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

With her new book, Oye Como Va!, Deborah Pacini Hernandez contributes a fresh new approach to the complex world of Latin American popular music in the United States. The complexity is evident even in the name of her subject: the very idea of a "Latino" music as differentiated from the more common usage, "Latin music," is already a step in a new direction as the author seeks to thereby develop a coherent analysis of two musical worlds often considered as separate, if not counter-posed against each other, i.e., the Mexican and the Caribbean strains of US-based Latin American music. In bringing them together, and treating the entire gamut of "Latino" styles and practices as one discrete area, this book builds on two important previous contributions: the pioneering and by now canonical 1979 book by journalist John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge, and Ed Morales's more recent coverage in his valuable book, The Latin Beat (2003). For the most part, all other book-length works on the subject treat the distinct ethnically and regionally circumscribed musical worlds in isolation, or focus on a single period, style, or musician.

Pacini Hernandez, known to readers for her excellent book on Dominican bachata, strikes off in bold new directions even when compared with those other pan-Latino studies. As suggested in her subtitle, "Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music," she lends the topic a theoretical sophistication and attention to contemporary issues like identity and transnational cultural flows generally absent in the previous literature. She frames her discussion of the music with a reflection on the mixed-ness and what she calls "layering" characteristic of US Latino cultures, qualities that are inherent in Latin American background histories but are also a testament to the ongoing, constantly shifting immigration patterns and community formations in the US. She is also commendably attentive to issues of race and African diaspora heritages in discussing the musical traditions, dimensions of the subject that have hitherto found only tangential reference. The author's historical eye is also trained on more recent social realities, with a good deal of the discussion addressing the changes wrought to all Latino experience and its representation as a consequence of the massive presence of newly arriving immigrants from many parts of Latin America that had not previously formed a major part of the Latino mix. Going past the usual Mexican-Puerto Rican-Cuban field of ethnic reference, and bringing Dominicans, Colombians, and other more recent arrivals into the narrative, deeply enriches our understanding of what is meant by Latino music. Indeed, the chapters on merengue and bachata, and especially the lengthy study of the migrations of Colombian cumbia and vallenato, are no doubt among the strongest in the book.

Oye Como Va is also refreshingly up-to-date as regards the musical styles and practices discussed and analyzed: some of the most valuable sections of the book are those which treat contemporary, post-2000 stylistic developments and their immediate antecedents; I would call attention to the provocative discussions of free-style, reggaeton, disco, the Latin hustle, world beat, and a staggering range of dance forms which the author ingeniously groups together as "new sonic circuitries." As throughout the book, the informed assessment of the vagaries and influences of the music industry, Latin and mainstream, major and indies, lends further fascination to both the musical and the sociological dimensions of this wide-ranging and consistently engaging study. While most of the discussion goes to musical practice and communities as based on archival and ethnographic analysis, there is also ample interest in the patterns and processes of diffusion, distribution, and consumption as manifest in the burgeoning market for the musical languages generally labeled as "Latino."

I would mention three minor caveats to my admiration for this valuable new contribution, one of which is actually the flip-side...