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David F. Garcia
Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2006
210 pp. Paperback
ISBN 159213386X
, $24.95
In Arsenio Rodríguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music , David F. García thoughtfully interweaves biography with a discussion of the cross-fertilization that took place between the son montuno , the mambo , and the later development of salsa in New York between the 1940s and the 1960s. The result is a textured history that vividly depicts Arsenio's genius as a musician and a composer, and documents black artistic life in Havana. García's intricate narrative reveals the cultural and political flows that contributed to Arsenio's stylistic innovations and their impact on Latin popular music in Cuba and the United States.
García's overarching argument is layered with an understanding that Arsenio's music was motivated by his experiences as a working class black male performing at the margins of Cuban society. The book's most important contribution is the thoughtful and careful attention to detail that García engages in when tracing the linkages between Arsenio's ideological, political and racial self-knowledge and his representation of "musical blackness and masculinity" (p. 55). Thus, García's work is situated within the broader discussion of Cuban musical genres and their tendency towards progressive hybridization. However, what is most innovative is the connection that García draws between Arsenio's gendered racialized personal experiences...