Music as a Productive Force: Making Things with Tango in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Music is a productive force, something that makes other things. Those things include musical sound itself and the deeply affective engagement that often motivates musical participation. They also include musical goods, services, institutions, and ideologies. This paper argues for the productive force of music via a discussion of the First International Congress of Tango for Musicians, a week long, intensive tango music education event that took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina from July 21-27, 2014. Drawing on a wide variety of ethnographic data gathered before and following the event, I argue that Tango for Musicians literally made tango, producing the genre as a networked amalgamation of socialized communities, musical pedagogy, instrumental techniques, aesthetic histories, and institutional structures and products.
Co-Sponsored by the Musicology/Ethnomusicology Department and the Fine Arts Diversity Committee
Biography
Morgan James Luker is Associate Professor of Music at Reed College. An ethnomusicologist, Morgan's scholarly work focuses on the cultural politics of Latin American music, with special emphasis on contemporary tango music in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His first book on this topic is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. Morgan received a B.A. in Music History from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a M.A. and Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Columbia University. He joined the Reed faculty in 2010, and teaches a wide variety of courses on world music and culture, including the Cultural Study of Music, Music and Politics, Latin American Popular Music, and Musical Ethnography, among many others. Morgan is also the director of Tango For Musicians at Reed College, an intensive summer music program that brings musicians from around the world to Reed to study tango.