Don Lazarillo Vizcardi. Sus investigaciones m?sicas con ocasion del concurso ? un magisterio de.

Argentina is still reeling from the worst economic and political crisis to afflict the nation in its modern history. Since December 2001, the country has been through economic depression and bankruptcy, the impoverishment of half the population, a presidency that changed four times in the span of two weeks, and social protests met by state repression that left dozens dead and hundreds injured. What brought on this state of affairs? What are the primary features of this crisis? Who are the key actors? And what are the potential ways out of the crisis? This volume brings together an assortment of experts to grapple with these questions. Broken Promises? traces the political and economic origins of the crisis, considers the reactions of Argentina's security forces during difficult times, reflects on the responses of Argentine society, and concludes with an analysis of Argentina's key relationships with Brazil and the U.S. This edited volume fills a gap in literature concerning the study of contemporary Argentine politics and will be of great interest to students of development, comparative politics, international politics, and Latin American studies.

Dedicated to the late Gerard Béhague (1937-2005), whose pioneering work in Latin American music, popular culture, and performance studies contributed extensively to ethnomusicological discourse in the 1970s-1990s, this anthology offers comparative perspectives on the evolving legacy of performance ethnography in socio-musical analysis. President of the Society for Ethnomusicology from 1979-81, editor of its journal, Ethnomusicology, from 1974-78, and founder and editor of the trilingual Latin American Music Review from 1980 until his death, Béhague also established the ethnomusicology graduate program at the University of Texas at Austin in 1974, thereby influencing the training and thinking of dozens of the field’s practitioners. Among these are the volume’s eight authors, whose contributions reflect the heritage but also contemporary trajectories of Béhague’s scholarly concerns. Prefaced by an essay outlining key developments in the ethnography of performance paradigm, the volume’s seven case studies portray snapshots of musical life in representative communities of the Americas, including the southwestern and Pacific United States, Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, and Ecuador. Situated in milieus ranging from the indigenous festivals of the Andean highlands, to the competitive public gatherings of poet-singers in post-Pinochet Chile, to the Puerto Rican dance halls of the Hawaiian islands, these studies pose anthropological inquiries into the ontology of performance practice, the social power of poetic performativity, and the experience and embodiment of sound in place.

In recent years, scholars and musicians have become increasingly interested in the revival of musical improvisation as it was known in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This historically informed practice is now supplanting the late Romantic view of improvised music as a rhapsodic endeavour—a musical blossoming out of the capricious genius of the player—that dominated throughout the twentieth century. In the Renaissance and Baroque eras, composing in the mind (alla mente) had an important didactic function. For several categories of musicians, the teaching of counterpoint happened almost entirely through practice on their own instruments. This volume offers the first systematic exploration of the close relationship among improvisation, music theory, and practical musicianship from late Renaissance into the Baroque era. It is not a historical survey per se, but rather aims to re-establish the importance of such a combination as a pedagogical tool for a better understanding of the musical idioms of these periods. The authors are concerned with the transferral of historical practices to the modern classroom, discussing new ways of revitalising the study and appreciation of early music. The relevance and utility of such an improvisation-based approach also changes our understanding of the balance between theoretical and practical sources in the primary literature, as well as the concept of music theory itself. Alongside a word-centred theoretical tradition, in which rules are described in verbiage and enriched by musical examples, we are rediscovering the importance of a music-centred tradition, especially in Spain and Italy, where the music stands alone and the learner must distil the rules by learning and playing the music. Throughout its various sections, the volume explores the path of improvisation from theory to practice and back again.