Doctoral candidate publishes book on Latin American music made during COVID-19 – The Daily Texan

Without live audiences to listen, thousands of Latin American musicians used social media to express their feelings about the COVID-19 pandemic. Authors J.A. Strub and Daniel Margolies worked tirelessly to capture them all in their book “¡Maldito Coronavirus!”

From videos with five views to songs with tens of millions, throughout the pandemic Strub and Margolies scoured YouTube to document the Latin American reaction to the pandemic through music. Published Sept. 8,  “¡Maldito Coronavirus!” details the pandemic moment in music, according to Equinox Publishing. Strub said they listened to over 4,000 examples of music put on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, including 3,000 in their book. 

“What really astounded us was the amount of music that we saw, the variety in terms of the number of countries represented, the number of styles represented, even the emotional range,” Strub said. “It ranged from songs that lament the pandemic as being tragic — that speak to the fear and anxiety of the pandemic moment — to songs that sort of reject the severity of the pandemic and encourage people to take it easy and to keep on partying.”

As a musician and historian, Margolies said he held a personal connection with the book when he witnessed the healing influence creating music provided the people and families he interviewed. 

“This musical expression across the whole (Latin American) region had a very positive  individual, emotional, psychological and sonic impact on all sorts of people who otherwise would have been very isolated,” Margolies said.

Strub said one important aspect of the book is the YouTube playlist of 3,291 songs mentioned or included in the text. Strub said listening to music while reading the book is important. 

“I’ve taught classes at UT (as) a graduate instructor at the Butler School of Music,” said Strub, an ethnomusicology graduate student. “One thing that I always try to involve in my classes is active listening, because what use is reading about music if you’re not listening to it?” 

The book’s cover art seeks to embody the core messages of the text through authentic Mexican printmaking, said the cover illustrator Alec Dempster. Dempster’s experience documenting traditional music in Veracruz, Mexico through his artwork inspired the front cover illustration which reflects the diversity of Latin America.

“(Although it) may be without a specific audience in mind, the resulting music could have reached anywhere, but it was coming from Latin America,” Dempster said. “It was the expansiveness of it that (I sought to embody).”

Margolies said he and Strub chose Latin America as their focus due to the withstanding impact COVID-19 had on its culture. 

“Creatives, and also people in the industry, musicians and entrepreneurs in the digital spaces really responded in interesting and important socially (and culturally) significant ways,”  Margolies said.

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