CONTRIBUTORS BIOS

 

Paulo Alvarado is a Guatemalan composer, producer, cellist, and journalist.  He is a founding member of the rock group Alux Nahual, and also a member of the early musical group, La Cantoría de Tomás Pascual and the Contemporary String Quartet. The recipient of numerous awards for classical performance and composition, he has produced and is featured on more than a dozen long-playing recordings.  As a journalist, he has written more than 450 articles (essays and musical criticism) for the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre.  Currently, he is preparing an album of his chamber musical compositions and working on the soundtracks for several films.

 

Jorge Arévalo has an MA in Ethnomusicology from Hunter College.  He is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, where he is specializing in popular and traditional musics in the Americas. He has also worked as a music archivist and exhibit curator in various New York City-based cultural institutions, including several years at the Woody Guthrie Archives, the Louis Armstrong House and Archives, and the Raíces Latin Music Museum. He is an accomplished musician (guitar) who has recorded and performed widely in the New York City area.

 

Susana Asensio has a doctorate from the University of Barcelona-CSIC in Ethnomusicology and has published widely on music and migration, and the relationship between music and marginalized subjects. She has been teaching and conducting postdoctoral research at both Columbia University and New York University.

 

Cecilia Benedetti is a doctoral candidate in the Humanities at the University of Buenos Aires, where she also studied Anthropology.  She has taken an active role in various projects related to cultural processes in the city of Buenos Aires. 

 

Héctor Castillo Berthier has a doctorate in Sociology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico City), where he currently holds an appointment in the Institute of Social Research.  He has published widely on questions of urban society, including Juventud, cultura y política social: Un proyecto de investigación aplicada en la ciudad de México, 1987-1997 (2000) and has a weekly radio program dedicated to rock cultural expression.  He is also the founder of Circo Volador, a music-oriented organization for working and lower-class youth (www.circovolador.org).

 

Tere Estrada,is a musican and author of Sirenas al ataque. Historia de las mujeres rockeras mexicanas, 1956-2000 (2000).  She holds a B.A. in Sociology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico City) and wrote a thesis entitled, “Lenguaje e identidad en el rock mexicano, 1985-1990.”

 

Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste received his PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literature from SUNY Stony Brook (1996). He is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where he teaches Latin American culture. His publications include Narrativas de representación urbana (1998), a chapter of which centers on Argentine rock. His articles on Latin American cinema, literature, and media theory have appeared in journals such as Hispania, Chasqui, and Film Quarterly. He has also authored pieces on the topic of Latin American graphic humor published in Imagination Beyond Nation (1998), the International Journal of Comic Art, and in conference proceedings.

 

Reebee Garofalo is professor in the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He has written numerous articles on racism, censorship, the political uses of music, and the globalization of the music industry. He is the author of Rockin' the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements (1991), and is currently working on a second edition of Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the USA.  He is also co-editing a volume entitled, Policing Popular Music to be published by Temple University Press.

 

Michelle Habell-Pallan is Assistant Professor of American Ethnic Studies and Faculty Affiliate of Latin American Studies at the University of Washington.  During 2002-2003 she was a Rockefeller Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center For Chicano Studies (University of California, Santa Barbara), and in 2001 was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Foundation Research Fellowship.  She is co-editor of Latino/a Popular Culture (2002) and has published several articles on U.S. and Canadian transnational Latina cultural production, including "'El Vez is Taking Care of Business': The International Appeal of Chicano Popular Music," in Cultural Studies (April 1999).  She is finishing a book manuscript entitled, “Bridge over Troubled Borders":  Chicana and Latina Popular Culture and Critical Transnational Imaginaries.

