Lecture Discusses Socio-Sonic Circuitry of Caribbean Latino Music

April 1, 2015

Join us on Thursday, April 9, 2015, for a presentation on "The Socio-Sonic Circuitry of Caribbean Latino Music: From Bomba and Palos to Hip Hop and Reggaeton" with Dr. Raquel Z. Rivera. Rivera will explore the multiple and overlapping musical circuits travelled by music genres such as Puerto Rico's bomba, the Dominican Republic's palos, and Caribbean hip-hop and reggaeton-circuits that often do not comply with geographic, national or language boundaries, nor with racial, ethnic or pan-ethnic expectations. The presentation will take place from 2:00-3:30 p.m. in Zimmerman Library's Frank Waters Room. For reference, see the event flyer. The event is sponsored by the University of New Mexico Departments of Music, Sociology, the Latin American and Iberian Institute, and the Center for Southwest Research.

Rivera is an author and visiting scholar at UNM's Sociology Department. Co-editor of the anthology Reggaeton (Duke University Press 2009) and author of New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (Palgrave Macmillan 2003), her articles on popular music and culture have been published in numerous books, journals, magazines and newspapers. Her areas of scholarly interest are popular music and culture, race and ethnicity, nation and diaspora, and the intersections between Latino and Africana studies. A singer-songwriter, her band Ojos de Sofia has received various awards-including the Rockefeller Foundation's NYC Cultural Innovation Grant-for their unconventional approach to Latino Caribbean roots music.