- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: University of Arizona Press (May 17, 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 081652632X
- ISBN-13: 978-0816526321
Salsa and merengue are now so popular that they are household words for
Americans of all ethnic backgrounds. Recent media attention is helping
other Caribbean music styles like bachata to attain a similar status.
Yet popular Mexican American dances remain unknown and invisible to most
non-Latinos. Quebradita, meaning “little break,” is a modern
Mexican American dance style that became hugely popular in Los Angeles
and across the southwestern United States during the early to mid 1990s.
Over the decade of its popularity, this dance craze offered insights
into the social and cultural experience of Mexican American youth.
Accompanied by banda, an energetic brass band music style, quebradita is
recognizable by its western clothing, hat tricks, and daring flips. The
dance’s combination of Mexican, Anglo, and African American influences
represented a new sensibility that appealed to thousands of young
people. Hutchinson argues that, though short-lived, the dance filled
political and sociocultural functions, emerging as it did in response
to the anti-immigrant and English-only legislation that was then being
enacted in California. Her fieldwork and interviews yield rich personal
testimony as to the inner workings of the quebradita’s aesthetic
development and social significance. The emergence of pasito
duranguense, a related yet distinct style originating in Chicago, marks
the evolution of the Mexican American youth dance scene. Like the
quebradita before it, pasito duranguense has picked up the task of
demonstrating the relevance of regional Mexican music and dance within
the U.S. context.
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