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Writing modernist and avant-garde music in Mexico: performativity, transculturation, and identity after the revolution, 1920-1930

Madrid-Gonzalez, Alejandro Luis
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1054237342

Abstract Details

2003, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Music.
In my dissertation I study the traditional rhetoric of Mexican cultural history that interprets post-revolutionary artistic manifestations as a “natural,” almost teleological outcome of the Mexican Revolution. As with every historical narrative, this revolutionary hegemonic discourse developed out of a “myth of origin” which homologated the identity of the nation with the ideology of the new state. As part of this process, the modernist and avant-garde works of Julián Carrillo (1875-1965), Carlos Chávez (1899-1978), and Manuel M. Ponce (1882-1948) were written into the “official” discourse of the Mexican Revolution by adjusting them (as imitation of European styles, and nationalist and proto-nationalist musics respectively) to its ideological requirements. I propose an alternative reading that recognizes the complex social and cultural construction of that ideology and the uncertainties created by this process. To study these events I develop a model of identity construction that emphasizes agency and choice as individual action within changing ideologies. Under this paradigm, I analyze the artistic activities of Carrillo, Chávez, and Ponce in the 1920s as the result of individual action confronting power and struggling for hegemony, and consider their musical styles as sites of individual ideological struggle. My work re-enacts a double performative exercise. First, the composers’ self-representation and identification through musical style, and second, the composer’s role in the construction and execution of a hegemonic discourse that re-wrote them a posteriori, according to the nationalist principles of the dominant regime. In my dissertation I study the traditional rhetoric of Mexican cultural history that interprets post-revolutionary artistic manifestations as a “natural,” almost teleological outcome of the Mexican Revolution. As with every historical narrative, this revolutionary hegemonic discourse developed out of a “myth of origin” which homologated the identity of the nation with the ideology of the new state. As part of this process, the modernist and avant-garde works of Julián Carrillo (1875-1965), Carlos Chávez (1899-1978), and Manuel M. Ponce (1882-1948) were written into the “official” discourse of the Mexican Revolution by adjusting them (as imitation of European styles, and nationalist and proto-nationalist musics respectively) to its ideological requirements. I propose an alternative reading that recognizes the complex social and cultural construction of that ideology and the uncertainties created by this process. To study these events I develop a model of identity construction that emphasizes agency and choice as individual action within changing ideologies. Under this paradigm, I analyze the artistic activities of Carrillo, Chávez, and Ponce in the 1920s as the result of individual action confronting power and struggling for hegemony, and consider their musical styles as sites of individual ideological struggle. My work re-enacts a double performative exercise. First, the composers’ self-representation and identification through musical style, and second, the composer’s role in the construction and execution of a hegemonic discourse that re-wrote them a posteriori, according to the nationalist principles of the dominant regime.
Arved Ashby (Advisor)
Music; History; Identity; Transculturation; Mexico

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Madrid-Gonzalez, A. L. (2003). Writing modernist and avant-garde music in Mexico: performativity, transculturation, and identity after the revolution, 1920-1930 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1054237342

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Madrid-Gonzalez, Alejandro. Writing modernist and avant-garde music in Mexico: performativity, transculturation, and identity after the revolution, 1920-1930. 2003. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1054237342.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Madrid-Gonzalez, Alejandro. "Writing modernist and avant-garde music in Mexico: performativity, transculturation, and identity after the revolution, 1920-1930." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2003. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1054237342

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2003, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.