Jairo A. Moreno

This project develops a socio-political history of popular music making since the late 1970s by Spanish-speaking Latin American immigrants to the US Transformations in creative interactions with other minority groups and in the general economics of the culture industry and the state produce ambivalent experiences of US modernity for these immigrants. How is the socio-political field lived such that music constitutes a persistent but uncertain wager on a share in American modernity? Music-making interrogates basic organizing principles of modern socio-political life: Latino populism (1970s); Pan-Americanism (1980s); racialization of jazz aesthetics and democratic values (1990s); post-Pan-Americanism (late 1990s); and cosmopolitan citizenship and bilingualism (2000s).