Papers by Helena Simonett
Music and Dance IV—Indigenous
Miguel A García. Paisajes sonoros de un mundo coherente: Prácticas musicales y religión en la sociedad wichí.Buenos Aires, Argentina: Institiuto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega,” 2005. 254 pp., figures, musical transcriptions, footnotes, bibliography, compact disc
Yearbook for Traditional Music, 2008
Narcocorridos: An Emerging Micromusic of Nuevo L. A
Ethno-musicology, 2001
Mettant en evidence la relation entre contexte social et musique populaire, entre reseaux musicau... more Mettant en evidence la relation entre contexte social et musique populaire, entre reseaux musicaux translocaux et scenes musicales locales, l'A. examine les narcocorridos mexicaines dans les boites de nuit de Nuevo Los Angeles ou Nuevo L.A., un ensemble de compositions nouvelles, sur le modele des ballades populaires mexicaines (corridos), qui celebrent les trafiquants et le trafic de drogues. Il montre notamment comment les differents intervenants locaux sont les acteurs de la competition pour la production d'une localite specifique, centrant notamment son analyse sur l'un des protagonistes de cette micromusique. Integrant dans son analyse l'aspect commercial de la production musicale, il examine egalement les corridos destinees a une utilisation plutot privee et restreinte mais ayant un impact important pour l'industrie culturelle dans sa demande de production de mythes et de figures heroiques
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Sep 21, 2021
Resumen: El acordeón y sus múltiples variantes -desde la concertina y el acordeón de botones hast... more Resumen: El acordeón y sus múltiples variantes -desde la concertina y el acordeón de botones hasta la zanfona y el bandoneón-han florecido y arraigado en diversas culturas. Conocido comúnmente como "el piano del hombre común", este instrumento se convirtió en un medio para el crecimiento de la música folklórica y popular en distintas regiones del mundo, especialmente entre finales del siglo xix y principios del xx. Por esa razón, el ser una "banda de un solo hombre" facilitó su uso entre la gente de los sectores populares, por su capacidad de producir melodías, armonías y bajos a la vez. También era fuerte y duradero, ideal para reuniones al aire libre. Este artículo sigue la historia del acordeón desde sus principios en Europa hasta el Nuevo Mundo, al otro lado del Atlántico. Palabras claves: acordeón de botones, invenciones de instrumentos musicales, proletarización de la producción musical, industrialización, nacimiento de la música popular, migración internacional, compañía Hohner. 1 Esta es una versión en español del capítulo "From Old World to new Shores", aparecido en el libro The Accordion in the Américas. Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Zydedo, and More!, editado por la autora, en 2012, a quien agradecemos haber escrito ahora una versión especial para este número. A ella y a The University of Illinois Press, también agradecemos el permiso otorgado para su publicación. Traducción del inglés:
Pasito Duranguense
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 2, 2011
Cumbia! Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre
Hahr-hispanic American Historical Review, 2014
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Dec 22, 2022
The complex relationship between people and places has increasingly become a subject of scholarly... more The complex relationship between people and places has increasingly become a subject of scholarly inquiry with the rapid growth of globalizing processes since the 1990s. Place attachment and memories are central to coming to terms with one's fate, especially for people displaced from their homelands by economic or ecological crises and political conflicts. Music plays an important role in coping with insuing inequalities and feelings of powerlessness. For example, politically engaged bands often build on musical styles and genres located in specific listening traditions to musically challenge an unjust judicial system by subverting auditory spaces. This article focuses on Los Jornaleros del Norte, a California-based band that assumes power in a socio-acoustic space by "Chanting Down the Walls" of detention centers and prisons where migrants from Mexico and Central America are incarcerated, awaiting their deportation. Die von der Musikethnologie (und Musiksoziologie) verfochtene Kontextualisierung der Musik im kulturellen, sozialen und politischen Leben wird in der heutigen Musikforschung allgemein anerkannt. Doch wie der Musikphilosoph Roger Savage zu bedenken gibt: "Music's social, cultural, and even political relevance is inseparable from its capacity to refashion affective dimensions of our everyday expe riences and to renew our manner of inhering in the world. As such, music's worlding power is the ground of the interfaces between music's expressive vehemence and social life." 2 Der Wert und die Bedeutung der Musik ist also nicht allein in ihrer sozialen Signifikanz zu suchen, sondern in ihrer weltbildenden Kraft. 3 Das heisst, es ist die Fähigkeit der Musik, die affektiven Dimensionen unserer Alltagserfahrungen zu verstärken und neu zu gestalten. 4 Diese Aussage ist besonders wichtig für die Analyse populärer Lieder, die sich oftmals nur auf eine Textexegese beschränkt. 5 Denn, wie Savage weiter erläutert: Feelings of belonging precede the objectification of agents' multiply intersecting social positions in this regard. These feelings attest to the priority of the experience of belonging to a history, culture, and tradition. The priority of this experience is borne out by the fact that we are affected by the histories, cultures, and traditions of which we are a part. 6 Diese sinnliche Erfahrung der Zugehörigkeit zu einer Geschichte, Kultur und Tradition ist für alle Menschen bedeutsam. Die Erkenntnis, dass Menschen Orte nicht einfach nur bewohnen, sondern sie erleben und ihnen soziale Bedeutung verleihen (auch aus geographischer Distanz), wird als "sense of place" (Ortssinn) beschrieben. Die komplexe Beziehung zwischen Menschen und Orten ist seit der rasanten Zunahme globalisierender Prozesse in den 1990er Jahren Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Unter suchungen geworden, insbesondere in Diaspora-Studien, Human-und Sozialgeographie und
Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, Dec 29, 2022
The complex relationship between people and places has increasingly become a subject of scholarly... more The complex relationship between people and places has increasingly become a subject of scholarly inquiry with the rapid growth of globalizing processes since the 1990s. Place attachment and memories are central to coming to terms with one's fate, especially for people displaced from their homelands by economic or ecological crises and political conflicts. Music plays an important role in coping with insuing inequalities and feelings of powerlessness. For example, politically engaged bands often build on musical styles and genres located in specific listening traditions to musically challenge an unjust judicial system by subverting auditory spaces. This article focuses on Los Jornaleros del Norte, a California-based band that assumes power in a socio-acoustic space by "Chanting Down the Walls" of detention centers and prisons where migrants from Mexico and Central America are incarcerated, awaiting their deportation. Die von der Musikethnologie (und Musiksoziologie) verfochtene Kontextualisierung der Musik im kulturellen, sozialen und politischen Leben wird in der heutigen Musikforschung allgemein anerkannt. Doch wie der Musikphilosoph Roger Savage zu bedenken gibt: "Music's social, cultural, and even political relevance is inseparable from its capacity to refashion affective dimensions of our everyday expe riences and to renew our manner of inhering in the world. As such, music's worlding power is the ground of the interfaces between music's expressive vehemence and social life." 2 Der Wert und die Bedeutung der Musik ist also nicht allein in ihrer sozialen Signifikanz zu suchen, sondern in ihrer weltbildenden Kraft. 3 Das heisst, es ist die Fähigkeit der Musik, die affektiven Dimensionen unserer Alltagserfahrungen zu verstärken und neu zu gestalten. 4 Diese Aussage ist besonders wichtig für die Analyse populärer Lieder, die sich oftmals nur auf eine Textexegese beschränkt. 5 Denn, wie Savage weiter erläutert: Feelings of belonging precede the objectification of agents' multiply intersecting social positions in this regard. These feelings attest to the priority of the experience of belonging to a history, culture, and tradition. The priority of this experience is borne out by the fact that we are affected by the histories, cultures, and traditions of which we are a part. 6 Diese sinnliche Erfahrung der Zugehörigkeit zu einer Geschichte, Kultur und Tradition ist für alle Menschen bedeutsam. Die Erkenntnis, dass Menschen Orte nicht einfach nur bewohnen, sondern sie erleben und ihnen soziale Bedeutung verleihen (auch aus geographischer Distanz), wird als "sense of place" (Ortssinn) beschrieben. Die komplexe Beziehung zwischen Menschen und Orten ist seit der rasanten Zunahme globalisierender Prozesse in den 1990er Jahren Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Unter suchungen geworden, insbesondere in Diaspora-Studien, Human-und Sozialgeographie und
Loud and proud: the social history and cultural power of Mexican banda music
Cumbia!: Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre. By Héctor D.Fernández L'Hoeste and PabloVila (eds.). Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2013, p. 336, $24.95
The Latin Americanist, 2014
The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenology of Music Cultures, edited by Harris M. Berger, Friedlind Riedel, and David VanderHamm, 462-488. Oxford: Oxford University Press. , 2024
Based on ethnographic work among Indigenous people of northwestern Mexico and on Martin Heidegger... more Based on ethnographic work among Indigenous people of northwestern Mexico and on Martin Heidegger’s philosophical writings on being and time, this chapter addresses the phenomenon of human-animal transformation as practiced by the Yoreme. Music and song evoke memories of other temporalities and experiences of transcendence and, thus, help skilled deer dancers to become the animal, a transformation that is perceived as real, not as symbolic. By opening themselves up to juyia annia (the enchanted world of the deer), the dancers are able to reenactively engage with the mythological past. For Yoreme, this past is not what Robert Torrance would call an “inertial inheritance” but, rather, is constitutive of the future. For the community members present in the ceremonial fiesta, the dancer’s presentiation and remembrance of the deer world opens up a new possibility for human existence and allows them to understand themselves as a distinct people.
Music and Dance V—Mexico
Iberia and the Americas: culture, politics, and history : a multidisciplinary encyclopedia, Vol. 2, 2006 (D-M), ISBN 1-85109-421-0, págs. 749-752, 2006
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Dec 22, 2022
Much practical knowledge resides in places of higher education where it has been accumulated by p... more Much practical knowledge resides in places of higher education where it has been accumulated by performers and scholars who have institutional access to both infrastructure and networking. While access to this kind of knowledge is a privilege that asylum seekers and refugees seldom possess, harsh real-life experience (e.g., forced migration) is usually something that academics lack. We must therefore ask: How can we bring these two realms into a productive relationship? In particular, is it possible to generate knowledge in an equal partnership and, if so, how? By jointly presenting our collaborative work, we hope to demonstrate how researchers' advocacy can benefit lesser privileged artists without falling into the trap of paternalism. Combining an artistic and a theoretical approach, we will address both mobility and location as essential components of musical identity construction. Of particular interest is the construction and performance of a sense of home, place, and memory in the context of migration and displacement.
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Papers by Helena Simonett