Writing Sample: Llegó Los Van Van: A Transnational Introduction.
In my master’s thesis, I analyze some of the techniques used on Los Van Van’s 1999 album Llegó… Van Van to examine the Cuban popular music band’s place in the transnational flows of popular music (whether you want to call it salsa, songo, or timba).
I argue that Llegó illustrates many of the group’s important sub- and intercultural connections. Looking at the release of Llegó as a transnational product shows that the CD could be understood as (1) an introduction to the U.S. market, (2) a response to salsa, and (3) a contrast to images of Cuba isolated and trapped in time.
Download a pdf version of the paper.In addition, for those of you less inclined to read the whole thing see below to skip to some shorter excerpts.
Table of Contents
Excerpt 1 from “Llegó Los Van Van (LVV): A Transnational Introduction.”
Carlos Palomares
Excerpt 2 from “Llegó Los Van Van (LVV): A Transnational Introduction.”
Carlos Palomares
(FYI: Little did I know when we named our band Songo. That I would later end up doing a research paper on the band that invented Songo.)
Here is a map that helped me write this paper. Before I put this together I had a lot of information in my head, but now idea what to write. Once I mapped this out it felt like the paper wrote itself. My plug for mind mapping:
