Cuban Zarzuela
Cuban Zarzuela

Author: Susan Thomas

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0252033310

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

On September 29, 1927, Cuban soprano Rita Montaner walked onto the stage of Havana's Teatro Regina, her features obscured under a mask of blackened glycerin and her body clad in the tight pants, boots, and riding jacket of a coachman. Standing alongside a gilded carriage and a live horse, the blackfaced, cross-dressed actress sang the premiere of Eliseo Grenet's tango-congo, "Ay Mama Ines." The crowd went wild. Montaner's performance cemented "Ay Mama Ines" as one of the classics in the Cuban repertoire, but more importantly, the premiere heralded the birth of the Cuban zarzuela, a new genre of music theater that over the next fifteen years transformed popular entertainment on the island. Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana's Lyric Stage marks the first comprehensive study of the Cuban zarzuela, a Spanish-language light opera with spoken dialogue that originated in Spain but flourished in Havana during the early twentieth century. Created by musicians and managers to fill a growing demand for family entertainment, the zarzuela evidenced the emerging economic and cultural power of Cuba's white female bourgeoisie to influence the entertainment industry. Susan Thomas explores zarzuela's function as a pedagogical tool, through which composers, librettists, and business managers hoped to control their troupes and audiences by presenting desirable and problematic images of both feminine and masculine identities. Zarzuela was, Thomas explains, "anti-feminist but pro-feminine, its plots focusing on female protagonists and its musical scores showcasing the female voice." Focusing on character types such as the mulata, the negrito, and the ingenue, Thomas uncovers the zarzuela's richly textured relationship to social constructs of race, class, and especially gender.

Nationalizing Blackness
Nationalizing Blackness

Author: Robin Dale Moore

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 1998-01-15

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780822971856

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The 1920s saw the birth of the tango, the "jazz craze," bohemian Paris, the Harlem Renaissance, and the primitivists. It was a time of fundamental change in the music of nearly all Western countries, including Cuba. Significant concessions to blue-collar and non-Western aesthetics began on a massive scale, making artistic expression more democratic.In Cuba, from about 1927 through the late thirties, an Afrocubanophile frenzy seized the public. Strong nationalist sentiments arose at this time, and the country embraced afrocubanismo as a means of expressing such feelings. Black street culture became associated with cubanidad (Cubanness) and a movement to merge once distinct systems of language, religion, and artistic expression into a collective of national identity.Nationalizing Blackness uses the music of the 1920s and 1930s to examine Cuban society as it begins to embrace Afrocuban culture. Moore examines the public debate over "degenerate Africanisms" associated with comparas or carnival bands; similar controversies associated with son music; the history of blackface theater shows; the rise of afrocubanismo in the context of anti-imperialist nationalism and revolution against Gerardo Machado; the history of cabaret rumba; an overview of poetry, painting, and music inspired by Afrocuban street culture; and reactions of the black Cuban middle classes to afrocubanismo. He has collected numerous illustrations of early twentieth-century performers in Havana, many included in this book.Nationalizing Blackness represents one of the first politicized studies of twentieth-century culture in Cuba. It demonstrates how music can function as the center of racial and cultural conflict during the formation of a national identity.

The Zarzuela Companion
The Zarzuela Companion

Author: Christopher Webber

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2002-10-16

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1461673909

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It has been said that zarzuela means to Spain what operetta means to Vienna, Offenbach to Paris, Gilbert and Sullivan to London, and the musical to Broadway. Zarzuela is Spain's unique contribution to lyric theatre, a mixture of spoken and sung drama with a complex history extending over four centuries. The Zarzuela Companion is a comprehensive guide to zarzuela's most popular and romantic works written after 1850, with chapters devoted to the major Spanish zarzuela composers, writers and singers. Complete synopses of all sixty works selected are delivered at the level of detail necessary for non-Spanish speakers to follow along with ease. The book also features special sections on the history of the genre, and on the parallel Catalan and Cuban zarzuela traditions. A foreword by Plácido Domingo, a selected discography with current catalog reference numbers, a brief bilingual bibliography and glossary of Spanish terms make this book indispensable for the newcomer and aficionado alike.

