M/Otherland

This article introduces El Vez, an important performance artist and musician, whose translation of Elvis extends far beyond local audiences. In our historical moment of shrinking public outlets for the circulation and discussion of alternative and oppositional perpectives, his creator, Robert Lopez, has opened up a discursive space – on the terrain of popular music, in the unlikely genre of Elvis impersonation – that enables both critique of the status quo and dialogue concerning progressive social transformation. This article investigates Lopez's artful superimpositions of Chicana and Chicano realities and cultural icons on to the iconography, soundings and lyrics that cluster around Elvis, and claims that Lopez subverts both the myth of ‘Elvis as the embodiment of the American Dream’ and the reactionary assumption that American national identity and cultural belonging are (or should be) equated with exclusionary representations of whiteness. This article also argues that the content of his live and recorded stage shows (which are part strip-tease, part Chicana/o studies, part labour history, and part history of popular music course) respond to hegemonic discourses that fault racialized immigrants and working-class people for the consequences of global economic restructuring, and that his aesthetics of resistance subvert both dominant and subaltern dictates for strict, unyielding definitions of identity, sexuality and citizenship. Finally, it suggests that the positive reception of Lopez's performances by racialized, marginalized, displaced and economically outcast youth in Germany speaks to an identification with Chicana/o struggles that is not based on a specific ethnicity, but instead on an articulation of oppositional politics. In this context, Lopez's music enables the possibility of building coalitions beyond the constraints of the nation-state.     

World Music,nation and postcolonialism

Recent scholarship on representational politics in popular music tends to dwell on the macropolitical entailments of contradictory desires acted out through the consumerization of culture within the globalized circuitry of supranational capitalism. This article takes a micropolitical look at what salsa means for working-class Puerto Ricans in the colonial diaspora, positing salsa as a musical culture that fuels, and is fuelled by, the organic intelligence of its practitioners. Comparatively analysing the performative content and contexts of two albums produced at the symbolic juncture of the Quincentennial (1992) – Willie Colón's Hecho in Puerto Rico and Ruben Blades' Amor y Control – and sharing an auto-ethnographical account of experiences with salsa music in the Puerto Rican colonial diaspora, this article explores the cultural politics obtained between mainstream appropriations of Latin musical cultures and salsa within the working-class communities who created it. Thus shifting the critical lens from above to below, the most salient concerns become the ethical dimensions of subaltern (kin)aesthetics and knowledges, which can be charted alongside the overt rejection of consumerist assimilation, the conscious racialization of cultural agency and other articulations of liberatory desire.     

Fashion,the passage,the body

Studies on transnational cultures have shown that local, national identities are not necessarily subordinated to, or erased by, the globalizing forces of the economy. Rather, the local mediates transnational cultures as well as it is transformed by the crossing of cultural boundaries. Likewise, emerging interdisciplinary and cultural studies approaches to Latin(o) popular music examine the ways in which musical production, circulation and reception create cultural spaces that challenge hegemonic notions of national identity and discrete cultural boundaries. This article examines the figure of the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz, and the tensions among the multiple, transnational subjectivities that are constituted through her musical repertoire, her performances on stage, the aesthetics of her body, and her public statements in interviews. Having spanned more than sixty years of performances and recordings, Celia Cruz's diverse repertoire and musical selections have served as a performative locus for the negotiations of her Cubanness (her exile and national identity) and a hemispheric, Latin American identity that also includes the United States. Likewise, her construction of blackness as an Afro-Cuban woman transforms and is transformed by her collaborations with African-American musicians and singers, from jazz to hip-hop. Celia Cruz has also crossed racial and cultural boundaries by collaborating with Anglo musicians and by tropicalizing rock music. Her staged persona and her body aesthetics also reveal the fluidity with which the Queen of Latin music assumes diverse racial, national and historical identities while she simultaneously asserts her Cubanness through the use of Spanish on stage. Celia Cruz serves as a complex and intriguing icon of the relational nature of nationalism and transnationalism.     

