The great woman singer : gender and voice in Puerto Rican music

Abstract

Licia Fiol-Matta traces the careers of four iconic Puerto Rican singers-Myrta Silva, Ruth Fernandez, Ernestina Reyes, and Lucecita Benitez-to explore how their voices and performance style transform the possibilities for comprehending the figure of the woman singer. Fiol-Matta shows how these musicians, despite seemingly intractable demands to represent gender norms, exercised their artistic and political agency by challenging expectations of how they should look, sound, and act.