What is the Music of the Americas? The Music Division of the Pan American Union, 1938–45

This presentation analyzes the activities of the Music Division (MD) of the Pan American Union, from its inception in 1938 to the end of World War Two, as the site of the first systematic interaction among artists, musicologists, scholars, and diplomats from the Americas. It is divided in three parts. The first part briefly discusses recent historiography that has advanced our understanding of the musical chapter of Inter-American relations, particularly studies of the Pan American Association of Composers, the transnational origins of the folklore studies, and the New Deal’s cultural diplomacy. The second section analyzes the main features of the MD according to its official documents and musicological publications as well as to external sources, such as the correspondence among some of its members and Uruguayan Francisco Curt Lange—who some years before had initiated another transnational musicological network. This part describes the creation of the MD and its evolution until the end of World War Two by paying attention to the people involved in it, their agendas and struggles, and the variety of concerts, broadcasting, publications, and song compilations they produced. The third and last part examines the musical categories employed by the MD musicologists—e.g., “American,” “Latin,” “folk,” “Art,” “national,” “traditional,” and “commercial” music—and the different ways of representing and organizing the musical and cultural complexity of the Americas that resulted from them.