Aaron Copland in Latin America

Over the course of his distinguished career, U.S. composer Aaron Copland made four cultural diplomacy tours of Latin America, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. They span a critical period in U.S.–Latin American relations. The first took place during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose Good Neighbor Policy sought to smooth over prior tensions with Latin America and unite against European fascism. The same period saw the beginnings of government-sponsored cultural diplomacy in the United States. Copland’s final tour of Latin America took place during the Cold War, when the United States meddled in Latin American governments to contain communism, effectively erasing Good Neighborly solidarity. This book sheds new light on Copland’s biography, the reception of his music worldwide, and U.S. –Latin American relations as enacted via the broader narrative of classical music and its role in cultural diplomacy. Drawing on previously unexamined Spanish-and Portuguese-language primary source materials (including interviews with Latin American composers who knew Copland), the author unearths fresh perspectives on his music and engages more broadly with Latin American classical music, habitually overlooked in the United States. Finally, the author makes a hopeful argument on behalf of cultural diplomacy today.