<p> This essay presents the life and works for solo piano of Portuguese composer and pianist &Oacute;scar da Silva (1870&ndash;1958). It is the first publication dedicated solely to &Oacute;scar da Silva in the English language. It also presents the first chronological catalogue of da Silva&rsquo;s solo piano works. It includes both published and unpublished works, encompassing all of the extant music available in several libraries in Portugal. &Oacute;scar da Silva studied with Adolf Ruthardt and Carl Reinecke in Leipzig and with Clara Schumann in Frankfurt. He was the most prolific composer of piano music of his generation in Portugal, and one of the most prolific ever in Portuguese piano music. His life is marked by the end of the monarchy in Portugal, the rise and fall of the first republic, and by Estado Novo. His music ranges from German romanticism to modernism. His works are also emblematic of saudosism, a Portuguese nationalistic movement not previously studied in music. </p><p> This essay was submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance, at The Hartt School, University of Hartford, on March 23, 2015.</p>

<p> Osvaldo Golijov wrote the unaccompanied cello piece, <i>Omaramor </i> as an homage to the famous Argentinian tango singer, Carlos Gardel. In this project report, <i>Omaramor</i> will be examined through a historical and cultural lens, including a reflection on past performances. This project will examine recordings and programming to learn more about the historical and cultural significance of this piece in order to benefit future cellists&rsquo; interpretation of the piece.</p>

<p> This paper examines the evolving methods of incorporating indigenous and popular Mexican music since the Nationalistic period in M&eacute;xico. This project report also shows how the integration of Mexican folk music in Mexican composers' works has changed throughout the years. This paper analyzes the compositions <i>Sinfon&iacute;a india</i> written by Carlos Ch&aacute;vez and <i>&iexcl;&Uacute;nicamente la verdad!</i> written by Gabriela Ort&iacute;z. This paper also analyzes "<i>Tezcatlipoca, </i> A Sacrifice Dance," a chamber orchestra work by myself, a Mexican-American student composer. "<i>Tezcatlipoca,</i> A Sacrifice Dance" incorporates Mexican folk music as well as Carlos Ch&aacute;vez, Gabriela Ort&iacute;z and many other Mexican composers.</p>

<p> Since the mid-1970s, the indigenous ritual dance known as Danza has had a profound impact on the self-identification and concept of space in Xicana communities, but how is this practice received in the powwow space? My project broadly explores how studentorganized powwows at UC Davis, UC Riverside, and UC San Diego (UCSD), are decolonizing spaces for teaching and learning about Native American identities. Drawing on Beverly Diamond&rsquo;s alliance studies approach (2007), which illuminates the importance of social relationships across space and time, as well as my engagement in these powwows, I trace real and imagined connections between Danza and powwow cultures. Today, powwows are intertribal social events organized by committees and coordinated with their local native communities. Powwows not only have restorative abilities to create community for those who perform, attend, and coordinate them, but they are only a small glimpse of the broader socio-political networks that take place throughout the powwow circuit. By inviting and opening the powwow space to indigeneity across borders, the University of California not only accurately reflects its own native student body who put on the event, but speak to the growing understanding of "Native American" both north and south of the United States border. Ultimately, I argue an alliance studies approach to historical ethnography and community-based methodologies in music research are crucial, especially in the case of indigenous communities, who are committed to the survival and production of cultural knowledge embedded in music and dance practices.</p><p>

<p> This study investigates the <i>siku</i> of Argentina, Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela; and the <i>shakuhachi</i> of Japan and their effect on Western classical flute repertoire. By exploring the histories, construction of the flutes, and the role each flute has in its society, a better understanding of these flutes and the cultural aesthetic in which they work will be achieved thus creating a higher level of authenticity when performing these pieces. The pieces being surveyed are <i>Flute 3.2.4.</i> by Adriana Verdie and <i>Nesting of Cranes</i> by Wil Offermans. Notes on technique of what the author found useful when playing these pieces are found at the end of each chapter.</p>

