Ludim Pedroza

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Abstract

On August 14, 2012, Gustavo Dudamel convened the LA Philharmonic and Dominican singer-composer Juan Luis Guerra in a merengue-symphony concert marketed as unprecedented. La Opinión’s critic, writing in Spanish, exalted “the way in which Dudamel and Guerra threaded rhythms and musical concepts” and deemed the event historically significant. The fusion disappointed the LA Times’ music critic, who heard the orchestra as “high-gloss window dressing” for the singer and declared the event a “Latin pops” program, “terrific,” but hardly “genre-busting.” All in all, both writers described the musical experience in superlative yet economic terms, and the exuberant audience of over 10,000 danced and cheered with a comfort that ratified aspects of the LA Times’ reception.

How do the experience and reception of this concert illuminate socio-historical and aesthetic parameters that have come to define “Latin pops”? Building on my published study of archived programs and LA Times reviews relating to “Latin pops” events at the Bowl, I further tackle this question through a re-listening of the LA Phil-Guerra collaboration and a consideration of the director’s scores currently housed at the LA Phil Music Library.  In dialogue with scholars of Afro-American musics I propose conceptual platforms for the study of distinctive musical experiences that traverse supposedly self-contained genres. The “pops” is an aesthetic arena where such experiences are ubiquitous and where musicians confirm the parameters of established genres—in this case “Latin Music” and “classical music”—while simultaneously demonstrating their fluidity. At the same time, the “pops” is a cultural scenario that reveals, in singular ways, the limitations of the paradigms academic institutions have traditionally advanced for the appreciation and value of music in general.

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Lectures & Master Classes