WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., March 12, 2010 - In her new book, "Musical ImagiNation" (New York University Press, January 2010), María Elena Cepeda shows how popular music has become an alternative, dynamic space for conceptualizing transnational Colombian identity.

Subtitled "U.S.-Colombian Identity and the Latin Music Boom," the book engages in an interdisciplinary analysis of music, music videos, and other popular culture texts linked with the Colombian population of Miami to discuss previously overlooked facets of the Latina/o music industry.

"Musical ImagiNation" is the first academic book to focus on the U.S.-Colombian community, as well as the Latin music industry. Frances R. Aparicio, author of "Listening to Salsa," calls the book a "valuable contribution to Latino/a cultural studies" and "erudite, rigorously researched, and accessibly written."

"A primary goal of this book," Cepeda writes in the introduction, "is to move beyond the existing, highly descriptive Spanish-language studies that promote neat chronologies of a given genre and instead strive to achieve a representation of the contemporary 'rock en espanol' and 'vallenato' genres and marketing formats that more accurately reflect their transcultural, transnational nature."

In "Musical ImagiNation," Cepeda applies a rigorous lens to the artistic contributions and public personas of Colombian artists Shakira, Andrea Echeverri of Aterciopelados, and Carlos Vives. She draws on the theoretical frameworks of Cultural Studies and Media Studies in order to highlight questions of gender, ethnoracial identity, and nation in the transnational context.

Cepeda elucidates contemporary shifts not only within the music industry, but also in the demographics of metropolitan Miami-Dade and the paradigm of Latin American Studies. Driven in part by ongoing immigration from Colombia to South Florida, these developments include the emergence of Miami as the "Latin Hollywood" for both North and South America, and a growing scholarly engagement with the transnational aspects of U.S. Latina/o identity.

Ultimately, Cepeda asserts that the identity of the Colombian transnational community hinges on territorial as well as imagined communal spaces, chief among them popular music.

"Though certainly not free of its own representational flaws and clichés, popular artistic expression has helped to make it possible for 'colombianos' everywhere to carve out our own symbolic spaces within a political moment otherwise principally defined by violence," she writes.

"Cepeda's book gives the 'New Latinos' the thorough and respectful attention they deserve," said Deborah Pacini Hernandez of Tufts University.

Cepeda is assistant professor of Latina/o Studies at Williams College. Her research focuses on U.S. Latina/o and Latin American popular culture, contemporary media, transnationalism, language politics, community-based pedagogical approaches, and gender and sexuality. She received her B.A. from Kenyon College and her Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan.

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Yue-Hi & Iliyana