Latin American Music and Culture (MUSI40090)

HonoursPoints: 12.5Not available in 2025

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Overview

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This subject explores the musical traditions of Spanish-speaking Latin America, focusing on the intersections of music, culture and language. A number of selected musical traditions will be examined including expressions from the Caribbean, Andean and River Plate regions such as Cuban son, Argentine tango, protest song and art music, among others. These repertoires will be approached from a twofold perspective, concentrating on the different musical genres and their original cultural contexts, as well as critically examining their representations in mainstream Western culture through an analysis of the presence of Latin American music in media.

Intended learning outcomes

On completion of this subject students should be able to:



  • Aurally analyse different expressions of Latin American music according to their musical characteristics and be able to situate them in their socio-historical context
  • Discriminate between different Latin American musical traditions and be able to support your opinion with relevant musical evidence
  • Articulate historical, social and musical data in coherent narratives applying a sophisticated technical and scholarly vocabulary
  • Evaluate and criticise a body of empirical data and identify its theoretical context
  • Conduct independent research on music and cultural representations of Latin America

Generic skills

On completion of this subject students will have further developed:

  • an enhanced capacity to value the music of different cultures
  • critical thinking and analytical skills
  • ability to seek out, organise and evaluate relevant information
  • advance communication skills, both oral and written
  • collaborative skills
  • capacity for independent, self-reflective and critical enquiry
  • the ability to apply appropriate critical skills to evaluate diverse musical and cultural phenomena
  • the ability to communicate specific musical content in an academic context both in oral and written form

Last updated: 4 March 2025