The Practices of Experimentalism in Latin@ and Latin American Music

Abstract

This chapter introduces the main theoretical issues discussed in the book and puts them in dialogue with contemporary discussions about them. The book’s adoption of the plural term “experimentalisms” points toward a purposeful decentering of the usual US and Eurocentric interpretative frameworks. The case studies in this volume contribute to this by challenging discourses about Latin@s and Latin Americans and experimentalism that have historically marginalized them. As such, the notion of “experimentalisms” works as a performative operation of sound, soundings, music, and musicking that gives social and historical meaning to the networks it temporarily conforms and situates. The authors propose an understanding of music experimentalisms as a series of continuous presences that navigate fluidly in a transhistorical imaginary encounter of pasts and presents.