Research Summary
Research Summary
Eduardo Herrera specializes in Latin American and Latin@ musical practices of the 20th and 21st centuries.Herrera is currently working on an ethnographic project that studies collective chanting in Argentine soccer stadiums. His field work with fans of several teams pays attention to the way that moving and sounding-in-synchrony might frame the interpretation of symbolic and physical violence. Herrera’s work shows how the participatory nature of stadium chanting contributes to the construction of masculinities that are heteronormative, homophobic, and agressive, often generating a cognitive dissonance with the individual beliefs of many of the fans.
Much of Herrera’s work has centered on the city of Buenos Aires during the 1960s when avant-garde and experimental music making experienced an unparalleled boom fueled by significant funding from local and foreign elites. The creation of the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM) at the Di Tella Institute (1962–71) attracted composers from all across the continent and impacted the region for decades to come. Through extensive collection of oral histories and dedicated archival research in Argentina and Uruguay, the Paul Sacher Stitfung in Switzerland and the Rockefeller Archives in New York, Herrera has brought well-deserved attention to a crucial institution for art music in the 20th century and highlights the active participation of Latin American composers in the art music scene after 1945.
Interests
- Latin American Music
- Decoloniality and Music Studies
- Ethnography of Elites
- Cultural Diplomacy and Philanthropy
- Music and the Cold War
- Soccer Chants, Violence, and Masculinities
- Peircean Semiotics
- Intellectual History of Ethnomusicology
Research Projects
We take a broad approach to a wide variety of Latin American musical traditions including free improvisation in Argentina, experimentation in Cuban and Chilean canción protesta, Cuban experimental film music, fringe areas between classical music and rock improvisation in Colombia, improvisation and public performance in Mexico, and experimental practices in diasporic Brazilian electronic dance music.
The edited volume is the result of an interdisciplinary symposium Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey on September 24-25, 2015. We invited contributors to explore a number of relevant issues in relation to experimental music in Latin America that somehow challenged mainstream notions about experimentalism.