<p> Afro-Brazilian guitarist-composer Baden Powell de Aquino (1937-2000), one of Brazil's earliest and most successful international musicians, is renowned for his inexplicable rhythmic style. This is especially true in the context of instrumental samba, or samba-jazz, which emerged in the late-night music clubs of 1950s-60s Rio de Janeiro. Samba-jazz engages a set of normative expectations: (1) a theme-and-variations performance involving a (2) cyclic scheme of regular and even chord changes comprising (3) a form of often 16 or 32 bars traditionally conceived of as being in duple meter (e.g. 2/4), where (4) improvised variations track the chord changes of the form. Against this recursively even, duple-meter background, Baden's chord-melodic improvisations frequently foreground dotted or asymmetrical rhythms that, in their interaction with the duple frame, suggest uneven periodicities. This study argues that such uneven regularities can, under certain conditions, be defined as metric and as such can be treated as participating in generalized hemiolas of the background form's meter. This two-fold expansion of meter and hemiola leads to the discovery of a much larger and more variegated abstract space constituted by the even and uneven metric possibilities for a given span of musical time. </p><p> This dissertation consists in two complementary projects. The theoretical project expands current theories of meter, hemiola, and metric space, as most recently defined by Richard Cohn (2018), to incorporate Justin London's (2012) theory of non-isochronous meters. The analytical project explores the richness of Baden's rhythmic art&ndash;it's metric implications and relationship to tropes of samba-jazz. </p><p> Through an exploratory analysis of "&Eacute; de lei," Chapter 1 shows why we should and how we can expand current meter theory, while introducing the reader to Baden Powell and his musical context of Brazilian samba and samba-jazz. Chapter 2 is a formal exposition of the expanded theory of meter, hemiola, and metric space. Using the language and representations of mathematical set and graph theories, it builds analogous (to Cohn 2001) analytical models of hemiola and metric space from the ground up upon an expanded and revised definition of meter that allows for both isochrony and well-formed non-isochrony. Through a series of shorter examples, including passages from "Tristeza," "A lenda do Abaet&eacute;," and "Canto de Xang&ocirc;," Chapter 3 defines, contextualizes, and analyzes four of the most prevalent rhythmic tropes of samba-jazz, while building some basic familiarity with the method of the analytical model. Chapter 4 considers larger examples organized around the idea of harmonic quantization, including extended improvisations from "Samba triste," "Conversa de poeta," and "O barquinho." It seeks to understand the metric implications of how Baden in theme-and-variations form can simultaneously support the 2/4 bar-to-bar chord changes required by the harmonic form of the theme while soloing with long extensions of dotted chord-melodies. Chapters 3 and 4 gradually increase the tempo and scope of analysis&ndash;from a few bars to entire form variations. Chapter 5 analyzes an entire recording, the afro-samba "Candombl&eacute;," principally asking how metric change and hemiola influence our perception of musical form, especially in the absence of more traditional form-defining parameters.</p><p>

<p> This dissertation addresses the sonorous attributes of hegemony and subaltern resistance within contemporary Mexico City. In this urban environment, inhabitants use sound to interpret and shift the balance of power that pervades their daily lives. I draw on the interdisciplinary research area of sound studies that regards the acoustic environment not only as an amalgam of sounds but as overlapping sites of cultural inscription, resistance, and reimagining. Recent works in the area of sound studies identify sound not only as a byproduct of social conflict but also as a weapon itself. While these studies emphasize the use of weaponized sounds in war zones, few studies exist concerning the insidious manipulation of acoustic environments by oppressive regimes during peacetime, or the efforts of marginalized groups to challenge this oppression through sound. As a result, a significant aspect of social conflict in urban centers&mdash;that of the sonic&mdash;remains unexamined. </p><p> This dissertation is organized into four case studies that each address distinct yet interrelated manifestations of sonorous struggles for territorial dominance: 1) the specialized listening and sound producing practices of street vendors in Mexico City&rsquo;s Historic Center; 2) the crisis of street harassment as a sonorous practice of patriarchal domination; 3) the mosaic of sonic differentiation found in the Chopo Cultural Bazaar and finally 4) the reconfiguration of <i>son jarocho</i> (a folkloric dance and musical tradition from Veracruz) by urban musicians as a form of counterhegemonic protest during the Ayotzinapa marches of 2014 and 2015. These four case studies represent nodes of broader patterns of oppression and resistance that are indicative of both Mexico City&rsquo;s distinct history and its contemporary condition. The materiality and affective potency of these acoustic environments provide a crucial link between subjective sensory experiences and the social forces that inform them. The selective listening of sonically inundated urbanites, the politics of personal representation and group affiliation shown through aesthetic musical choices, and the occupation and contestation of acoustic space through the use of amplified sound all demonstrate tangible expressions of embodiment that speak to larger patterns of power.</p><p>

