Oye Como Va!: Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music (review)

As anthropologist Deborah Pacini Hernandez affirms at the beginning of this cultural history, hybridity comprises the defining feature of contemporary Latino musical practices. Indeed, the assertion that musical mestizaje constitutes the rule as opposed to the exception quickly emerges as the theoretical underpinning of Oye Como Va! Engaging topics ranging from Chicano rock to Puerto Rican freestyle to Colombian cumbia, Pacini Hernandez approaches popular music as a vehicle that not only reflects, but also perpetuates, hierarchies of power. Her treatment of Latino popular music primarily departs from much of the existing scholarly literature via its emphasis on genres not typically associated with “traditional” Latino music, such as doo-wop, rock, pop, and disco, among others.

The author’s methodological approach is both comparative and interdisciplinary. Pacini Hernandez does not claim to offer a comprehensive analysis of Latino popular music; notably, she dedicates little energy to the discussion of Cuban genres, often deemed the most influential among scholars and aficionados of Latino popular music. In contrast, she devotes considerable attention to Dominicans and Colombians, two highly influential yet understudied musical communities. While indicative of rapidly shifting U.S. Latino demographics as well as Pacini Hernandez’s stated desire for her study to serve as a template for future comparative research on emerging immigrant populations, this choice simultaneously echoes the particular brand of musical historiography promoted throughout Oye Como Va! When understood within the context of the larger body of academic research on Latino popular music, which frequently centers on Cuban music, the author’s purposeful shift away from an emphasis on Cuban music arguably counterbalances the potential, no matter how unintentional, to overstate the artistic contributions of any one national group. This corrective measure thereby proves consistent with Pacini Hernandez’s aim to foreground the resolutely interconnected character of contemporary Latino musical forms across time.

Crafted in accessible language and impeccably ordered, Oye Como Va! is an ideal course book for various (inter)disciplines, including ethnomusicology, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Latin American Studies, American Studies, and history. Its contributions to the study of popular music are numerous. To date no other scholarly monograph has offered such a broad yet nuanced overview of Latino musical history, testifying to the ambitious nature of Pacini Hernandez’s undertaking. Her multi-layered analysis implicitly highlights the propensity among many scholars of Latino popular music to paradoxically treat musical genres as hermetically sealed hybrids despite substantial evidence to the contrary. In this vein, Pacini Hernandez’s pointed engagement of musical forms not typically framed as “Latino,” despite Latinos’ long-standing involvement with them as both creators and/or fans, proves critical, as it counteracts in particular historic categorizations of rock, rap, and pop as exclusively “white” or “black” genres.

Exemplary of the multiple ways in which Latinos persistently challenge the U.S. ethnoracial binary, this thematic focus effectively calls into question any adherence to the trappings of genre and its extramusical functions. In her efforts to chronicle the extensive artistic activity of second-generation immigrants, particularly Dominicans, Pacini Hernandez also provides significant evidence in support of the notion that second-generation transnationalism exists as more than a mere theoretical construct. Finally, Pacini Hernandez’s examination of the contemporary Latino music industry underscores the need to re-envision traditional models of U.S. cultural imperialism in favor of alternative paradigms, which I would assert, necessitate a more explicit emphasis on Latino agency. That said, Oye Como Va! does not merely offer valuable insights regarding the Latino music industry, transnational cultural flows, and the artistic contributions of select communities. Rather, Oye Como Va! convincingly urges readers to actively reassess existing historical depictions (or historical erasures, as the case may be) of Latino “musical migrations” in favor of a more multidirectional perspective on musical exchanges throughout the Americas.