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Papers by Amanda Martinez Morrison

Western folklore, 2008

... Musical Trafficking : Urban Youth and The Narcocorrido-Hardcore Rap Nexus = Trafic Musical : ... more ... Musical Trafficking : Urban Youth and The Narcocorrido-Hardcore Rap Nexus = Trafic Musical : Jeunesse Urbaine et les liens entre les narco-ballades mexicaines et le rap hardcore. Auteur(s) / Author(s). MORRISON Amanda Maria ; Revue / Journal Title. ...

The Journal of Popular Culture, 2010

constitute a sizeable and lucrative consumer base to tap into, much like enterprising industriali... more constitute a sizeable and lucrative consumer base to tap into, much like enterprising industrialists tap into and exploit the natural resources of fertile, ''underdeveloped'' terrain. The 2000 US Census affirmed this fact when it revealed that Latina/os or ''Hispanics'' (the federal government's preferred term) now comprise the largest minority group in the United States. Leading economists predict that Latino buying power-disposable income available for spending on goods and services after taxes-will exceed US$1 trillion by 2010 (Humphries 7). Numerous problems arise when the debate over the meaning of the identity marker ''Latino'' spills over from the academy, political organizations or from the communities that self-identify as such into the boardrooms of corporate America-particularly those of the cultural industries (film, television, music, publishing, advertising), which play a key role in the dissemination of images of ''Latinidad'' within the United States but also globally. Cultural anthropologist Arlene Dávila describes this notion of Latinidad as the '''out-of-many, one-people' process through which 'Latinos' or 'Hispanics' are conceived and represented as sharing one common identity'' (16). While politically useful in terms of mobilizations for civil rights, this category becomes problematic in the sphere of the cultural industries, whose bottom line benefits from the positioning of Latinos as a homogenous market and not as the culturally, racially, and economically diverse population that it actually is-a population that is, at best, only loosely tied together

Abstract: Through ethnography, I examine how hip-hop's expressive forms are being used as th... more Abstract: Through ethnography, I examine how hip-hop's expressive forms are being used as the raw materials of everyday life by residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, home to what many regard as one of the most stylistically prolific, politically charged, and racially ...

The notion of a "Latin boom" in the music industry typically conjures the swiveling hips and buoy... more The notion of a "Latin boom" in the music industry typically conjures the swiveling hips and buoyant salsa-infused rhythms of pop performers like Ricky Martin and Shakira or, more recently, the driving island beats of reggaeton. Few imagine a Stetson-sporting vaquero as a representative figure of the contemporary Latin music scene. Yet this is the visual style associated with what is by far the largest-selling Latin genre in the U.S.: Mexican regional music. "Regional Mexican" is the catchall phrase the industry uses to categorize a variety of musical traditions. These include the mariachi and ranchera sounds most people identify with Mexican national culture. It also includes musical styles linked to specific states or regions in Greater Mexico, including banda, norteño, duranguense, and tejano. These song forms stem from pre-industrial folk music traditions, and often evoke a pastoral, agrarian past. But today's performers adapt them to better reflect the struggles of working-class Chicanos and Mexican immigrants living and laboring in U.S cities. Many artists infuse their music with an urbane sensibility, and sometimes even a hip-hop swagger, as is the case with narcocorridos-gritty ballads about gangsta-style drug smuggling antiheroes. The commercial category known as "regional Mexican" is really as much an American phenomenon as it is Mexican. Many of its most popular artists are, in fact, Mexican American, including Los Tigres del Norte, Jenni and Lupillo Rivera, Intocable, and Grupo Montez de Durango. A reflection of transnational realities, Mexican regional artists today typically have to do well in the States before they hit it big south of the border (Kun 2006). Here in the U.S., the style sells more than Latin pop, rock, and tropical acts combined. It's one of few genres that haven't suffered significantly in the music industry's recent downturn. Yet despite its massive U.S. appeal, Mexican regional remains ghettoized within the music industry as an "ethnic" niche-market genre whose domestic audience is never expected to reach beyond immigrant communities in the West and Southwest. The music receives little promotional backing from record labels and garners the fewest licensing and sponsorship deals of all Latin genres, despite the fact that it outsells them all. Its standing in the Latin music community is so low that Mexican regional artists boycotted the inaugural Latin Grammys in 2000 to protest their vast under-representation in the show's award categories. One of the reasons frequently given for regional Mexican's marginalization is the perception that it's either corny or old-fashioned. To unaccustomed ears, the blaring brass, polka beats, and waltzing accordions underlying so many regional styles sound either like circus music or Lawrence Welk showtunes. In sound and image, it's thought to contrast sharply with the suave salseros and Latin-pop divas whose sultry performance of Latin-ness has traditionally been easier for music execs to promote. I argue that regional Mexican music fails to reach "general" markets, and attract industry support, because it presents a version of Latinidad that's either incongruous or threatening to the dominant cultural order. Beginning with the mid-century "mambo craze," record executives have tended to put greater development resources behind Caribbean-based musics because of their connotations of glamour, sensuality, and romance. Underlying this appeal is a tropical imaginary that portrays Latinos as "hot and spicy," passionate and sexy. Francis Aparicio and Susana Chávez-Silverman define the verb "to tropicalize" as a "means to trope, to imbue a particular space, geography, group, or nation with a set of traits, images, and values" (1997:8) that is "overdetermined for the Caribbean" (1). Tropicalism, or the belief that Latinos embody an intrinsic eroticism and "hot bloodedness," can be understood in similar terms as, or as a corollary to, Edward Said's analysis of "Orientalist" discourse in regard to Asia and the Middle East-i.e. fantasies of an exoticized, eroticized, non-Western other. This tropicalist orientation results in the marginalization of Mexican regional music-and of Mexican Americans generally-from marketing and promotional efforts within the domestic entertainment industry, despite the fact that people of Mexican descent comprise nearly 70% of all

