부산대학교 도서관

To this day, Silvestre Revueltas (1899–1940) has been systematically portrayed as a nationalist composer both in his native Mexico and abroad. His private and public writings belie this myth, however, as he sought to sound the voice of the downtrodden, not only those wandering the Mexican streets but also gypsy miners in Spain, black slaves in the US South, and those living in Cuba in colonial times. The various soundings of such social actors account for the diversity of aesthetics in his works, which Roberto Kolb-Neuhaus explores in this volume through a correlation of the musical texts with the composer’s writings as well as his wide-ranging political activism. With few exceptions, though, most of his works seek to transcend standards of political art expression, such as program music or scores variously linked to word or image. Revueltas’ early instrumental works appear to abstract a musical ontology from the time and space of his diverse and multiple social actors through a daringly free use of montage and collage. Avant-garde rebellion and satire are also present in his best-known late works. Revueltas’ art is unique and provocatively decolonial, one that pokes fun at the cosmopolitanistic fantasies of his Eurocentric peers at home as well as the exoticizing expectations he faced abroad. Unveiling the sense behind Revueltas’ irony and the form that political passion takes on in his music is the intention guiding Kolb-Neuhaus’s hermeneutic approach, which intertwines Revueltian art with his writings and political actions.