“What does it mean to feel like you don’t quite belong in the world?”
That’s a question Brown University professor Iván Ramos says influenced the production of his first book, “Unbelonging: Inauthentic Sounds in Mexican and Latinx Aesthetics.”
Growing up in Mexico — where rock music was banned from the 1960s to the 1990s — Ramos developed an affinity for rock and its subgenres. However, he noted that Latinx individuals have a complex connection to these genres based on outward perceptions of both the music and what it means to listen to it.
“I was wondering why there was a thing around punk, rock and music that, as I was growing up, I was always told was white music or American music,” Ramos said. “In Mexico, it was a little bit weird that I listened to it; in the U.S. if I went to shows, it was a little bit weird. I mean there were a bunch of Latino kids [listening to rock], but there was the sense of ‘How do you relate to this music?’”
Ramos presented his book to Bradley students in assistant English professor Alexander Lalama’s Latinx Literatures course and to a larger group in Westlake Hall.
An assistant professor in the Department of Theater Arts and Performance Studies at Brown, Ramos overviewed the four chapters of his book, which address the various ways Latinx individuals view rock and its subgenres as a form of resistance against contemporary and historical violence and oppression.
Ramos emphasized that the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1992 caused negative economic changes in Mexico, but also sparked the ability for rock music to be played on the radio and during concerts again. This drew more listenership to the genre from citizens across backgrounds who couldn’t outwardly express their discontent.
“NAFTA is a trade agreement that ended up taking away our labor protections. It moved a lot of jobs from [Mexico] to across the border where labor was cheap,” Ramos said. “There’s the sense that being a good Mexican means you care about NAFTA, you care about trades … So there’s this sense that it’s no longer the middle class that listens to rock, but also people who have grown up in some of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.”
The importance of relating to rock music was highlighted again when Ramos discussed the popularity of English singer-songwriter Morrissey and his band The Smiths among Latinos on the West Coast. Having produced music in a time where England suffered from an economic depression, the emotions conveyed by the band’s projects related to experiences of those Latinx populations.
“Most explanations as to why Chicanos and Latinos in Southern California listen to Morrissey are sociological,” Ramos said. “The deal with Morrissey is that he writes almost ridiculously sad lyrics. It’s music about being a sad teenager in your bedroom, but … when you listen to The Smiths, it’s the sound of economic dissatisfaction.”
The undertaking of completing his first book was an effort that Ramos says took years. The development of “Unbelonging” began while he was writing a paper in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley.
“So I’m looking at this history, and I realize rock music and, what I call dissonant sounds that aren’t immediately identifiable with Mexican culture, became sounds of opposition,” Ramos said. “I started realizing there’s this pattern that seems to be repeated around other sound artists that worked in Mexico and that it was close to what I wanted the first chapter to be.”
The Intellectual and Cultural Activities Committee, which funds lectures, exhibitions and performances that present cultural experiences to students and faculty, sponsored Ramos’ presentation after Lalama applied for funding following his discovery of “Unbelonging.”
“I saw the cover and I’m like ‘I have to read this,’ because it’s right up my alley from a literary perspective, and so I picked it up,” Lalama said. “Ramos’ [writing] has really informed my understanding of the vocabulary I have for this type of work.”
The ultimate goal behind Ramos’ appearance was to expose students to experiences that they don’t typically see in representations of mainstream Latinx identity.
“I think that students will learn about histories they weren’t aware of, for example, the history of rock and its political ties in Mexico, but also just the existence of this multifaceted, diverse field of Latinx studies,” Lalama said.
