La música en las representaciones de lo latinoamericano en los primeros filmes hollywoodenses con sonido incorporado (1927-1932)

Abstract

The rapid transition from the so-called “silent films” to the “sound films”, that took place in the late 1920s, raises questions and speculations related to the decisions and negotiations faced by musical directors, composers and arrangers of Hollywood when defining how to musically characterize Latin America. What notions and background information of Latin American music would have reached the hands of the musicians of the Hollywood industry during the beginnings of the sound film era? What resources and musical procedures were used to represent and characterize the Latin American in the productions of that period? How did these elements contribute to the construction of Latin America through music? To address these questions, I analyze three Hollywood productions from this period. I conclude that instrumentation and rhythm consolidated as the go-to technical resources to represent Latin America through music, which helped to configure the “Latin Music” tag in the global music industry, also contributing to delineating recurrent procedures in subsequent productions aligned with US foreign policy.

Keywords

• music and alterity
• music and representation
• latin music
• music and film
• sound films