Cecilia Valdés or El Angel Hill
Cecilia Valdés or El Angel Hill

Author: Cirilo Villaverde

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-09-29

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 0199725233

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Cecilia Valdés is arguably the most important novel of 19th century Cuba. Originally published in New York City in 1882, Cirilo Villaverde's novel has fascinated readers inside and outside Cuba since the late 19th century. In this new English translation, a vast landscape emerges of the moral, political, and sexual depravity caused by slavery and colonialism. Set in the Havana of the 1830s, the novel introduces us to Cecilia, a beautiful light-skinned mulatta, who is being pursued by the son of a Spanish slave trader, named Leonardo. Unbeknownst to the two, they are the children of the same father. Eventually Cecilia gives in to Leonardo's advances; she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby girl. When Leonardo, who gets bored with Cecilia after a while, agrees to marry a white upper class woman, Cecilia vows revenge. A mulatto friend and suitor of hers kills Leonardo, and Cecilia is thrown into prison as an accessory to the crime. For the contemporary reader Helen Lane's masterful translation of Cecilia Valdés opens a new window into the intricate problems of race relations in Cuba and the Caribbean. There are the elite social circles of European and New World Whites, the rich culture of the free people of color, the class to which Cecilia herself belonged, and then the slaves, divided among themselves between those who were born in Africa and those who were born in the New World, and those who worked on the sugar plantation and those who worked in the households of the rich people in Havana. Cecilia Valdés thus presents a vast portrait of sexual, social, and racial oppression, and the lived experience of Spanish colonialism in Cuba.

The Music of Spain
The Music of Spain

Author: Carl Van Vechten

Publisher:

Published: 1918

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

My main purpose has been to open the ears of the world to these new sounds, to create curiosity regarding the music of the Iberian Peninsula. When more of this music is familiar will be time enough to write a more critical and more comprehensive work. - Preface.

Thinking Spanish Translation
Thinking Spanish Translation

Author: Louise Haywood

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-10

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1134818688

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Thinking Spanish Translation is a comprehensive and revolutionary 20-week course in translation method with a challenging and entertaining approach to the acquisition of translation skills.

Autobiografía de Un Esclavo
Autobiografía de Un Esclavo

Author: Juan Francisco Manzano

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9780814325384

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The proceedings of ISCV'95, the successor to previous Workshops on Computer Vision, comprise 104 refereed papers on topics in optical flow, matching/stereo, motion, object recognition, low-level vision, CAD-based vision, stereo, deformable models, systems and applications, tracking, segmentation and grouping, active vision, aerial image analysis, and integration/texture. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Barrio Rhythm
Barrio Rhythm

Author: Steven Joseph Loza

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780252062889

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The hit movie La Bamba (based on the life of Richie Valens), the versatile singer Linda Ronstadt, and the popular rock group Los Lobos all have roots in the dynamic music of the Mexican-American community in East Los Angeles. With the recent "Eastside Renaissance" in the area, barrio music has taken on symbolic power throughout the Southwest, yet its story has remained undocumented and virtually untold. In Barrio Rhythm, Steven Loza brings this hidden history to life, demonstrating the music's essential role in the cultural development of East Los Angeles and its influence on mainstream popular culture. Drawing from oral histories and other primary sources, as well as from appropriate representative songs, Loza provides a historical overview of the music from the nineteenth century to the present and offers in-depth profiles of nine Mexican-American artists, groups, and entrepreneurs in Southern California from the post-World War II era to the present. His interviews with many of today's most influential barrio musicians, including members of Los Lobos, Eddie Cano, Lalo Guerrero, and Willie chronicle the cultural forces active in this complex urban community.

Our Lady of the Night
Our Lady of the Night

Author: Mayra Santos-Febres

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-07-28

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0061900923

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From internationally-acclaimed novelist Mayra Santos-Febres comes a carnal, epic novel about the life of Isabel “La Negra” Luberza--a legendary Puerto Rican madam who, by the end of World War II, became the most powerful woman on the island. Born into poverty and then abandoned by her mother, Isabel "La Negra" Luberza blossoms into a supremely sensual young woman. Obsessed with attaining aristocratic status—armed with incredible physical presence, indomitable ambition, and keen intelligence—she meets Fernando Fornarís, the man who will forever change her life. With a parcel of land given to her by her rich, white married lover, Isabel transforms herself into a hard-edged and merciless businesswoman—abandoning her own newborn son to become Puerto Rico's most feared and respected madam, a collector of society's secrets, a queen of the notorious brothel that emerges as the island's true political and economic heart. Set against the rich backdrop of the Caribbean and the United States during the tumultuous years of World War II, Mayra Santos-Febres's Our Lady of the Night is a breathtaking novel of passion, power, and the devastating price of achieving everything one wishes for.