Dancing with desire: cultural embodiment in Tijuana's Nor-tec music and dance

Abstract

Nor-tec music was created at the Tijuana–San Diego border as a hybrid that incorporates the sounds of traditional music from the North of Mexico to computer-based styles of dance music. Through a distinct process of do-it-yourself distribution, Nor-tec quickly became a worldwide phenomenon in the underground electronic music scene. Based on extensive ethnographic work in Tijuana, Los Angeles and Chicago, this article compares different Nor-tec scenes in an attempt to identify how different transnational communities appropriate this music in order to imagine and conciliate notions of identity, modernity and tradition according to their specific social context. I focus on the relationship between discourses about Latinidad and Latino bodies, and their influence on the way different Latino communities dance and move to the Nor-tec beats.

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