In the late 1950s to 1970s, an Afro-Peruvian revival brought the forgotten music and dances of Peru's African musical heritage to Lima's theatrical stages. The revival conjured newly imagined links to the past in order to celebrate-and to some extent recreate-Black culture in Peru. In this groundbreaking study of the Afro-Peruvian revival and its aftermath, Heidi Carolyn Feldman reveals how Afro-Peruvian artists remapped blackness from the perspective of the "Black Pacific," a marginalized group of African diasporic communities along Latin America's Pacific coast. Feldman's "ethnography of remembering" traces the memory projects of charismatic Afro-Peruvian revival artists and companies, including Jose Durand, Nicomedes and Victoria Santa Cruz, and Peru Negro, culminating with Susana Baca's entry onto the global world music stage in the 1990s. Readers will learn how Afro-Peruvian music and dance genres, although recreated in the revival to symbolize the ancient and forgotten past, express competing modern beliefs regarding what constitutes "Black Rhythms of Peru."

About the Author
HEIDI CAROLYN FELDMAN is a lecturer in the Department of Communications at the University of California, San Diego.

Reviews
"Brilliantly written, this book is valuable to everyone interested in how traditions are constantly reinvented and resignified." - Raul Romero, author of Debating the Past: Music, Memory and Identity in the Andes"



Book Information
ISBN 9780819568151
Author Heidi Feldman
Format Paperback
Page Count 328
Imprint Wesleyan University Press
Publisher Wesleyan University Press