Book Talk: Danzón: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance

We all love music, whether it’s lively or soothing to the soul. Alejandro L. Madrid’s new book, Danzón (Oxford University Press, Dec. 2013), delves into the emergence of the danzón phenomenon, a Latin American music, dance, and expressive culture. Its history spans more than 150 years and its influence transcends national boundaries.

The danzón first emerged as a distinct form of music and dance among black performers in nineteenth-century Cuba, influenced by the European contradance tradition where couples face each other in a line and change partners. It reflects the fusion of European and African elements, later influencing Latin dance traditions as well as early jazz in New Orleans. In the early 20th century, it exploded in popularity. Madrid and coauthor Robin Moore explore the long history of its controversial popularization, development, glorification, decay, and rebirth.

Alejandro L. Madrid is a music scholar whose research focuses on the intersection of modernity, tradition and globalization in music and expressive culture from Mexico, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the circum-Caribbean. His books have received the AMS's Ruth A. Solie Award, IASPM's Woody Guthrie Book Award, and the Casa de las Américas Musicology Prize. Most recently he has received the Béla Bartók Award from the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards and the AMS's Robert M. Stevenson Award for Danzón. He is associate professor of ethnomusicology at Cornell.

Buffalo Street Books will offer books for purchase and signing. Light refreshments served.