Autonomous Youth? Independence and Precariousness in the Indonesian Underground Music Scene

Indonesia boasts a thriving underground music scene that has become an important element in the identity practices of many urban youth. For dedicated ‘scenesters’, the underground is more than a personal expression of style; it is a way of life, and often a way to make a living. I draw on the concept of ‘precarity’ to examine the underground value of independence (kemandirian) in the context of the precarious position of urban youth in neoliberal Indonesia. The identities and practices of the underground scene are both a reaction against and a reflection of this experience. Scenesters draw on their underground identities, and the autonomous community networks they have established, in order to assert their independence from the demands of capital. However, they also mobilise this independence as the basis for their own entrepreneurial activities, resulting in a nascent tendency towards capital accumulation and class polarisation within the scene.     

论文艺对科学创造的助益效应——以爱因斯坦的音乐情结为例

科学和文艺虽属不同领域,但两者之间并不是截然对立,文艺对科学创造有助益效应。从科学家爱因斯坦与音乐的关系中,可以发现这种助益效应主要体现在三个方面:一是文艺中蕴含的内在情感因素,可以转化为科学创造中的外在情感因素;二是艺术想象的诗性智慧带来的精神张力和思维活力,可以促发科学家的想象力;三是文艺和科学都有精神自由的诉求,艺术的审美世界可以为科学的精神自由提供资源。     

音乐制度与法律关系辨析

音乐是有规则的震动产生的声音或者乐音,能够提供人类听觉上的享受,用以表达人类的情感,是一种抽象的灵动的艺术.法律是一种公平规则,一种社会规则,以正义的存在作为存在基础.法律由一个国家制定再认可,规定了当事人的权利与义务,同时法律这种社会规范是具有普遍约束力的.如此看来,法律与音乐处在两种截然不同的境地.法律是严肃理性的,而音乐是飘渺变化的.如果将音乐与法律“融合”在一起,这两种风马牛不相及的概念能产生什么样的“化学变化”呢？是琴瑟和鸣地奏出高山流水袅袅余音还是导致一种无奈的最终裁判？     

西域佛教石窟寺中的音乐造型

新疆石窟寺中的音乐造型十分丰富。整体而言,西域石窟寺音乐造型有两大体系:以龟兹为中心的西域体系和以高昌为中心的中国中原体系。但在不同历史时期,两种体系又有交叉和互相影响。本文结合西域历史和佛教发展史对西域石窟寺中音乐造型的来源、属性、功能和乐器形制等方面进行综合探讨。     

试论唐代诗歌与音乐的交融

在唐代,东西方文化交流日益频繁,丝绸之路传来的西域音乐如一股股清泉融入了当时音乐艺术的各个领域,统治者的提倡和时尚的引领,塑造了大唐诗人独特的生活态度和内在的艺术气质,创作了无数描绘当时社会音乐活动的精美诗歌,成为千古流芳的传世佳作。音乐的高度发展提升了诗歌创作的审美境界,同时,诗词的盛行也促进了音乐的发展,优美的诗歌乘着音乐的翅膀,得到了更为广泛的传播。     

再造乌托邦－－谈《无风之树》的叙述人称特色

《无风之树》无论是对人性的挖掘与表现,还是对生命现象的体悟与思考,或就艺术表现技巧而言,都堪称精品.而其中叙事人称的设置尤其引人注目,小说采用了两种叙事人称的交替第一人称(我)与第三人称(他),从而形成了两种叙事形态."我"承担了十二个人物角色,"他"承担了一个人物角色,而十二个第一人称(我)与一个第三人称(他)又处处显示出"触目惊心"的对立.在中国当代小说中,类似李锐这样设置如此众多叙述者的文本是极为罕见的,李锐以自己这种个性化的书写方式使得《无风之树》在当代文坛上独树一帜.     

广西北部湾地区民间歌舞剧《老杨公》的艺术特色

《老杨公》是广西北部湾地区流传的民间优秀传统歌舞剧。它的音乐结构、表演特征、歌词、念白等,都有着浓郁而鲜明的地域性和原生态的艺术特色,保留着浓郁的民俗文化色彩和乡土文化意识以及独特的艺术风格。该文笔者秉持挖掘、整理和拯救民间艺术文化遗产的理念,对《老杨公》的地域性和原生态艺术特色做了一些研究。