NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY THE CONCEPT OF IDENTITY: AN APPROACH TO LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC A RESEARCH DOCUMENT SUBMITTED TO THE BIENEN SCHOOL OF MUSIC IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS Program of Composition By José Miguel Arellano EVANSTON, ILLINOIS February, 2018 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 1 ABSTRACT The Concept of Identity: An Approach to Latin American Music José Miguel Arellano Since the beginning of the 21st century, the idea of building a Latin American musical discourse has returned to the artistic discussion, taking into account the peculiarities of cultural syncretism that manifest in the different countries of the region. From the most diverse aesthetics and through different musical media, a great number of composers have begun to rethink the possibility of articulating their artistic language through different mechanisms that could be considered as typical of Latin American culture: rediscovery of Aboriginal music, utilization of vernacular instruments, non-tempered melodic and harmonic systems, rhythmic irregularities, and mixture between art forms among many different other approaches. This dissertation proposes a historical review of different moments in Latin American history in which composers, artists and intellectuals tried to elaborate a local identity, analyzing the diverse problems that might have arisen from the cultural, social, and political contexts of the different periods studied. A second part of this work will be the articulation of a personal approach to the study of music and processes of identity formation in Latin America, with a special emphasis on the particular case of Chile and its development from the late 19th century to the present day. However, rather than describing a theoretical framework for an analytical approach to the study of classical music in Latin America, this dissertation aims to contribute to the discussion about the need to reflect on the possibility of constructing a genuine local art, considering the specific characteristics of the region, from a historical, social, political and cultural perspective. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my gratitude to Jay Alan Yim, my advisor, for his guidance and for his great knowledge about music and art in general. I also thank the members of my committee, Hans Thomalla and Ryan Dohoney, for all their help. I would like to make a special mention to Professor Beltrán Undurraga, for his teachings on sociology and our conversations about Jacques Rancière and Pierre Bourdieu, which have served to delve into relevant aspects of this dissertation Also, thanks to Professor Gabriel Castillo, for our conversations about art and aesthetics in Latin America. Finally, I would like to thank the wonderful people that I had the good fortune to meet in Chicago: Craig Davis Pinson, Luis Fernando Amaya, Morgan Krauss, Juan Campoverde, Luis Fred, Eric Singh, Brandon Quarles, and many others. I dedicate this work to Rocío, Elisa and Sofía. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 The Concept of Identity 1.1 The Case of Latin America 6 1.2 The Building of a Nation: What does music have to do with politics? 9 1.2.1 Institutional Configuration 10 1.2.2 The Political Side of a Musical Work 13 2 Latin America in the 19th Century 2.1 The Construction of an Identity 16 2.2 Western Art Music in Latin America 17 2.3 Music After the Independence Wars 20 2.4 Federico Guzmán: The Quest for a Chilean Identity 21 3 Whose Identity Are We Talking About? 2.1 A Musicological Approach 26 3.2 Latin America’s Fin de Siècle 30 3.3 Identity vs Modernity: The Normative Role of the Arts 34 4 Latin America From the 20th Century to the Present Day 4.1 Brief Historical Overview 39 4.2 Pedro Humberto Allende 39 4.2.1 La Voz de las Calles 41 4.2.2 12 Tonadas de Carácter Popular Chileno 45 4.3 Carlos Isamitt and Eduardo Cáceres: An Approach to Indigenous Músic 48 5 Towards a Sociology of Music in Latin America 5.1 Interdisciplinary Approach 53 5.2 National Customs or Social Identities? 56 5.3 Cultural Capital and the Construction of the Identity 62 6 Preliminary Conclusions 73 7 References 75 4 A Rocío, Elisa y Sofía 5 1. The Concept of Identity 1.1 The Case of Latin America Identity is a concept that shies away from any clear and precise definition. Innumerable pages have been written trying to define this idea that seems to manifest itself and come to life in multiple and diverse ways, even among members of the same culture. The issue becomes even more complex when art is used as a platform for the reflection or identity-representation of a particular group of people. Simon Frith1 has a very interesting approach to the study of the relations between music and possible representations of identity. Focused on the specific case of popular music he says the following: “The academic study of popular music has been limited by the assumption that the sounds must somehow 'reflect' or 'represent' the people. The analytic problem has been to trace the connections back, from the work, the score, the song, the beat, to the social groups who produce and consume it. What's been at issue is homology, some sort of structural relationship between material and musical forms.”2 Throughout this work I will refer to identity3 as a set of cultural, social and political characteristics that are formed over time due to multiple historical events, and that determine certain modes of behavior of a specific group of people. 