AMST 340L: Black and Puerto Rican Soundscapes: From the Harlem Hellfighers to Bad Bunny

This course traces the social life of Afro-diasporic Puerto Rican music since the early 20th century. With an emphasis on the cultural politics of music, students trace the social and aesthetic context in which Puerto Rican diasporic music developed; Afro-diasporic musical practices embedded within Puerto Rican music; and reciprocity between Black, Puerto Rican, and ¿Latin¿ music traditions. We begin by exploring the significance of the San Juan Hill neighborhood in the cultural life of New York, the recruitment of Afro-Puerto Rican musicians into the US Army¿s Black regimental band during World War I, and the growing cosmopolitanism of Puerto Ricans musicians during the 1920s and 1930s. With an eye toward New York¿s changing soundscape after World War II, we explore the role of Puerto Rican musicians in an emerging Nuyorican subjectivity via musical experimentation in jazz, boogaloo, salsa, and disco. Tracing the racialization and economic marginalization of Puerto Ricans and African Americans alongside the social life of music, we explore the collaboration between Black and Puerto Rican communities in the emergence of hip hop, the music¿s transnational circuits in the circum-Caribbean, the emergence of Puerto Rican ¿underground¿ and, eventually, reggaeton. Course materials include essays, music, videos, panel discussions, film, liner notes, music reviews, and cultural criticism.