Our warm congratulations to Frances R. Aparicio whose new book, Replaying Marc Anthony: Sonic, Political, and Cultural Resonances (Ohio State University Press, 2025) is now available. Petra Rivera-Rideau (author of Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico) writes, “Aparicio makes a case for pop music studies to be taken seriously as a form of politics, linking Anthony’s songs to broader issues within Latinx and Puerto Rican studies—homeland and diaspora, gender and racial politics, cultural links between Latinxs and other groups, and more.”
Description: Replaying Marc Anthony is the first book-length study of Marc Anthony’s cultural, aesthetic, and political contributions to Latinx popular music and Latinx communities. Despite the trivializing label of “Latino pop,” Anthony’s repertoire has had a tremendous impact on his audience, particularly within the US Latinx community. Considering his music outside of limiting frameworks imposed by the music industry, Frances R. Aparicio situates Anthony’s songs within specific musical genealogies and histories, demonstrating that his songs not only foster healing from colonial violence but also produce, textually and sonically, multiple identities that resonate with his listeners. Relistening to five of Anthony’s most canonical songs—“Preciosa,” “Hasta Que Te Conocí,” “I Need to Know,” “Aguanile,” and “Vivir Mi Vida”—Aparicio traces the circulation of these sonic texts, examining their social, cultural, gender, and political meanings. Among the myriad topics Marc Anthony’s music critically reflects on are Puerto Rican and Diasporican itinerant subjectivities, Blackness, environmental crises, MexiRican sonic exchanges, Latinidad, masculinities, struggles with belonging as an “American,” and Global South solidarities.
Frances R. Aparicio is Professor Emerita in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University. She is the author of Negotiating Latinidad: Intralatina/o Lives in Chicago and Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures, among other books, and coeditor of various critical anthologies.
Our warm congratulations to Frances R. Aparicio whose new book, Replaying Marc Anthony: Sonic, Political, and Cultural Resonances (Ohio State University Press, 2025) is now available. Petra Rivera-Rideau (author of Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico) writes, “Aparicio makes a case for pop music studies to be taken seriously as a form
