During her residency at the Hemispheric Institute, music historian Rosa Marquetti engaged in this virtual conversation with Licia Fiol-Matta & Alexandra Vázquez. Here Marquetti provides examples of what Vázquez calls “the Marquetti Method,” including how she recovers the history of Afrocuban music in the face of anti-Black archival practices and how she makes the most of limited sources to produce an account of music as a communal phenomenon.
Fiol-Matta and Vázquez pose questions to her, drawing out her insights–-as an historian and Cuban music-lover–-about musicians such as Juan Formell, Chucho Valdés, Celeste Mendoza, and, of course, Celia Cruz. At the end, attendees ask questions on topics such as the personal toll that Marquetti’s research has taken on her and the socio-political implications of her research within the Cuban diaspora.
Biography
Rosa Marquetti Torres received a degree in philology from the University of Havana. Her professional connection with Cuban music began in 1993 as an executive at the Pablo Milanés Foundation. Marquetti is the author of Chano Pozo: A Life (1915-1948), El Niño con su tres: Andrés Echevarría Callava, Niño Rivera, the blog Desmemoriados. Histories of Cuban Music, and Celia in Cuba (1925-1960). Her articles and research on major events, characteristics, and figures of Cuban music have been published in specialized and general journals and magazines in Cuba, Colombia, Spain, France, and the United States. Alexandra T. Vázquez is Associate Professor in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University. She is the author of The Florida Room (Duke 2022) and Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music (Duke 2013, winner of the American Studies Association’s Lora Romero First Book Prize). Vázquez’s work has been featured in NPR's "Turning the Tables," American Quarterly, small axe, Social Text, Women & Performance, the JPMS, and in the edited volumes Keywords in Latina/o Studies, Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, Reggaeton, and Pop When the World Falls Apart. Licia Fiol-Matta grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University. She writes on Latin American and Latinx literary and cultural studies, women’s and gender studies, and music. She is the author of A Queer Mother for the Nation: The State and Gabriela Mistral (Minnesota; translation Editorial Palinodia, September 2022) and The Great Woman Singer: Gender and Voice in Puerto Rican Music (Duke; translation Editorial Callejón, forthcoming). For The Great Woman Singer, Fiol-Matta received the 2020 Modern Languages Association US Latina and Latino and Chicano and Chicana Literary and Cultural Studies Prize; the 2018 Frank Bonilla Book Award from the Puerto Rican Studies Association; and an Honorable Mention, 2018 Woody Guthrie Award of the International Association for Popular Music Studies-US.
