Fiesta de diez pesos: Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba

Out of Stock

Contents: Preface
Introduction. Part I Understanding... (Setting the Scene): Understanding Cuban homosexualities: from ' maricon ' to 'gay'
'Swing to sunshine in gay Havana': the capital's musicscape, ethnoscape, and homoscape. Part II Dance Music and the Fiestas : The fiestas de diez pesos scene
'Watch how the locas do the despelote !': dance music genres and their queer appropriation
'Dancing identity': social and musical analysis of the fiestas scene. Part III ' El Chow ': Performance, Performativity, and Audience: Performance, performativity and camp: a brief introduction to Part III
Drag shows: glamour, empowerment, and resistance
El Ballet Nacional, 'the most obvious discreet gay space in Havana'
Chango versus Santa Barbara: Santeria ritual performance as a gay space
!Yo soy el bolero! : queer appropriation and identification in the kitchen. Conclusion and some theoretical framing
Epilogue: !Ya empezo la fiesta! (the party has already begun!)
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

About
Reviews
Explore

About

The ‘Special Period’ in Cuba was an extended era of economic depression starting in the early 1990s, characterized by the collapse of revolutionary values and social norms, and a way of life conducted by improvised solutions for survival, including hustling and sex-work. During this time there developed a thriving, though constantly harassed and destabilized, clandestine gay scene (known as the ‘ambiente’). In the course of eight visits between 1995 and 2007, the last dozen years of Fidel Castro’s reign, Moshe Morad became absorbed in Havana’s gay scene, where he created a wide social network, attended numerous secret gatherings-from clandestine parties to religious rituals-and observed patterns of behavior and communication. He discovered the role of music in this scene as a marker of identity, a source of queer codifications and identifications, a medium of interaction, an outlet for emotion and a way to escape from a reality of scarcity, oppression and despair.

Morad identified and conducted his research in different types of ‘musical space,’ from illegal clandestine parties held in changing locations, to ballet halls, drag-show bars, private living-rooms and kitchens and santería religious ceremonies. In this important study, the first on the subject, he argues that music plays a central role in providing the physical, emotional, and conceptual spaces which constitute this scene and in the formation of a new hybrid ‘gay identity’ in Special-Period Cuba.

Reviews

Ethnomusicology Forum

What we have here is an important study of transcultural synthesis...With such thought-provoking material and interpretations, Fiesta de diez pesos is a stellar contribution to the field of music, gender and sexuality studies, and is highly recommended for students and scholars of anthropology, ethnomusicology, cultural studies and the Americas

Book

Contents

Download queue