Music and the binational imagination: The musical nationalisms of Mexico and the United States in the context of the binational relationship, 1890--2009

Scholars in the social sciences have devoted considerable research to the relationship between the United States and Mexico, underscoring its crucial importance to the economic, political, social and cultural development of both countries. However, academics in the humanities and arts are just beginning to write the history of binational cultural relations. This study examines the musical nationalisms of both countries in the context of the binational relationship. A comparative analysis of Mexican and American musical nationalisms shows significant, yet largely unexplored, connections and parallels, elucidating the mechanisms through which foreign policy, culture, and music interact to create and mediate national and transnational identities.The definition of a national identity and the development of cultural and political nationalism dominated much of the musical discourse of early twentieth-century American and Mexican art music, as well as of popular music in the late part of the century. Intertwined with the discourse of musical nationalism in both countries are aesthetic and cultural issues emerging from two dichotomies that came to dominate the music of the twentieth century: the split between modernism and the Classical tradition, and the split between art and "popular" musics.In the early twentieth century, composers in both countries found similar responses to the aesthetic and political need to position themselves strategically vis-a-vis the European art music tradition, which was increasingly solidifying into a canon that excluded such peripheral countries as Mexico and the United States, and the contemporary music scene. They created nationalisms steeped in nostalgia for an idealized national past while at the same time claiming a stake in international modernism they also show a deep ambivalence towards nature and, by extension, race. The dialectical tensions between these extremes---the national versus the universal tradition versus progress nature versus civilization---pervade not only each country's construction of itself but also the binational relationship.In the second half of the century, popular music in both countries emerged as an important site for public debate through an interaction between media, audience and state. Both art and popular musics are involved in the constantly evolving process through which such subjectivities as national identity are created and recreated. By exploring the role of both art and popular musics in the creation of national and transnational identities, this study offers a more comprehensive look at binational cultural exchange than has been the case in other studies.As people of Mexican ancestry in the United States grow in number and political influence, the bond between the two countries will become increasingly difficult to disentangle. Through the cultural relations of individual artists, musicians, writers, and citizens, and through the impact of international policy, technology, media and commerce, both cultural communities have contributed to imagining themselves and each other. Thus, music shows the existence of a "binational imagination" throughout the twentieth century. Whether such an imagination will translate into political, economic, or cultural integration, as many critics have suggested, remains to be seen.