Maldito Coronavirus!: Mapping Latin American Musical Responses to the Pandemic Moment

Maldito Coronavirus!: Mapping Latin American Musical Responses to the Pandemic Moment offers an expansive survey and analysis of local and regional musical responses to the global coronavirus moment. The authors situate this emergent phenomenon within interdisciplinary explorations of music-making on social media platforms, transnational culture flows, emotional intimacy in digital spaces, and the intersections of music, health, and community. The first study of its kind, Maldito Coronavirus! emphasizes the singularity of this cultural moment by examining the myriad ways musicians, promoters, activists, and listeners artistically, emotionally, and organizationally responded to the challenges of living through a global pandemic. Highlighting examples from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, and across the Hispanic Caribbean, this book analyzes lyric, affect, and performance and explores the ways participatory digital platforms facilitated cultural sustenance and musical distribution at a time when physical gatherings were unfeasible. Maldito Coronavirus! draws on over a year’s worth of digital ethnography as well as insights from folklore, history, ethnomusicology, and the growing literature on music and wellbeing to highlight the locally-contingent ways music-makers responded to a global crisis.