This essay explores all-too-rare portrayals of Chicana youths as leading characters in contempora... more This essay explores all-too-rare portrayals of Chicana youths as leading characters in contemporary U.S. cinema. It focuses primarily on three narrative films-

alter/nativas: Latin American Cultural Studies Journal,, 2014

Journal of Popular Culture, 2010

Conference Presentations by Amanda Martinez Morrison

Methodology Research was limited to of Bay Area and some Southern California, mostly college educ... more Methodology Research was limited to of Bay Area and some Southern California, mostly college educated Latino young adults (age 18-31). Interviews were semi-structured with pre-written questions designed to elicit discourse about interviewees' experiences and attitudes in terms of racialization and encounters with law enforcement and institutional authority as well as cultural identity, personal style, and group belonging. Interviews were open ended in an individual setting. Objective The research objective is to contribute to a fairly new and growing body of scholarly literature on Latino and African-American social and cultural exchange. This project examines attitudes and experiences of Bay Area and Sonoma County Latino young adults (age 18-31) in the aftermath of the 2013 killing of local teen Andy Lopez. This incident, in which a local deputy sheriff fatally shot the thirteen year-old Lopez after mistaking the boy's airsoft gun for an assault rifle garnered national attention in part because of the public outcry and activism it spurred among young Bay Area residents, particularly North Bay Latino youth. As young people participated in protests and became civically engaged around police-minority relations and social-justice issues, a discourse emerged explicitly linking the Andy Lopez tragedy to the recent spate of fatal police shootings of African-American young men, including Oscar Grant in Oakland, CA and more recently, Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO; as well as the Florida slayings of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis by overzealous gun owners who equated hip-hop cultural markers (hoodie sweatshirts, baggy pants, loud rap music) with criminality. This study explores parallel experiences of racialization and stigmatization between Latino and African-American youth, as well as the ways "black and brown" youth create affective alliances through cultural forms such as hip-hop. This points to an emergent youth culture and possible coalitional politics that, though far from being "post racial," certainly unsettles cultural-nationalist models of previous generations. Background As part of our historical background we utilized population and race statistics to look at the diversity in the populations we were interviewing. For previously done scholarly work we utilized previous work done by Luiz Alvarez on cultural exchanges between Chicanos and African-Americans dating back to World War II and Zoot Suiters. Below we have highlighted some quotes and excerpts from his 2007 article in Latino Studies: Chicana/o identity is deeply shaped by how Chicanos relate to other racialized groups. What binds Chicanos and other non-white youth in the post war era is not just their shared experiences of racialization or cultural style, but a more profound connection between their efforts to reclaim dignity amidst difficult life conditions, including internment, discrimination, and poverty. The changes experienced by Chicana/o, Latina/o, Asian, and African American communities in US cities…have resulted in the denial of youth dignity in profound ways. Economic restructuring and deindustrialization has forced many in the urban US to face growing rates of unemployment, dilapidated and unaffordable housing, along with decreasing local, state, and federal resources for inner-city welfare, schools, parks, and healthcare.

