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IVÁN CÉSAR MORALES FLORES. Identidades en proceso: Cinco compositores cubanos de la diáspora (1990-2013). Havana: Fondo Editorial Casa de las Américas, 2018. 506 pp. ISBN: 978-959-260-514-5
The waves of migration that accompanied Cuba's political and economic shifts since the 1959 Cuban Revolution account for the creation of avantgarde music that both conformed to and opposed ideologies of the government. Although the artistic and professional endeavors of musicians remaining in Cuba initially demonstrated a strong affinity with the revolutionary government, these same affinities weakened in the face of scarcity and poverty during the Special Period, or the Período Especial (1991-2000). The acute economic crisis, arising from the collapse of the Iron Curtain on which Cuba had depended financially since 1959, resulted in the rationing of food, oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel, as well as a rapid decline in imports from the Soviet Union. For many artists and musicians, this period forced them to seek financial and performance opportunities abroad (58).
Iván César Morales Flores's book Identidades en proceso: Cinco compositors cubanos de la diáspora (1990-2013) examines the careers of five postmodern composers who sought careers abroad during the Special Period. Trained at the Instituto Superior de Arte de La Habana, now Universidad de las Artes-Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), Ileana Pérez Velázquez (1964), Eduardo Morales-Caso (1969), Keyla Orozco (1969), Ailem Carvajal, and Louis Aguirre...