The Spanish presence in the Americas spans from the early modern period to the age of mass Atlantic migrations from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Likewise, interest in Spanish culture and arts led people from the Americas to travel and establish links and alliances with Spain. In recent decades there has been a major development in musicology’s understanding of sonic exchanges between Spain and the Americas thanks to scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. Research has largely focused, though, on musical exchanges between Spain and Latin American countries due to their shared and strong historical ties, as well as their common language. Cultural and musical transfers between Spain and the United States have been addressed to a lesser extent and need more attention. On the other hand, studies have usually favored case-study topics on the mobility of musicians, music sources, and musical genres, sometimes with less emphasis on broader concepts and subjects.

This bicontinental symposium in Barcelona and New York seeks to study musical transfers between Spain, North America, and Latin America focusing on the concept of the exchange of musical knowledge, understood in the broadest way. The notion of musical knowledge exchange has been at the very center since the first contacts between these three geographical areas. The first music of European origin to be taught by 16th-century Spanish missionaries to Native Americans was likely Spanish, and Spanish clerics were among the first to provide descriptions of Native American music. The movement or circulation of human beings has been recognized as a required element of the transfer of valuable knowledge. Waves of migration between Spain and the Americas started with the first Spanish settlers in the Americas but continued after colonial times. Between ca. 1880 and the first decades of the 20th century (the so-called age of mass Atlantic migrations), around four million Spaniards arrived in the Americas, a big proportion to the Spanish-speaking Latin America countries, but a substantial number also made their way further north via Mexico or Cuba. Another wave of migration towards the Americas ensued with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

Contacts between both countries resulted in exchanges of musical knowledge through a wide range of people: musicians, clerics, ethnographers, intellectuals and scholars, travelers, writers, teachers and students, and other ordinary people who brought with them musical knowledge through a variety of cultural artifacts such as music scores, recordings, musical instruments, scholarly literature, and texts of any kind.

The core question of this bicontinental symposium is how the geographical mobility of people, ideas, practices, and cultural artifacts between Spain, North America and Latin America has had an impact on the epistemic systems of musical knowledge within these territories. We invite scholars from all disciplines, whose work engages with music in both specific and broad ways, to send their contributions exploring topics such as:
- Types of musical knowledge exchanges (e.g., academic, popular, pedagogical, religious, others) between Spain and the Americas (North America and/or Latin America)
- Changes through time and territories in the exchange of musical knowledge between these three geographical areas
- Musical and musicological knowledge created in the context of forced displacement and exile between Spain, North America, and Latin America
- The role of exiled intellectuals and scholars in the exchange of musical knowledge
- The role of women and underrepresented groups in the creation, dissemination, and exchange of musical knowledge
- The influence of migration and exile experience on academic, popular, pedagogical, and other types of musical knowledge and thought
- The role of intellectual networks for the creation, dissemination, and exchange of musicological knowledge between these geographical areas

We welcome proposals for individual papers and whole panels in English or Spanish. Individual paper presentations must be kept to 20 minutes (followed by 15-minute discussions).

Abstracts should be sent through this form https://forms.gle/3NjBa4tsj3x2uw6a8 by 1 March 2024 in English or Spanish. Participants must indicate whether they want to participate in the Barcelona symposium in 2024 or in the New York symposium in 2025. For individual papers: abstracts of c. 300 words; for panels: abstracts of ca. 200 words of the proposal as a whole and ca. 100 words on the contribution of each participant. Applicants will be notified by 1 June 2024.

Please direct any questions to apuentes@imf.csic.es and to TFruhauf@gc.cuny.edu.