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Puerto Rican music in New York is given center stage in Ruth Glasser's original and lucid study. Exploring the relationship between the social history and forms of cultural expression of Puerto Ricans, she focuses on the years between the two world wars. Her material integrates the experiences of the mostly working-class Puerto Rican musicians who struggled to make a living during this period with those of their compatriots and the other ethnic groups with whom they shared the cultural landscape.



Through recorded songs and live performances, Puerto Rican musicians were important representatives for the national consciousness of their compatriots on both sides of the ocean. Yet they also played with African-American and white jazz bands, Filipino or Italian-American orchestras, and with other Latinos. Glasser provides an understanding of the way musical subcultures could exist side by side or even as a part of the mainstream, and she demonstrates the complexities of cultural nationalism and cultural authenticity within the very practical realm of commercial music.



Illuminating a neglected epoch of Puerto Rican life in America, Glasser shows how ethnic groups settling in the United States had choices that extended beyond either maintenance of their homeland traditions or assimilation into the dominant culture. Her knowledge of musical styles and performance enriches her analysis, and a discography offers a helpful addition to the text.

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CHOICE Review

Glasser's fascinating and thoroughly readable study began life as a dissertation in urban ethnomusicology, but its subject is musicians and Puerto Rican music in context, not its structure, not its sound. In a ten-page preface, which is at once reflexive, confessional, and polemical, Glasser (Hunter College) explains why a "nice Jewish girl from New York" with little musical training and minimal knowledge of Spanish became so involved in Puerto Rican music. The author somewhat obviously champions allegedly forgotten, misunderstood, and marginalized Puerto Rican musicians. Though the book is thoroughly researched and should fascinate any reader interested in immigrant musics, there is an unfortunate suggestion that the author is the only enlightened person on the subject, all others having committed themselves to nearsighted paradigms. She is clearly committed to righting wrongs, leveling the playing field (especially in relation to Cuban music), and making certain that the blinded masses know the importance of Puerto Rican music in the US. Nonetheless, she succeeds in explaining how immigrant musics respond to their new contexts and relate to the social and economic milieu, and she weaves into this tale much description of Puerto Rican history, culture, and "traditional" music. As for Glasser's goal--to raise readers' consciousness of Puerto Rican music--she will succeed to the extent that readers change their thinking (read, prejudices) about Puerto Rican culture after reading this book. General; upper-division undergraduate and above. T. E. Miller; Kent State University

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Ruth Glasser is a public historian and part-time Lecturer in American Studies at Yale University.