The acoustic imaginary in recent Spanish cinematic music

• Autores: Marvin D'Lugo
• Localización: The Routledge Handbook to Spanish Film Music / Laura Miranda González (ed. lit.), 2024, ISBN 9781003174974, págs. 305-317
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Beginning in the late 1980s, Spanish filmmakers began incorporating Latin American popular music, actors and settings into their fictional films. In the face of declining audiences at home and shrinking international markets, this seemed a commercially expedient strategy. Some, however, viewed these films as a transparent exploitation of Latin American settings and cheaper production costs. Notable exceptions to this trend also emerged. Films by prominent filmmakers integrated selections from an historically rooted musical repertory of that could potentially serve to highlight the transnational musical heritage shared by Spain and Latin America. The musical structuring of these latter films provides a demonstration of the affective power of a Hispanic acoustic imaginary structured around elements that reveal a deeper historical transnational identarian ethos. This essay looks at the specific narrative and musical strategies through which this acoustic imaginary is developed in individual films—Carlos Saura's Tango! (1990) and Benito Zambrano's Habana Blues (2005)—as well as the conceptual underpinning guiding the use of popular music in the films of two prominent auteurs: Fernando Trueba and Pedro Almodóvar.