Biography

Jeffrey Pijpers studied Latin American Studies with a specialization in Literature at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and combined this with a minor in classical guitar at the Royal Conservatory at The Hague. During his M.A. and MPhil studies he started to combine literary studies with music and now focuses on identity and resistance in song lyrics and musical performance of marginal musicians, related to the concepts of hegemony and diaspora. His areas of interest are post-Revolutionary Cuba and 1970s Brazil and their particular forms of musical activity in two different contexts of repression. He is currently undertaking a Ph.D. dissertation at ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis), University of Amsterdam, on marginal musicians in Cuba and Brazil. He has spent extended periods of time inHavanaandRio de Janeiro for research purposes.

Dissertation

The current PhD dissertation at ASCA focuses on identity construction and resistance through music by marginal artists in 1970s Brazil and 1980s Cuba. Within these specific socio-political contexts, where censorship originated from politics of national(ist) identities, music became a space where marginal identities could be articulated through song lyrics, melodic or rhythmic constructions, and performative language. In this way, marginality was able to manifest itself without rejecting its own exterior status, thus confronting hegemony with its own negativity. At the same time, marginality allowed for the creation of alternative identities that transcended the inside-outside binary system of nationalist discourse. This project therefore also contributes to discussions about identity construction in the present day, where migration and a global exchange of information urge us to question existing divisions of national boundaries and cultural dominance.

"Artimanha, the Precise Moment of Being: Performance and Resistance in the Poetry of Brazil's Nuvem Cigana."

Performing Poetry. Eds. Arturo Casas, Cornalia Graebner. Rodopi: Amsterdam, 2011 (Forthcoming).

"Detuning as Resistance."

Eighty-Eight: Mieke Bal PhDs 1983-2011. Ed. Murat Aydemir and Esther Peeren. Amsterdam: ASCA Press, 2011.

"Habana Abierta: Boomerang"

Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana. Ed. Luís Manuel García. Madrid: Asociación Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana. No. 45 (2008): 41-45.

"La Nueva Trova Cubana"

Revista de Estudos Poético-Musicais - Repom. Ed. Tereza Virginia de Almeida. No 4, June2007.

"'La Otra Orilla': Exile and Identity in the Music of the Cuban Generation of the Moles"

Mi pueblo me hace cantar, University of East Anglia, U.K., April 16-18, 2010.

"'Marchen Bien', Testimony as Resistance in Cuban Diasporic Music"

Creoles, Diasporas, Cosmopolitanisms, American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), New Orleans, U.S.A. April 1-4, 2010.

"Music and Marginália in 1970's Brazil"

Latin American Music Seminar, University of London / Institutefor the Study of the Americas,U.K. November 21, 2009.

"From Tropicalismo to marginália: image and invisibility in Brazilian music"

Image, Music, Identity, Royal Music Association (RMA), University of Nottingham, U.K. June 6, 2009.

No known ancillary activities