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"Dancer and organizer Margarita Castro Olvera provides a focal point for an ethnography of danzâon in Veracruz, the Mexican city closely associated with the music-dance genre. Hettie Malcomson draws upon on-site research among semi-professional musicians and amateur dancers like Olvera to reveal how danzâon connects, and does not connect, to Blackness, joyousness, nostalgia, ageing, and romance. Challenging pervasive utopian views of danzâon, Malcomson uses the idea of ambivalence to explore the frictions and opportunities created by seemingly contrary sentiments, ideas, sensations, and impulses. Her account takes readers into Black and mestizo elements of local identity in Veracruz, nostalgic and newer styles of music and dance, and the friendships, romances, and rivalries among the older women at the heart of regular danzâon performance and its complex social world. Fine-grained and evocative, Danzâon Days journeys to one of the genre's essential cities to provide new perspectives on aging and romance and new explorations of nostalgia and ambivalence"--
List of contents
Vignette 1. Gerardo, Elena, and Miguel [Fiction] Introduction. Danzón, Veracruz, and Ambivalence
Vignette 2. Teresita [Fiction]
Chapter 1. Racial Ambivalence: Veracruz, Blackness, and Danzón
Vignette 3. Pancho [Fiction]
Chapter 2. Ambivalent Nostalgia: Histories and Memories of the Port and Its Danzón
Vignette 4. Renata [Fiction]
Chapter 3. Elegant Moves: Modernist Aesthetics and Danzón in Veracruz
Vignette 5. Lulú and Antonio [Fiction]
Chapter 4. Moves to Rescue: Reviving the Dance, State Sponsorship, and Power
Vignette 6. Hettie and Uriel
Chapter 5. United in a Viper’s Nest: Group Dynamics, Conviviality, and Rivalry
Vignette 7. Carmen and Ernesto [Fiction]
Chapter 6. Loving Ambivalence: Dance Groups, Amorous Encounters, and Ageing Bodies
Vignette 8. Diana [Fiction]
Acknowledgments
Notes
Glossary
Select Discography
Select Filmography
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Hettie Malcomson
