‘American Sabor’
Book traces Latin influences on U.S. popular music
Shannon Dudley, Marisol BerríosMiranda and Michelle HabellPallán weren’t satisfied with how the history of Latinos in popular culture was told.
So they decided to change it.
After working 15 years on the project, the trio have published “American Sabor: Latinos and Latinas in US Popular Music.” Dudley and BerríosMiranda will sign copies of the book at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 15, at Bookworks.
The book traces the musical contributions of Latinas and Latinos in American popular music between World War II and today. The story is told in both English and Spanish.
From Tito Puente’s mambo dance rhythms to the Spanglish rap of Mellow Man Ace, the book focuses on the various musical styles that have developed largely in the United States.
It includes jazz, R&B, rock, punk, hip hop, country, Tejano and salsa.
“We’re proud to keep our territorial control from start to finish,” Dudley says. “We fought for this book to be done right. At one point, Marisol was upset at the translation and we ended up getting her sister to translate the book.”
Habell-Pallán says working on the project was intriguing to her because it could have a big impact.
“We looked at the larger pan-Latino view,” she says. “And across time and space, they shared each other’s music but didn’t know each other’s history. Mainstream media tries to say Latino is all the same. Sometimes there’s a divide between Spanish-speaking communities and English-dominant Latino communities. We really wanted to get the widest reach into the book.”
Dudley says seeing the book come out was gratifying.
“When we did the exhibit, we knew we had the story,” he says. “To turn it into a book was a little more work than we thought. Once we started writing the book, it was different. The book is linear, and we had to construct the narrative in book form. We had to think very carefully about themes and connecting the cities. We had issues such as immigration and migration and women challenging gender roles. We would always be trying to reinforce them. We wanted to make the book more accessible, as well. Hopefully, teachers will see the book and want to utilize it in classes.”