"El Hielo"

• In Event: Critical Karaoke

Abstract

My presentation explores popular music as communicative action and focuses on 21st century musical activism that targets the Obama administration's deportation and immigration policies. I will focus specifically on the work of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and their collaborations with musicians like Aloe Blacc, La Santa Cecilia, Ana Tijoux, and others. NDLON uses music to address and critique recent immigration and deportation policies-- specifically what Nicholas de Genova has analyzed as "the deportation regime"-- while mobilizing community and imagining new social ethics and new approaches to political advocacy. Against the backdrop of the music video for “El Hielo,” directed by Alex Rivera and performed by La Santa Cecilia, I will listen to their collaborations with globally networked artists to track a project of musical decolonization as a model for merging policy, protest, and popular performance.

Josh Kun is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Southern California. He is author of Audiotopia, co-author of And You Shall Know Us By the Trail of Our Vinyl, and co-editor of Tijuana Dreaming. Recent cultural projects include Songs in the Key of Los Angeles, Trouble in Paradise (with the Grammy Museum), and The Corrido of LA (with Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

Author

• Josh Kun, U of Southern California