Feminist Latina scholars of music, Alexandra Vazquez, Licia Fiol-Matta, and Deborah Vargas proposed departure points for theorizing music made across the Americas. Together with the panelists, the audience was invited to take in sounds across various Latinate genres and geographies; to imagine what they demanded of listening practices and what they offered to counter public collectives, and to experience the wonder of being with music with a primarily feminist ethos. The panelists explored and advocated for the “impermissible” practices of Latina feminist music criticism, including experimental forms of writing meant to blow open the constraints imposed by “regional” thinking and to play with materials suspicious of (and to) archives.

Professor Alexandra Vazquez of New York University’s Department of Performance Studies and author of Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music, moderated and participated in this exciting conversation. She was be joined by Professor Licia Fiol-Matta of New York University’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, author of The Great Female Singer: Gender and Voice in Puerto Rican Music, and Professor Deborah Vargas, Henry T Rutgers Term Chair in Comparative Sexuality, Gender and Race at Rutgers, author of Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music.

This event was free, open to the public, co-sponsored by The Latinx Project and was a joint project of the music department at New York University’s College of Arts and Science, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, Tisch School of the Arts, and the AMS. 

Event Recap

On February 21st, 2019, The Latinx Project co-sponsored an evening with three amazing Latina music critics Alexandra Vazquez, Licia Fiol-Matta, and Deborah Vargas; who taught us how to engage in feminist listening practices. The critics shared some favorite classics that challenged stereotypical ideas about what Latinx music feels and sounds like.