Elite Art Worlds

The Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM) in Buenos Aires operated for less than a decade, but by the time of its closure in 1971 it had become the undeniable epicenter of Latin American avant-garde music. Providing the first in-depth study of CLAEM, author Eduardo Herrera tells the story of the fellowship program--funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Di Tella family--that, by allowing the region's promising young composers to study with a roster of acclaimed faculty, produced some of the most prominent figures within the art world, including Rafael Aponte Ledeé, Coriún Aharonián, and Blas Emilio Atehortúa. Combining oral histories, ethnographic research, and archival sources, Elite Art Worlds explores regional discourses of musical Latin Americanism and the embrace, articulation, and resignification of avant-garde techniques and perspectives during the 1960s. But the story of CLAEM reveals much more: intricate webs of US and Argentine philanthropy, transnational currents of artistic experimentation and innovation, and the role of art in constructing elite identities. By looking at CLAEM as both an artistic and philanthropic project, Herrera illuminates the relationships between foreign policy, corporate interests, and funding for the arts in Latin America and the United States against the backdrop of the Cold War.

Eduardo Herrera is Associate Professor of Musicology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He researches Argentine and Uruguayan avant-garde music, postcoloniality in Latin America and, most recently, collective soccer chants as participatory music making and public affective practice. His co-edited volume Experimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2018) discusses a wide variety of artistic and musical traditions from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinos/as in the United States that are conceived or perceived as experimental.

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments Introduction: Elite Art Worlds Chapter 1: CLAEM: 1962-1971 Chapter 2: John Harrison, Alberto Ginastera, and the Creation of CLAEM Chapter 3: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American Music in the 1950s and 1960s Chapter 4: The Di Tella Family, Art Philanthropy, and the Legitimation of Elite Status Chapter 5: Embodied Avant-garde(s): A Way of Being in the World Chapter 6: From Musical Pan Americanism to Latin Americanism Chapter 7: The Closing and Lasting Impact of CLAEM