Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

I discuss the potency of constructed musical memory through an ethnomusicological examination of Hawai‘i Puerto Rican musical style and song texts. For this population, who largely descend from early 20th century immigrant sugar plantation laborers, music and dance have historically been both diversions and primary cultural anchors. Their physical and communication disconnection from Puerto Rico, very unlike the constant ebb and flow of Puerto Ricans between New York and the Caribbean, was profound throughout much of the 20th century. Themes of separation and longing strongly resonate for Hawaiʻi Puerto Ricans, even though very few of them have any personal experience of Puerto Rico. Instead of a physical and experienced memory of their original homeland, they nurture an imaginary memory in songs and dances. I maintain that in the face of a profound separation, Puerto Rico-identified music and dance have served for Hawaiʻi Puerto Ricans as what I call a “pathoscape”: an “emotional sound landscape.” For many, both young and old, poignantly aware of the broken link with Puerto Rico, recordings and music and dance practices have in a sense come to serve as surrogate ancestors. In coming to grips with a diasporic Puerto Rican identity both imagined and immediate, Hawaiʻi Puerto Ricans in the 20th century have repeatedly rationalized, renegotiated and reinterpreted the aesthetic criteria they consider appropriately culturally appropriate, and which nurture this emotional landscape.