ABSTRACT
This chapter explores music and dance forms such as salsa as collective cultural expressions to think through the analysis of diaspora on a global scale. It details music and dance forms which are demotic and social in origin and contemporary practice – that live on the streets, in the nightclubs, and on the dance floor, even though they may be showcased on the stage. Dance as an embodied and improvised collective practice will complement evidence from diasporic music, which, like all music in modernity, is transmitted through technological capture. The framework of modernity also predicates the large-scale displacement of peoples that occurred on a trans-oceanic and trans-continental scale during the formation of global capitalism through expansionism, colonialism, slavery, indentured labour, and, in the postcolonial and neoliberal period, through economic migration. The chapter presents three sets of paired themes: trauma and alegria; embodiment and technology; and authenticity and creolization.