Western folklore, 2008

... Musical Trafficking : Urban Youth and The Narcocorrido-Hardcore Rap Nexus = Trafic Musical : ... more ... Musical Trafficking : Urban Youth and The Narcocorrido-Hardcore Rap Nexus = Trafic Musical : Jeunesse Urbaine et les liens entre les narco-ballades mexicaines et le rap hardcore. Auteur(s) / Author(s). MORRISON Amanda Maria ; Revue / Journal Title. ...

The Journal of Popular Culture, 2010

constitute a sizeable and lucrative consumer base to tap into, much like enterprising industriali... more constitute a sizeable and lucrative consumer base to tap into, much like enterprising industrialists tap into and exploit the natural resources of fertile, ''underdeveloped'' terrain. The 2000 US Census affirmed this fact when it revealed that Latina/os or ''Hispanics'' (the federal government's preferred term) now comprise the largest minority group in the United States. Leading economists predict that Latino buying power-disposable income available for spending on goods and services after taxes-will exceed US$1 trillion by 2010 (Humphries 7). Numerous problems arise when the debate over the meaning of the identity marker ''Latino'' spills over from the academy, political organizations or from the communities that self-identify as such into the boardrooms of corporate America-particularly those of the cultural industries (film, television, music, publishing, advertising), which play a key role in the dissemination of images of ''Latinidad'' within the United States but also globally. Cultural anthropologist Arlene Dávila describes this notion of Latinidad as the '''out-of-many, one-people' process through which 'Latinos' or 'Hispanics' are conceived and represented as sharing one common identity'' (16). While politically useful in terms of mobilizations for civil rights, this category becomes problematic in the sphere of the cultural industries, whose bottom line benefits from the positioning of Latinos as a homogenous market and not as the culturally, racially, and economically diverse population that it actually is-a population that is, at best, only loosely tied together

Abstract: Through ethnography, I examine how hip-hop's expressive forms are being used as th... more Abstract: Through ethnography, I examine how hip-hop's expressive forms are being used as the raw materials of everyday life by residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, home to what many regard as one of the most stylistically prolific, politically charged, and racially ...

The notion of a "Latin boom" in the music industry typically conjures the swiveling hips and buoy... more The notion of a "Latin boom" in the music industry typically conjures the swiveling hips and buoyant salsa-infused rhythms of pop performers like Ricky Martin and Shakira or, more recently, the driving island beats of reggaeton. Few imagine a Stetson-sporting vaquero as a representative figure of the contemporary Latin music scene. Yet this is the visual style associated with what is by far the largest-selling Latin genre in the U.S.: Mexican regional music. "Regional Mexican" is the catchall phrase the industry uses to categorize a variety of musical traditions. These include the mariachi and ranchera sounds most people identify with Mexican national culture. It also includes musical styles linked to specific states or regions in Greater Mexico, including banda, norteño, duranguense, and tejano. These song forms stem from pre-industrial folk music traditions, and often evoke a pastoral, agrarian past. But today's performers adapt them to better reflect the struggles of working-class Chicanos and Mexican immigrants living and laboring in U.S cities. Many artists infuse their music with an urbane sensibility, and sometimes even a hip-hop swagger, as is the case with narcocorridos-gritty ballads about gangsta-style drug smuggling antiheroes. The commercial category known as "regional Mexican" is really as much an American phenomenon as it is Mexican. Many of its most popular artists are, in fact, Mexican American, including Los Tigres del Norte, Jenni and Lupillo Rivera, Intocable, and Grupo Montez de Durango. A reflection of transnational realities, Mexican regional artists today typically have to do well in the States before they hit it big south of the border (Kun 2006). Here in the U.S., the style sells more than Latin pop, rock, and tropical acts combined. It's one of few genres that haven't suffered significantly in the music industry's recent downturn. Yet despite its massive U.S. appeal, Mexican regional remains ghettoized within the music industry as an "ethnic" niche-market genre whose domestic audience is never expected to reach beyond immigrant communities in the West and Southwest. The music receives little promotional backing from record labels and garners the fewest licensing and sponsorship deals of all Latin genres, despite the fact that it outsells them all. Its standing in the Latin music community is so low that Mexican regional artists boycotted the inaugural Latin Grammys in 2000 to protest their vast under-representation in the show's award categories. One of the reasons frequently given for regional Mexican's marginalization is the perception that it's either corny or old-fashioned. To unaccustomed ears, the blaring brass, polka beats, and waltzing accordions underlying so many regional styles sound either like circus music or Lawrence Welk showtunes. In sound and image, it's thought to contrast sharply with the suave salseros and Latin-pop divas whose sultry performance of Latin-ness has traditionally been easier for music execs to promote. I argue that regional Mexican music fails to reach "general" markets, and attract industry support, because it presents a version of Latinidad that's either incongruous or threatening to the dominant cultural order. Beginning with the mid-century "mambo craze," record executives have tended to put greater development resources behind Caribbean-based musics because of their connotations of glamour, sensuality, and romance. Underlying this appeal is a tropical imaginary that portrays Latinos as "hot and spicy," passionate and sexy. Francis Aparicio and Susana Chávez-Silverman define the verb "to tropicalize" as a "means to trope, to imbue a particular space, geography, group, or nation with a set of traits, images, and values" (1997:8) that is "overdetermined for the Caribbean" (1). Tropicalism, or the belief that Latinos embody an intrinsic eroticism and "hot bloodedness," can be understood in similar terms as, or as a corollary to, Edward Said's analysis of "Orientalist" discourse in regard to Asia and the Middle East-i.e. fantasies of an exoticized, eroticized, non-Western other. This tropicalist orientation results in the marginalization of Mexican regional music-and of Mexican Americans generally-from marketing and promotional efforts within the domestic entertainment industry, despite the fact that people of Mexican descent comprise nearly 70% of all

