Music Education in the Caribbean and Latin America

Music Education in the Caribbean and Latin America, a book devised and compiled by Dr. Raymond Torres-Santos, will certainly soon be a very valuable introductory guide for English speaking readers to a fascinating region of the world where I live and make music constantly. Have it, read it! -- Ana Lucía Frega, PhD, National Academy of Education, Argentina; past president, International Society of Music Education (ISME); co-dditor, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education
This book is extraordinarily important and a most needed one. Kudos to Dr. Raymond Torres-Santos, general editor, and to Rowan and Littlefield Education, for magnificently unveiling a significant cultural and sociological subject, one which, until now, has been greatly ignored in the United States. -- Aurelio de la Vega, PhD, composer, distinguished emeritus professor, California State University, Northridge
An important book in the field of music education that broadens the visibility of the Caribbean and Latin America. Adopting different approaches, the chapters provide knowledge about a range of countries, and their ways of conceiving and realizing music education. They can help us to better understand music education around the world and its relationship to diversity. -- Luciana Del Ben, PhD, Music Educator and Scholar, Professor, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - Brazil

In Music Education in the Caribbean and Latin America, editor Raymond Torres-Santos has brought together a distinguished group of scholars to write highly significant and timely essays on the rich diversity of music educational practices in Latin American and the Caribbean. These studies not only examine contemporary systems and philosophies, but trace the manner in which music has been taught orally and in written form through time, from the pre-colonial, indigenous periods to the emergence of national styles and the development of innovative methods such as Venezuela’s “El Sistema.”

Recognizing the cultural, racial mosaic that has characterized Latin America and the Caribbean, Torres-Santos has invited scholars representing the majority of the countries encompassing the cultural area, and who have incorporated the intercultural factors that have affected the teaching of music, from European models to their interface with African and indigenous concepts, resulting in the musical mixtures of mestizaje and their effect in educational approaches. Although much has been written in Latin America and the Caribbean on the topic of music education, this book fills a lacuna in the related literature by bringing these individual national contexts into one volume of collected essays. Furthermore, it makes this dynamic topic accessible to the English speaking sector. The National Association of Music Education must be commended for commissioning Torres-Santos to edit this important contribution to the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and music composition and theory.

-- Steven Loza