Partially-automated live performance by Latin American musicians in two Canadian cities: Musical identity and authenticity in a globalized cultural economy.

Abstract

This ethnographic study examines the roles digital technologies (sequencers, drum machines, synthesizers, samplers, and computers) play in the musical practices of nine Latin American musicians participating in the local live music scenes of Ottawa and Montreal in the 1990s. Music has historically played a fundamental role in the construction of collective identities for Latin American musicians in the diaspora. A declining local musical economy combined with prevalent aesthetic value systems have made the use of automation in live performance an attractive and/or necessary alternative for some local Latin American musicians. The use of digital technologies, and in particular the use of automation, has particular implications for established notions of musical competence, creativity and ultimately of musical and cultural authenticity. This study looks at the notion of musical authenticity and its indelible connection with cultural, political, social and economic issues. It investigates the effects technology has on the ability of Latin American musicians to assert individual and collective identities in two of Canada's highly multicultural urban environments. As a site of social, economic and cultural struggle, exchange and interaction, the live performances of Latin American musicians are historically situated within the global/local cultural economic nexus of Canada's late twentieth-century.