Journal of Undergraduate Research
Keywords
Latin American music, Carpentier, magical realism, music
College
Fine Arts and Communications
Department
Music
Abstract
In 1949 the Nobel Prize-winning Cuban novelist and musicologist, Alejo Carpentier, published his essay on lo real maravilloso Americano, an aggressively American discussion of the theory now known as magical realism. Carpentier refers to the German art critic Franz Roh (who initially coined the term in reference to post-expressionist painting in 1925), but diverges and defends magical realism as a uniquely Latin American phenomenon. While the world has latched onto Magical Realism as a critical literary theory, it is undeniably the Latin American authors and artists who have embraced, embodied and defined the practice of it. Carpentier asserts that the magical, mystical and imaginary is not to be discovered by transcending reality (as the surrealists claim), but that the marvelous is inherent in the natural and human realities of time and place, “where improbable juxtapositions and marvelous mixtures exist by virtue of Latin America’s varied history, geography, demography and politics—not by manifesto.” (“On the Marvellous Real in America,” 75).
Recommended Citation
Edwards, Erika; Hopkin, Dr. Arden; and Handley, George
(2013)
"The Marvelous American Reality: Making a Case for Carpentier’s Magical Realism in Latin American Music,"
Journal of Undergraduate Research: Vol. 2013:
Iss.
1, Article 2272.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jur/vol2013/iss1/2272