This essay explores all-too-rare portrayals of Chicana youths as leading characters in contempora... more This essay explores all-too-rare portrayals of Chicana youths as leading characters in contemporary U.S. cinema. It focuses primarily on three narrative films-

alter/nativas: Latin American Cultural Studies Journal,, 2014

Journal of Popular Culture, 2010

Methodology Research was limited to of Bay Area and some Southern California, mostly college educ... more Methodology Research was limited to of Bay Area and some Southern California, mostly college educated Latino young adults (age 18-31). Interviews were semi-structured with pre-written questions designed to elicit discourse about interviewees' experiences and attitudes in terms of racialization and encounters with law enforcement and institutional authority as well as cultural identity, personal style, and group belonging. Interviews were open ended in an individual setting. Objective The research objective is to contribute to a fairly new and growing body of scholarly literature on Latino and African-American social and cultural exchange. This project examines attitudes and experiences of Bay Area and Sonoma County Latino young adults (age 18-31) in the aftermath of the 2013 killing of local teen Andy Lopez. This incident, in which a local deputy sheriff fatally shot the thirteen year-old Lopez after mistaking the boy's airsoft gun for an assault rifle garnered national attention in part because of the public outcry and activism it spurred among young Bay Area residents, particularly North Bay Latino youth. As young people participated in protests and became civically engaged around police-minority relations and social-justice issues, a discourse emerged explicitly linking the Andy Lopez tragedy to the recent spate of fatal police shootings of African-American young men, including Oscar Grant in Oakland, CA and more recently, Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO; as well as the Florida slayings of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis by overzealous gun owners who equated hip-hop cultural markers (hoodie sweatshirts, baggy pants, loud rap music) with criminality. This study explores parallel experiences of racialization and stigmatization between Latino and African-American youth, as well as the ways "black and brown" youth create affective alliances through cultural forms such as hip-hop. This points to an emergent youth culture and possible coalitional politics that, though far from being "post racial," certainly unsettles cultural-nationalist models of previous generations. Background As part of our historical background we utilized population and race statistics to look at the diversity in the populations we were interviewing. For previously done scholarly work we utilized previous work done by Luiz Alvarez on cultural exchanges between Chicanos and African-Americans dating back to World War II and Zoot Suiters. Below we have highlighted some quotes and excerpts from his 2007 article in Latino Studies: Chicana/o identity is deeply shaped by how Chicanos relate to other racialized groups. What binds Chicanos and other non-white youth in the post war era is not just their shared experiences of racialization or cultural style, but a more profound connection between their efforts to reclaim dignity amidst difficult life conditions, including internment, discrimination, and poverty. The changes experienced by Chicana/o, Latina/o, Asian, and African American communities in US cities…have resulted in the denial of youth dignity in profound ways. Economic restructuring and deindustrialization has forced many in the urban US to face growing rates of unemployment, dilapidated and unaffordable housing, along with decreasing local, state, and federal resources for inner-city welfare, schools, parks, and healthcare.