Cumbia!: Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre

The cumbia beat has swept Latin America where it has developed into as many styles as there are local, regional, and national cultures; that is, the cumbia has evolved into a countless myriad of variants ranging from unamplified "roots" styles using only the traditional Afro-Indigenous instruments to the most technologically-dependent cumbia digital, with every imaginable form of instrumentation (including full symphonic orchestras) filling the sonic space between the traditionalist and avant-garde extremes.At the same time that this anthology gives a comprehensive sampling of the cumbia universe as of 2013, it is also a brilliant exposition of human migration in the western hemisphere. This is an especially valuable contribution to cultural understanding because most discussions of migration in the western hemisphere are limited to immigration into the U.S., where xenophobia is surging as La Tierra del Tío Sam takes on the complexion of Las Américas.I gave the book 4 (instead of 5) stars only because it's now five years old and the cumbia scene is evolving so widely and so rapidly that it is no longer as comprehensive as when it was first published.This review may have prompted various questions in the readers' minds: read the book for the answers . . .

Overall very good ethnography on Cumbia. "Gender Tensions in Cumbia Villera's Lyrics" is pretty much cringeworthy garbage, though. For two social scientists who claim to understand feminism, they certainly pick and choose to hold up the parts that serve their narrative, with an obvious lack of current feminist critique. They seem to be very stuck on late 90's/early 2000's iterations of third wave. Hmm, I wonder why? The book was published in 2013, but this chapter has not aged to the credit of its authors. Otherwise, this is a good book, and has been enlightening reading.