Overview

Winner of the 2024 BFE Book Prize (British Forum for Ethnomusicology) Older people negotiating dance routines, intimacy, and racialized differences provide a focal point for an ethnography of danzón in Veracruz, the Mexican city closely associated with the music-dance genre. Hettie Malcomson draws upon on-site research with semi-professional musicians and amateur dancers to reveal how danzón connects, and does not connect, to blackness, joyousness, nostalgia, ageing, and romance. Challenging pervasive utopian views of danzón, Malcomson uses the idea of ambivalence to explore the frictions and opportunities created by seemingly contrary sentiments, ideas, sensations, and impulses. Interspersed with experimental ethnographic vignettes, her account takes readers into black and mestizo elements of local identity in Veracruz, nostalgic and newer styles of music and dance, and the friendships, romances, and rivalries at the heart of regular danzón performance and its complex social world. Fine-grained and evocative, Danzón Days journeys to one of the genre’s essential cities to provide new perspectives on aging and romance and new explorations of nostalgia and ambivalence.

Full Product Details

Author:   Hettie Malcomson
Publisher:   University of Illinois Press
Imprint:   University of Illinois Press
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9780252045004

ISBN 10:   0252045009
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   23 May 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Vignette 1. Gerardo, Elena, and Miguel [Fiction] Introduction. Danzón, Veracruz, and Ambivalence Vignette 2. Teresita [Fiction] Chapter 1. Racial Ambivalence: Veracruz, Blackness, and Danzón Vignette 3. Pancho [Fiction] Chapter 2. Ambivalent Nostalgia: Histories and Memories of the Port and Its Danzón Vignette 4. Renata [Fiction] Chapter 3. Elegant Moves: Modernist Aesthetics and Danzón in Veracruz Vignette 5. Lulú and Antonio [Fiction] Chapter 4. Moves to Rescue: Reviving the Dance, State Sponsorship, and Power Vignette 6. Hettie and Uriel Chapter 5. United in a Viper’s Nest: Group Dynamics, Conviviality, and Rivalry Vignette 7. Carmen and Ernesto [Fiction] Chapter 6. Loving Ambivalence: Dance Groups, Amorous Encounters, and Ageing Bodies Vignette 8. Diana [Fiction] Acknowledgments Notes Glossary Select Discography Select Filmography Bibliography Index

Reviews

“Malcomson provides a superb ethnographic study of ambivalence in lived experience: danzón is disciplinary and jealously competitive, yet it gives aficionados room to be creative and convivial, and to weave identities around narratives of blackness and race mixture, local histories, and personal trajectories. A brilliant exploration of how people navigate the contradictions of everyday life.”--Peter Wade, coeditor of Against Racism: Organizing for Social Change in Latin America

Malcomson provides a superb ethnographic study of ambivalence in lived experience: danzon is disciplinary and jealously competitive, yet it gives aficionados room to be creative and convivial, and to weave identities around narratives of blackness and race mixture, local histories, and personal trajectories. A brilliant exploration of how people navigate the contradictions of everyday life. --Peter Wade, coeditor of Against Racism: Organizing for Social Change in Latin America

Author Information

Hettie Malcomson is an associate professor of ethnomusicology and social anthropology at the University of Southampton.

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