New Cultural Identities Through Literature and Rock Music In Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil)

Gimbernat, Javier Gonzalez

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

New Cultural Identities Through Literature and Rock Music In Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil) Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/6t053g09f

Abstract

The emergence of rock music in the middle of the 1950s was a key milestone for popular, mass media culture in the 20th Century. Its impact was felt immediately by the culture industry as there was suddenly a fresh, untapped market--the youth market--toward which it could direct its attention. With rock came new aesthetic realms not only in music, but also in fashion and graphic design. Its impact on literature was less palpable, though its influence ran deep among several young writers from Latin America, opened up a new realm with which to identify, and was a key component in the formation of the Tropicália movement in Brazil. By the 1960s, rock had become the soundtrack for the newly liberated youth. With millions of fans, musicians such as Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, transcended their role as performers to become icons of the counterculture. My study focuses on the work of José Agustín, Parménides García Saldaña (Mexico), Andrés Caicedo (Colombia), Marcelo Cohen (Argentina) and Ignácio de Loyola Brandão (Brazil). The analyses are directly related to rock culture and, in Brazil, the Tropicália movement and the influence of rock on new cultural identities, considering its ripple effects that link it aesthetically, socially, historically and politically to the works. Part of the ripple effect is the significant consequence on some writers whose influence was not felt until decades later in the case of Agustín and Caicedo. My intention to reflect the diversity of rock and its varied modes of influence as a concept and social/aesthetic phenomenon is borne out by bringing in different critical approaches that nonetheless link it to overall continuum of literary and cultural history, manifested uniquely in each context to reflect the cultural and historical realities from which the works were created.

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