<p>From its roots in Richie Valens's "La Bamba" riffs, garage rock, and the Ramones to hardcore and the cultural front of the anti-globalization movement, Latina/os have played a significant role in punk music, fashion, identity, and politics. In the 1970s and 1980s, in context of the transformative effects of neo-liberal economic globalization on the United States I Mexico borderlands, working class Latina/o youth from the barrios of Los Angeles to Tijuana's colonias were instrumental in shaping punk's subcultural identity. Though separated by national borders, Latina/o socio-economic conditions and experiences with the police state increasingly mirrored each other. By the 1990s, accessing Latina/o cultural sights and sounds as markers of punk's oppositional identity, these organic intellectuals fostered a transborder civic imagination and alternative critical space within punk that intersected with the radical politics of the indigenous Ejercito Zapatista de Liberaci&oacute;n Nacional (E.Z.L.N.) inciting the anarchist inspired anti-globalization politics in punk culture. </p>

This dissertation situates these three modes of artistic expression in a broader interdisciplinary framework to better understand the cultural, socio-political, and historical processes of countercultural formation in Latin America. In Chapter 1, I define my conceptualization of Latin American counterculture. Here I make the case for including antipoetry, nueva canción and third cinema as part of Latin American counterculture seeking to contest foreing influences and elitist cultural models. In Chapter 2, I present the theoretical foundations of decolonial aesthetics, which serves as a framework that guides my analysis of key filmmakers, poets, and musicians and their respective representative works of art. Here I argue for the need to rethink aesthetics from a non-Eurocentric and non-elitist position. To conceptualize decolonial aesthetics, I draw on the work of Enrique Dussel, Jacques Ranciére, Aníbal Quijano, Ramón Grosfoguel, and Nelson Maldonado-Torres. In Chapter 3, Nicanor Parra, Mario Benedetti, Ernesto Cardenal, and Roque Dalton elicit a reevaluation of the shifts in Latin American poetics toward colloquial and accessible poetry intended for non-traditional audiences and underrepresented voices in the historical narratives of the region. In chapter 4, I study Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara, Mercedes Sosa, and Silvio Rodríguez as salient voices of a committed generation that sought radical societal changes, but whose music continues to have an appeal with newer social struggles. In chapter 5, select films by Fernando Solanas Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Humberto Solás, and Raymundo Gleyzer are essential in my study of nationalist and regional preoccupations with developing new cinematic languages and depicting histories of colonialism, racialization, failed revolutions, oppression of women, and the tensions among the bourgeoisie and various labor movements. Throughout this dissertation, I stress the importance of cross-genre and pan-Latin American readings as a way to reinterpret Latin America’s cultural canon in the 1960s and 1970s. I propose a reexamination of third cinema, antipoetry, and nueva canción as movements that produced artistic works with imbricated aesthetic and ideological projects (decolonial aesthetics) at a time when pro-independence struggles, liberation projects, and anticolonial sentiments pervaded globally; in turn, the specificities of political, social, and cultural contexts rendered some artistic projects more successful in achieving their respective goals than others.