1 An English sociologist and musicologist whose main focus of study is related to various aspects of popular music, such as reception, identity and social experiences. Since 2006 he is Tovey Chair of Music at the University of Edinburgh (source: http://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/profile/prof-simon-frith) 2 Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay. Questions of Cultural Identity. (London, UK: SAGE Publishers, 2006): 108. 3 For a detailed analysis of the evolution of the concept of identity I recommend a paper by James D. Fearon, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, entitled: What is Identity (As We Now Use the Word)? 6 It is necessary for me to clarify that there are many other points of view to this concept, and that some of them may be in opposition to the definition that I am using to structure this work. Jorge Larraín,4 for instance, in his book Identidad y Modernidad en América Latina (Identity and Modernity in Latin America), analyzes some of the many different approaches to the subject, focusing on the specific case of Latin America, and categorizing them depending on their specific situation in the historic evolution of the region.5 For example, he describes the Indigenist Movement from the late 19th and early 20th century, which locates identity in an oppressed past, in the loss of a set of traditions and ways of conceiving life strongly linked to the indigenous inhabitants of a region. Thereby, for the indigenists, the concept of identity starts from a reconstruction of the past and must go through a rediscovery of the lost roots that were destroyed as a consequence of the European invasion. Thus (as Larraín would say) identity is located and formed—once and for all—in the past.6 For the Chilean sociologist, however, one common element in each of the different manifestations that has occurred in the region is, precisely, this constant search for identity. Regardless of whether it is understood as a past phenomenon that must be reconstructed, or of a concept that has to be articulated looking towards the future, one of the fundamental 4 Jorge Larraín is a Chilean sociologist whose research focus centers around the concepts of ideology, identity and modernity in Latin America. He received his PhD. from Sussex University in the UK, and currently serves as director of the Social Science Department at Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile. 5 Jorge Larraín describes four different types of approximation to identity: 1) Constructivism: discursively constructed character of identity and therefore openness to any change. 2) Essentialism: fixed character, closed to any change of identity. 3) Historic/structural: entrenched practices of a group. It can change in a materially conditioned way. Constructivism focuses its attention in the discourse as a mechanism to create identity. Constructivism focuses its attention in the discourse as a mechanism to create identity, whether political, economic, cultural, etc. (Identidad y Modernidad en América Latina, pag. 47-48) 6 Jorge Larraín Identidad y Modernidad en América Latina. (Mexico D.F., Mexico: Editorial Océano de Mexico, 2004), 57. 7 characteristics of the Latin American people is this constant quest for shared cultural symbols that could help boost the artistic, political, economic and cultural development of the region. If we analyze the history since the early days of colonialism, we can see that the discussion about identity has always arisen with greater force during periods of crisis, when shared cultural codes arr threatened by outside influences. During the 19th century, for example, wars for independence meant constant conflict for Latin American societies, in which they had to begin to define (re-define), under sometimes uncertain parameters, the various paths that the nascent nations would follow, in terms of their social and cultural construction. If we think in purely musical terms, we will see that the 19th century is one of the decisive centuries not only for the formation of certain aesthetic and political movements, such as Nationalism, Indigenism and Europeanism, Criollism etc., but also for the impact that those orientations would have in the different social segments of Latin American nations.