Awards

• Winner of Winner, Robert M. Stevenson Award, American Musicological Society.

Overview

The Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM) in Buenos Aires operated for less than a decade, but by the time of its closure in 1971 it had become the undeniable epicenter of Latin American avant-garde music. Providing the first in-depth study of CLAEM, author Eduardo Herrera tells the story of the fellowship program--funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Di Tella family--that, by allowing the region's promising young composers to study with a roster of acclaimed faculty, produced some of the most prominent figures within the art world, including Rafael Aponte Ledeé, Coriún Aharonián, and Blas Emilio Atehortúa. Combining oral histories, ethnographic research, and archival sources, Elite Art Worlds explores regional discourses of musical Latin Americanism and the embrace, articulation, and resignification of avant-garde techniques and perspectives during the 1960s. But the story of CLAEM reveals much more: intricate webs of US and Argentine philanthropy, transnational currents of artistic experimentation and innovation, and the role of art in constructing elite identities. By looking at CLAEM as both an artistic and philanthropic project, Herrera illuminates the relationships between foreign policy, corporate interests, and funding for the arts in Latin America and the United States against the backdrop of the Cold War.

Full Product Details

9780190877538

Table of Contents

Reviews

This superb book hums with the sounds, conversations, and behind-the-scenes negotiations that created one of the most vital centers for new music in the 1960s. A keen observer of people and their motivations, Eduardo Herrera transforms our understanding of philanthropy, Latin American identity, and the twentieth century's many avant-gardes. * Lisa Jakelski, Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester * In this ambitious and pathbreaking book, a vital part of Western music's history is told for the first time. Highly recommended! * Danielle Fosler-Lussier, author of Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy *

In this ambitious and pathbreaking book, a vital part of Western music's history is told for the first time. Highly recommended! * Danielle Fosler-Lussier, author of Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy * This superb book hums with the sounds, conversations, and behind-the-scenes negotiations that created one of the most vital centers for new music in the 1960s. A keen observer of people and their motivations, Eduardo Herrera transforms our understanding of philanthropy, Latin American identity, and the twentieth century's many avant-gardes. * Lisa Jakelski, Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester *

Author Information

Eduardo Herrera is Associate Professor of Musicology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He researches Argentine and Uruguayan avant-garde music, postcoloniality in Latin America and, most recently, collective soccer chants as participatory music making and public affective practice. His co-edited volume Experimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2018) discusses a wide variety of artistic and musical traditions from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinos/as in the United States that are conceived or perceived as experimental.

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