Geopolitical assemblages in a pop music concert in Cuba

Abstract

Facing a historical context of political and economic tension between Cuba and the United States, we investigate a pop music concert held in March 2016 in Anti-Imperialist Tribune, Havana, played by electronic music group Major Lazer, as a performance around the cultural memory in America, as postulated by Diana Taylor (2013). The staging of performance arrangements of musicians and the audience refers to rituals that reveal contradictions around the presence of American products traces in Cuban territory. We debate the erasures of restrictive communication policies by the Cuban government and the display of icons linked to United States by the Cuban youth as an inner question about a national project built in the Caribbean island.