Review in RPM#25 (Winter 1997/1998)

A journal of the University of Puerto Rico

1997, vol. 4
Jorge Giovannetti
Evolucion social, identidades y polticas del reggae en Jamaica
(Social development, identities and politics of reggae in Jamaica).

Many historical details of the relation between music and society in Jamaica during the 1960s and 1970s are not evident truths, despite the constant characterisation of reggae as a socially and politically committed music. This essay, which forms part of a larger study, seeks to throw light on many of the general presuppositions about reggae by means of a sociohistorical inquiry into its origins and development in Jamaica. Elements of discussion: social and ethnic identity, the urban context, political protest, and the appropriation of the music by political parties. The importance of the social context is underlined to interpret the meaning of music.

Keith Negus
La cultura, la industria y la matriz de la salsa:
el negocio de la musica en los Estados Unidos y la produccion de la musica latina
(Culture, industry and the matrix of salsa:
Music industry in the United States and the production of Latin music).

This article presents a particular approach to the production and circulation of contemporary salsa, by focusing on how contemporary entertainment corporations strategically manage their different musical repertoires. The paper pursues the implications of this strategy for thinking about how the ownership and control of cultural organisations are exerted and how they influence the creative practices of musicians and routes taken by the music they produce. Two themes outline the involvement of recording corporations in the production of popular music: on the one hand, an industry produces culture and, on the other, culture produces an industry.

Patria Roman Velazquez
El desarrollo de un circuito salsero y la construccion de identidudes latinas en Londres
(The development of a salsa scene and the construction of Latin identities in London).

This essay focuses on how particular Latin identities are constructed and communicated through a selection of salsa clubs in London. The global-local is proposed in its interaction and articulated through a series of processes and relations rather than as a specific geographical location. It also explores the different elements and processes in constructing the identity of the clubs as "Latin", and explains which processes contribute to the identities of specific salsa and "Latin" clubs in London.

Raquel Z. Rivera
Cultura y poder en el rap puertorriqueno
(Culture and power in the Puertorrican Rap).

From its beginning, those who have participated in Rap as audiences, artists, producers, or in any other way have had to struggle constantly for this music’s recognition as an artistic phenomenon and cultural expression. This essay discusses one of the factors that nourishes the silence and/or rejection with which this genre is often met: Rap exceeds the limits of what has traditionally been defined as "Puerto Rican national culture." Nevertheless, Rap is the poetic-musical genre that has most intensely been developed by Puerto Rican teenagers and twentysomethings in the last two decades of the century.