Diana
M Ruggiero, Graduate Teaching Associate
Dissertation: Más Allá del Fútbol: Music, Race, and Cultural Change in Ecuador’s Chota-Mira Valley/
Based on ethnographic research in 2007-2008 involving a Fulbright-funded documentary film project, my dissertation explores issues of race, national identity, and cultural change in Ecuador through a discussion of La Bomba, an oral song and dance genre of the highland Afro-Ecuadorian communities of the Chota-Mira valley. Though once neglected, today La Bomba is perhaps the most prominent signifier of Afro-Choteño identity. Yet while La Bomba is celebrated for its allusions to the region’s African cultural heritage, it is currently undergoing a transformation: younger generations influenced by global popular music are blending genres, rhythms, and instruments from the greater African diaspora. La Bomba’s revival and recent development poses significant questions for our understanding of black cultural identity in the diaspora, the notion of tradition, and the question of cultural change.
ETHNOGRAPHY FILMS
Más allá del fútbol. Dir. Diana Ruggiero. QueSeYo Productions, 2008.
Los II juegos autóctonos y popular de los pueblos indígenas, montubios y afro ecuatorianos. Dir. Diana
Ruggiero. QueSeYo Productions, 2008.
