISLAND”: A CRITICAL STUDY OF LIVE-MUSIC EVENTS PRODUCTION IN PUERTO RICO A Dissertation Presented by ANILYN DÍAZ-HERNÁNDEZ Approved as to style and content by: _______________________________________ Paula Chakravartty, Chair _______________________________________ Martha Fuentes-Bautista, Member _______________________________________ Sonia E. Álvarez, Member _______________________________________ Wilson Valentín-Escobar, Member ____________________________________ Marty Norden, Department Acting Head Department of Communication DEDICATION A mi familia por su paciencia. A mis amistades por esperar. A mis maestras y maestros por confirmarme que enseñar es un acto político. A los obreros y obreras de la música, en solidaridad. To my family for their patience. To my friends for waiting. To my teachers for showing me that teaching is a political action. To the music workers, in solidarity. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Paula Chakravartty and the committee members Martha Fuentes-Bautista, Sonia Alvarez, and Wilson Valentín-Escobar for their patience, useful critiques and questions during the presentation of this research work. We all have been through a lot and I appreciate you stayed until the very end. The advice of Fanny Nancy Rothschild in terms of editing was also greatly appreciated. I am particularly grateful for the assistance given by the UMass Department of Communication’s staff, especially Kathleen Ready and Susan Dreyer. Their support and sense of humor kept me down to earth and relieved – even in the most stressful moments of this race. I would also like to thank the departmental faculty, especially Leda Cooks, Jarice Hanson, Lisa Henderson, and Claudio Moreira for giving me a hand or a smile when most needed. Advice given by professors from other departments and universities, such as Federico Subervi, César J. Ayala, Rafael Bernabe, and Roberto Alejandro has been a great help to organize my ideas, keep my work on schedule, and have clear interlocutors in my project. My special thanks are extended to the staff and faculty of the UMass Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies (CLACLS), particularly Gloria Bernabe-Ramos who treated me as another daughter and gave me the opportunity to work closely with her in important projects that helped me to better frame my research. WMUA 91.1FM also provided me with very valuable experience in a welcoming environment where I met very good friends like Glenn Siegel, Priscilla Page, Rosa Oviedo, and Dan Ferreira, who helped me to live the university life in another way. They became part of my family in UMass along with Victor Ernesto Guevara Figueroa, who became a familiar figure for me during my studies at UMass-Amherst. I wish to acknowledge my dearest friends who also became my family at UMass: Avanti Mukherjee, Pitchaya Boonsrirat, Martin Rapetti, Fabián Slonimczyk, Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth, Jõao Paulo De Souza, Ian J. Seda-Irizarry, Gonzalo Hernández-Jiménez and Juanita González- Uribe from the Department of Economics. Of course, “my forever new cohort” and others from the Department of Communication was part of that family: Fadia Hasan, Tim Sutton, Gamze Onut, Alicya Floyd, David Avishai, Greg Dorchak, Gyuri Kepes, Sreela Sarkar, Sunny Lie, Eve Ng, and my dearest Toks Oyedemi whom I miss a lot. My friends from the Association of Latin American and Caribbean Students (ALACS and Friends) also helped me to feel in family, especially Martha Balaguera, Andrés F. Henao, Elva F. Orozco, Carlos Valderrama, and Leidy Hurtado. I would also thank Eric Burri for his kind words that often came in when most needed. Tomás, I am glad you were there, too. My special thanks to my friends Ayleen James, Keyla I. Torres, Nereidín Feliciano, Carmen C. Cortés, Natalia Rodríguez, Yolanda Vega, Ineabelle Colón, Pedro Muñiz, and Juan C. Puig for keeping me alive in the writing stage. Special thanks should be sent to Javier Santiago and Malu Seda from the Fundación Nacional para la Cultura Popular for giving me access to the Foundation’s archives and great stories, often unacknowledged in Puerto Rico. I would always be grateful of professors Edwin Hernández-Vera and José J. Rodríguez- Vázquez for encouraging me to get the doctoral degree. I was backed up by a paid leave of absence, an endangered right that all professors should fight for. Thanks also to my home Department of Tele-Radial Communication at the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo for letting me go in a critical moment for the Department. Finally, I want to thank my dear family for patiently waiting for me and helping however they could until the very last moment of my degree. ¡Gracias a todas y todos! v ABSTRACT THE COLONIAL LEGACIES OF “FIESTA ISLAND”: A CRITICAL STUDY OF LIVE-MUSIC EVENTS PRODUCTION IN PUERTO RICO SEPTEMBER 2014 ANILYN DÍAZ-HERNÁNDEZ, B.A., UNIVERSIDAD DEL SAGRADO CORAZÓN M.A., UNIVERSIDAD DE PUERTO RICO - RÍO PIEDRAS Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Paula Chakravartty This dissertation examines the historical relationship between the state and national culture in Puerto Rico as seen through the case of the entertainment industry, specifically live-music events production. The dissertation is located within two bodies of literature: critical post-colonial cultural studies of cultural industries and cultural policy, and cultural approaches to scholarship on collective action and state-civil society relationships in neoliberal contexts. The research design includes archival work and analysis of organizational material, supported by a cultural ethnography approach to semi-structured informant interviews and group interviews. The interviews focus on the historical development, cultural legacies, and practices of the entertainment industries in relation to musicians in Puerto Rico and links to the Latin American and Caribbean region, and translocal networks. Live-music events producers, musicians, and main institutional actors from the entertainment industry and the state were interviewed, and four state-sponsored live-music events were observed. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES ...............................................................................................................x LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................... xiv CHAPTER 1. BEYOND “FIESTA ISLAND” .......................................................................................1 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................1 1.2 Overview of events and live-music events production ......................................4 1.3 Theoretical overview .......................................................................................13 1.3.1 Critical Post-Colonial Cultural Studies of Cultural Industries and Cultural Policy ...........................................................................................14 1.3.2 Collective Action and State-Civil Society Relationships in Neoliberal Contexts .....................................................................................................19 1.4 Historical Overview .........................................................................................21 1.4.1 Organization of the Local Neocolonial State: From Americanization to Puertorriqueñidad (1945-1952) ..................................................................22 1.4.1.1 From national(ist) culture to national cultural policy ......................31