Lauren Shaw is an associate professor of Spanish at Elmira College where she teaches Hispanic Studies in the Romance Language Program and hosts a Spanish language radio program called Voces.

[This book]is a must-read for all those interested in building an emancipatory politics of the twenty first century. It opens a poetics of possibility which shines new light on the importance of taking seriously the cultural, the popular and the everyday in social change and political transformation. The collection takes us on a journey that crosses geographical, cultural, political and epistemological borders. . . .[The book's] playful use of form, combining traditional scholarly analysis of song with six interviews with musicians . . . contributes to its ability to stimulate the critical imagination and to open emancipatory horizons. The thirteen unique contributions highlight some of the generic ways in which song-poetry facilitates social change. . . .This volume is to be actively and tenderly explored. Through an embodied act of reading we can become active interlocutors with the text, listening to the traditions discussed. Through savouring the text in this way, we enter a dialogue of knowledges that engages our head, heart, body and imagination. Song and Social Change in Latin America transgresses borders. For this reason it is a gem.

• IntroductionLauren ShawPart I: Music and Agency Chapter 1: Singing the City, Documenting Modernization: Cortijo y su combo and the Insertion of the Urban in 1950s Puerto Rican CultureCarmelo EsterrichChapter 2: Shattering Myths: Brazil: Brazil’s Tropicália MovementJohn R. Baldwin and Phillip J. ChidesterChapter 3: The Mockingbird Still Calls for Arlen: Central American Songs of Rebellion, 1970-2010Juan Carlos UreñaChapter 4: Social Denunciation of the Politics of Fear: Rock Music through the Eighties in Argentina, Chile and PeruLisette BalabarcaChapter 5: The Politics of Language, Class, and Nation in Mexico’s Rock en español MovementIgnacio CoronaChapter 6: Witnessing Forced Internal Displacement in Colombia Through Vallenato MusicDiana Rodríguez QuevedoChapter 7: Rich Poetry: Cuban Voices of PossibilityLauren ShawPart II: Conversations on Music and Social ChangeRuben Blades, New York CityHabana Abierta, MadridRoy Brown, Mayagüez, Ana Tijoux, BostonMare Advertencia Lirika, Oaxaca via Skype