On Site, in Sound: Performance Geographies in América Latina by Kirstie A. Dorr (review)

I tried to use the song-detecting app Shazam while playing simultaneously "El condor pasa" by Peruvian singer Yma Sumack, and "El condor pasa (If I could)" by Paul Simon. All else equal (volume, chords), Shazam would always identify the Paul Simon version. I am sure there is an algorithmic explanation for this techno-sonic result, but the book by Kirstie Dorr offers a profoundly compelling and layered analysis of this musical phenomena, and the narratives of space and power that operate beneath the act of artistic identification.

On Site, In Sound is thematically anchored around what Dorr calls "South American musical transits": the combination of musical actors, aesthetic practices, and musical texts analyzed in the book (2). The critical occasion of this book is examining how sound and space are produced contingently. Dorr makes three interventions through her book: she explores the spatial and racial circuits of Música Andina, Nueva Canción, and Música Afrosudamericana; she suggests the aural practices described in her book delineate specific geopolitical histories in South America; she connects theories of social space with close analysis of musical circulation in the region. Her book is a welcome addition to a growing body of scholarship within sound and performance studies that seek to assess the role of space in the production of various forms of aural expressions.

Dorr's argument draws productively on Doreen Massey's definition of space as an ongoing social process that materializes in immediate and far-reaching contexts (Dorr 10). In addition to Massey, Dorr builds her approach to space, to site, following the work of Neil Smith through his conceptualization of scales, which helps Dorr analyze the material interactions between various geographic divisions. The dialogue between spatial and sound analysis is facilitated through a dialogue between Ana Maria Ochoa's "aural public sphere" (2006), Alexandra Vasquez' sound studies work (2003), and Diana Taylor's performance theory (2003). Dorr's theoretical contribution rests in "performance geography," a concept she expands from Sonjah Stanley Niaah's (2010) work. The interaction between national and international musical circuits, capital routes, and localized spheres of performance are rendered tangible by examining the "performance geography" at work in multiple sounding contexts that make up the book's case studies.

Undoubtedly the chapter that best exemplifies the potential of "performance geography" comes through Dorr's tracking of "El condor pasa" across its multiple lives: from Andean Peru to Paul Simon's folk rendition as "If I could." In that first chapter, Dorr goes into great archival and analytical detail to explain how the same song dovetailed from Alomía Robles' "folkloric rescue," to Simon's appropriation of Andean sounds, to Yma Sumack's rendition of "El condor" as a mediation between her own politics of identity and the masculinist demands of the music industry in New York.

In the second chapter, Dorr examines the "performance geographies" of what she calls Andean Music Industry (AMI). She accomplishes this feat by analyzing the relationship between space and capital in the AMI by comparing the genre to the "world music" industry—as exemplified by the recording label Putumayo Records. The history of migrations of AMI musicians, both within and outside of Peru, are particularly helpful to understand the stakes in the "performance geographies" described in the chapter. Dialogue with the work of Ketty Wong (2012) would have been helpful here to broaden the conceptualization of the Andes.

Dorr destabilizes Andean cultural space as constructed only through mestizo or indigenous musicians: this contribution comes in Chapter three, through an analysis of female Afro-Peruvian singers. This chapter accomplishes two main objectives. First, it places in dialogue the work of Victoria Santa Cruz, Susana Baca, and the Robles sisters, as well as the aesthetic and political movements affiliated to them. Second, it brings a nuanced analysis of race...