Season 2, Episode 13

How did Cold War money shape the musical avant-garde? What were the roles of experts, elites, and the Rockefeller Foundation in shaping the cultural politics of new music––in the era of serial tyranny and Milton Babbitt’s “Who Cares If You Listen?” An interview with musicologists Michael Uy and Eduardo Herrera about their research on funding new music in the Sputnik moment, in both the U.S. and Latin America.

Michael Uy is Allston Burr Resident Dean and Assistant Dean of Harvard College, Dunster House, and Lecturer on Music at Harvard. Eduardo Herrera is Associate Professor at Rutgers University and soon to join Indiana University as Associate Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. 

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If you’re interested in learning more about the work of Professor Herrera and Professor Uy, check out:

• Uy’s book Ask the Experts: How Ford, Rockefeller, and the NEA Changed American Music (Oxford University Press)
• Herrera’s book Elite Art Worlds: Philanthropy, Latin Americanism, and Avant-garde Music (Oxford University Press)
• Uy’s 2021 article “The Art of Philanthropy, The Philanthropy of Art,” for The Center for Effective Philanthropy
• Herrera’s 2018 article “Electroacoustic Music at CLAEM: A Pioneer Studio in Latin America,” in Journal of the Society for American Music
• Uy’s 2017 article “The Recorded Anthology of American Music and the Rockefeller Foundation: Expertise, Deliberation, and Commemoration in the Bicentennial Celebrations,” in American Music
• The book Experimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America, which Herrera co-edited with Alejandro L. Madrid and Ana R. Alonso-Minutti
• Herrera’s 2017 article “The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American Music in the 1960s: The Creation of Indiana University’s LAMC and Di Tella Institute’s CLAEM,” in American Music

Sound Expertise is hosted by Will Robin (@seatedovation), and produced by D. Edward Davis (@warmsilence). Please subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and/or Spotify. Questions or comments? Email williamlrobin@ gmail

A written transcript of this episode is available here; many thanks to Andrew Dell’Antonio for volunteering to prepare transcripts for the show!