Tigers of a Different Stripe: Performing Gender in Dominican Music (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology) - Softcover

Hutchinson, Sydney

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022640546X ISBN 13: 9780226405469

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2016

Synopsis

Tigers of a Different Stripe takes readers inside the unique world of merengue típico, a traditional music of the Dominican Republic. While in most genres of Caribbean music women usually participate as dancers or vocalists, in merengue típico they are more often instrumentalists and even bandleaders—something nearly unheard of in the macho Caribbean music scene. Examining this cultural phenomenon, Sydney Hutchinson offers an unexpected and fascinating account of gender in Dominican art and life.

Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork in the Dominican Republic and New York among musicians, fans, and patrons of merengue típico—not to mention her own experiences as a female instrumentalist—Hutchinson details a complex nexus of class, race, and artistic tradition that unsettles the typical binary between the masculine and feminine. She sketches the portrait of the classic male figure of the tíguere, a dandified but sexually aggressive and street-smart “tiger,” and she shows how female musicians have developed a feminine counterpart: the tíguera, an assertive, sensual, and respected female figure who looks like a woman but often plays and even sings like a man. Through these musical figures and studies of both straight and queer performers, she unveils rich ambiguities in gender construction in the Dominican Republic and the long history of a unique form of Caribbean feminism.

About this title

About the Author:

Sydney Hutchinson is assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Syracuse University. She is the editor of Salsa World and author of From Quebradita to Duranguense. 
 

Review:

“A highly sophisticated and welcome engagement with the shifting terrain of genre and gender in the merengue típico of the Dominican Republic. Spanning forty years, Tigers of a Different Stripe explores a series of key artists and performers and makes a much-needed, deeply insightful, and timely addition to the ethnomusicological literature on gender in the Caribbean.” (Michael Largey, author of Vodou Nation)

“In Tigers of a Different Stripe, Hutchinson pushes the theoretical boundaries and potential of gendered music scholarship in new and highly productive ways. Along the way, she introduces us to her delightfully quirky and passionate collaborators in such a way as to make them and their musico-political acts come alive. Pulling together years of study and performance, as well as careful and sophisticated theory, this book will become a staple for courses in ethnomusicology and anthropology or enjoyed by anyone interested in ethnography, performance, and gender told through the words of a skilled thinker and writer. This is a truly wonderful book!” (Ellen Koskoff, author of A Feminist Ethnomusicology)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 022640546X
• ISBN 13: 9780226405469
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248