Singing for the Dead: The Politics of Indigenous Revival in Mexico - Softcover

Faudree, Paja

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822354314 ISBN 13: 9780822354314

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2013

Synopsis

Singing for the Dead chronicles ethnic revival in Oaxaca, Mexico, where new forms of singing and writing in the local Mazatec indigenous language are producing powerful, transformative political effects. Paja Faudree argues for the inclusion of singing as a necessary component in the polarized debates about indigenous orality and literacy, and she considers how the coupling of literacy and song has allowed people from the region to create texts of enduring social resonance. She examines how local young people are learning to read and write in Mazatec as a result of the region's new Day of the Dead song contest. Faudree also studies how tourist interest in local psychedelic mushrooms has led to their commodification, producing both opportunities and challenges for songwriters and others who represent Mazatec culture. She situates these revival movements within the contexts of Mexico and Latin America, as well as the broad, hemisphere-wide movement to create indigenous literatures. Singing for the Dead provides a new way to think about the politics of ethnicity, the success of social movements, and the limits of national belonging.

About this title

About the Author:

Paja Faudree is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brown University.

Review:

"Singing for the Dead is an unusual work that brings a sophisticated analysis of language and song into dialogue with the contemporary history of factions and the politics of identification in the Mazatec region of Oaxaca. Paja Faudree deftly unpacks the intellectual and institutional infrastructure that has made a culturally innovative process of native revivalism possible." (Claudio Lomnitz, author of Death and the Idea of Mexico)

"Singing for the Dead makes major theoretical and ethnographic contributions to studies of indigenous literacy, ethnic revival movements, and the ways in which politics functions through cultural forms. The book is historically and theoretically rich, situating the different examples of ethnic revival—the Day of the Dead song contest, the Mazatec Indigenous Church, and the work of indigenous Mazatec writers—in a wonderfully vibrant context." (Lynn Stephen, author of Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon)

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0822354314
• ISBN 13: 9780822354314
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328