Wild Tongue: A Borderlands Mixtape

"In Wild Tongue, Jonathan Leal invites readers to the Rio Grande Valley to witness the sonic cultures and expressive forms of Latinx struggle and world-making. Blending auto-ethnography, music criticism, and borderlands theory, Leal depicts the borderlands as a generative place made by its inhabitants where creativity and cultural performance engage powerfully with politico-aesthetic issues, create communal identity, and challenge xenophobic and nationalist dominance. Wild Tongue centers the experiences and aesthetics of contemporary borderlands artists animating their geography anew: DJs and beat makers, electronic experimentalists and conjunto visionaries, singer-songwriters and hip-hop emcees, vinyl collectors and scene archivists, bedroom pop crooners and progressive metal acts, transnational producers and curatorial collectives. Echoes of colonial history collide with current developments, and contemporary issues find expression through music: local histories and shock discourses, techno-capitalism and (un)bordered futures, space frontierism and algorithmic cultures, preservation efforts, and more"-- Provided by publisher.