 

Josh Kun is Assistant Professor of English at University of California, at Riverside. He writes a weekly arts column for The San Francisco Bay Guardian and The Boston Phoenix.  His essays and articles on popular music have appeared in Los Angeles Weekly, SPIN Magazine, The Village Voice, and in numerous scholarly publications.  He has been writing about rock en español and Latin Alternative music since 1993 and was the host of the first commercial English-language Latin rock radio show in Los Angeles (The Red Zone on Y107FM). He now hosts Rokamole, a weekly Latin rock music video and culture show on KJLA-LATV. He has served as an on-air Latin rock consultant for television (ABC, UPN, FOX Latin America) and radio (BBC's The World) and since 2000 has hosted the annual Latin Alternative Music Conference in New York City.

 

Bryan McCann received his PhD from Yale University and is Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Georgetown University. His recently published book is entitled, Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil (2004).

 

Julia Palacios received her PhD in history (2004) and an MA in sociology from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, where she teaches in the Department of Communications.  Since 1983, when she was the first academic to introduce a course on the “History of Rock Music” at the Universidad Iberoamericana, she has taught various courses on contemporary popular culture and the global history of rock music.  In addition to publishing numerous articles, she has played an active role in Mexico’s rock music scene working as a disc jockey and television commentator.  Her doctoral thesis is entitled, “Mitos, sonidos, y sentidos: una historia del rock en México, 1954-1965.”

 

Deborah Pacini-Hernandez is Associate Professor of Anthropology and teaches Latino studies courses at Tufts University.  She is the author of Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music (1995), numerous articles on Spanish Caribbean and US Latino popular music, and is a co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music Studies.

 

Walescka Pino-Ojeda received her doctorate in Latin American Literature and Critical Theory from Washington University.  She is currently a Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand where her research involves literature, cinema, and music in Latin America.  Her most recent publication is Sobre castas y puentes: conversaciones con tres escritoras latinoamericanas: Elena Poniatowska, Rosario Ferré, and Diamela Eltit (2000).

 

Pablo Semán teaches at the Universidad Nacional de General San Martín in Argentina and is a postdoctoral fellow of the CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas, Educativas y Tecnologicas). His research involves diverse forms of popular culture. His most recent publication is "Brazilian Pentecostalism Crosses National Borders" (in collaboration with A. Oro), in Pentecostalism and Transnationalism: Africa/Latin America, by A. Corten and R. Marshall-Fratani (2003).

 

Abril Trigo is an Associate Professor of Latin American Cultures in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the Ohio State University. He has published extensively on Latin American cultural studies, with particular emphasis on the historical formation of national imaginaries and their articulation to popular culture in the Río de la Plata.  His publications include Caudillo, estado, nación: Literatura, historia e ideología en el Uruguay. (1990) and ¿Cultura uruguaya o culturas linyeras? (Para una cartografía de la neomodernidad posuruguaya) (1997).  He recently finished Migrant Memories, a book on migrant theory based upon the ethnographic study of a U.S. migrant community, and is a co-editor of Latin American Cultural Studies Reader, forthcoming with Duke University Press. Currently, he is working on Políticas de la transculturación en la América Latina globalizada, a book-length essay on eco-cultural formations in Latin America and a critique of the political economy of culture in the periphery.

 

Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa is Professor at the Instituto Villa Lobos of the Universidade do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.  She holds an MFA degree in Piano Performance from the University of Florida and a PhD in Musicology from Cornell University.  She has published on various aspects of Brazilian music, both in Brazil and abroad.  Her current research centers on semiotic musical analysis of popular Brazilian song.

 

Pablo Vila is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas in San Antonio. His research involves culture and identity in the U.S.-Mexico border and popular music in Argentina. His most recent publication is Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders: Social Categories, Metaphors and Narrative Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier (2000).

 

Eric Zolov received his PhD in History from the University of Chicago (1995) and is Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Franklin & Marshall College.  He is the author of Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture (1999) and co-editor of Latin America and the United States: A Documentary History (2000) and Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940 (2001).  His current research focuses on a cultural and diplomatic history of Mexico and US-Mexican relations during the 1960s.