In Tropical Riffs Jason Borge traces how jazz helped forge modern identities and national imaginaries in Latin America during the mid-twentieth century. Across Latin America jazz functioned as a conduit through which debates about race, sexuality, nation, technology, and modernity raged in newspapers, magazines, literature, and film. For Latin American audiences, critics, and intellectuals—who often understood jazz to stem from social conditions similar to their own—the profound penetration into the fabric of everyday life of musicians like Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker represented the promises of modernity while simultaneously posing a threat to local and national identities. Brazilian antijazz rhetoric branded jazz as a problematic challenge to samba and emblematic of Americanization. In Argentina jazz catalyzed discussions about musical authenticity, race, and national culture, especially in relation to tango. And in Cuba, the widespread popularity of Chano Pozo and Dámaso Pérez Prado popularity challenged the United States' monopoly on jazz. Outlining these hemispheric flows of ideas, bodies, and music, Borge elucidates how "America's art form" was, and remains, a transnational project and a collective idea.

"A superb history of Latin American jazz's artistic and societal evolution." - New York City Jazz Record

"“Tropical Riffs offers a wonderful introduction to jazz in Latin America in the early- to late mid-twentieth century, tracing and following jazz in Latin America, and Latin jazz in the U.S. as an evolving hybrid art of musical expressions."" - EIAL

"With Tropical Riffs, Borge has provided an extremely helpful survey that unites and expands upon scholarship that was, until now, largely contained in isolated country studies. The author convincingly shows how jazz figured prominently in the driving political and cultural debates of twentieth-century Latin America." - The Latin Americanist

"Perhaps the book’s most important contribution is the detailed look into emerging discourses of national identity and its entanglements with complex, and sometimes contradictory ideologies of racial inclusion. Throughout the entire book, Borge’s narrative brings to the fore the many connections between black musicians across the hemisphere that were made possible through jazz." - Journal of the Society for American Music

"Tropical Riffs offers a thought-provoking insight into the impact of jazz in Latin America, not only on musical styles and discussions but also on political and cultural debates throughout the region during the twentieth century. In examining how jazz music provided Latin American intellectuals with resources with which to negotiate changing attitudes toward race, sexuality, national identity, US influence, and mass con-sumption, Borge provides a well-written and informative study of a much-neglected topic." - Bulletin of Latin American Research

"“Jason Borge has managed to synthesize large and diverse bodies of literature to produce a thoughtful, well-written monograph.... It is a pleasure to enthusiastically recommend it for any collection supporting research in ethnomusicology, jazz studies, or twentieth-century Latin American culture and history.”" - Notes