Music, Migration, and the Exchange of Knowledge: Spain – North America – Latin america

28–29 November 2024, Barcelona
22–23 April 2025. New York
Call for Papers

A bicontinental symposium at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, 28–29 November 2024, and at the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation, CUNY, Graduate Center, New York, 22–23 April 2025.

The Spanish presence in the Americas spans from the Early Modern period to the age of mass Atlantic migrations from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Likewise, interest in Spanish culture and arts led people from the Americas to travel and establish links and alliances with Spain, and many Spanish musicians went to work in the Americas for a time or permanently. In recent decades there has been a major development in musicology’s understanding of sonic exchanges between Spain and the Americas thanks to scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. Research has largely focused, though, on musical exchanges between Spain and Latin American countries due to their shared and strong historical ties, as well as their common language. Cultural and musical transfers between Spain and the United States have been addressed to a lesser extent and need more attention. On the other hand, studies have usually favored case-study topics on the mobility of musicians, music sources, and musical genres, sometimes with less emphasis on broader concepts and subjects. This bicontinental symposium in Barcelona and New York seeks to study musical transfers between Spain, North America, and Latin America focusing on the concept of the exchange of musical knowledge, understood in the broadest way. The notion of musical knowledge exchange has been at the very center since the first contact between these three geographical areas. Music of European origin taught by sixteenth-century Spanish missionaries to Native Americans included Spanish music, and Spanish clerics were among the first to provide descriptions of Native American music. The movement or circulation of human beings has been recognized as a required element of the transfer of valuable knowledge. Waves of migration between Spain and the Americas and vice versa started with the first Spanish settlers in the Americas but continued after colonial times. Between c. 1880 and the first decades of the 20th century (the so-called age of mass Atlantic migrations), around four million Spaniards arrived in the Americas, a big proportion to the Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, but a substantial number also made their way further north. Another wave of migration towards the Americas ensued with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Contacts between Spain and the Americas resulted in exchanges both ways of musical knowledge through a wide range of people: musicians, clerics, ethnographers, intellectuals and scholars, travelers, writers, teachers and students, and other ordinary people who brought with them musical knowledge through a variety of cultural artifacts such as music scores, recordings, musical instruments, scholarly literature, and texts of any kind. The core question of this bicontinental symposium is how the geographical mobility of people, ideas, practices, and cultural artifacts between Spain, North America, and Latin America has had an impact on the epistemic systems of musical knowledge within these territories. We invite scholars from all disciplines, whose work engages with music in both specific and broad ways, to send their contributions exploring topics like:*

Types of musical knowledge exchanges (e.g., academic, popular, pedagogical, religious, ethnomusicological, others) between Spain and the Americas (North America and/or Latin America)

Changes through time and territories in the exchange of musical knowledge between these three geographical areas

Musical and musicological knowledge created in the context of displacement and exile between Spain, North America, and Latin America

The role of exiled intellectuals and scholars in the exchange of musical knowledge

The role of women, indigenous populations, and other underrepresented social groups in the creation, dissemination, and exchange of musical knowledge

The influence of migration and exile experience on academic, popular, pedagogical, and other types of musical knowledge and thought

The role of intellectual networks for the creation, dissemination, and exchange of musicological knowledge between these geographical areas

We welcome proposals for individual papers and whole panels in English or Spanish. Individual paper presentations must be kept to 20 minutes (followed by 15-minute discussions).

Abstracts should be sent through this form by 15 March 2024 in English or Spanish. Participants must indicate whether they want to participate in the Barcelona symposium in 2024 or in the New York symposium in 2025. For individual papers: abstracts of c. 350 words; for panels: abstracts of c. 300 words of the proposal as a whole and c. 200 words on the contribution of each participant. Applicants will be notified by 1 June 2024.

For more information visit the symposium website

Please direct any questions
to apuentes@imf.csic.es
and to TFruhauf@gc.cuny.edu.

Convenors & Coordination: Tina Frühauf (The CUNY Graduate Center, New York / RILM), Andrea Puentes-Blanco (IMF-CSIC, Barcelona & Societat Catalana de Musicologia)

Scientific committee: Tina Frühauf (The CUNY Graduate Center / RILM, New York , USA), Andrea Puentes-Blanco (Institución Milá y Fontanals de Investigación en Humanidades - CSIC, Barcelona, España), Daniela Fugellie (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile), María Gembero-Ustárroz (Institución Milá y Fontanals de Investigación en Humanidades - CSIC, Barcelona, España), Silvia Glocer (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), Javier Marín-López (Universidad de Jaén, España), Antoni Pizà (The CUNY Graduate Center / Foundation for Iberian Music, New York, USA), Emilio Ros-Fábregas (Institución Milá y Fontanals de Investigación en Humanidades - CSIC, Barcelona, España), Belén Vega Pichaco (Universidad de La Rioja, España)

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