Poetry, Poetics, and Aesthetics of Popular Song

Call for Contrapulso Journal 7/1 (July 2025) closes on 8 April 2025.

For issue 7/1, we are accepting articles, dossier contributions, book reviews, testimonies, and proposals for a new dossier. Submissions are welcome in Spanish, Portuguese, or English, and must align with the thematic focus of the journal on Latin and Latin American popular music studies. Articles should be between 5,000 and 8,000 words, while reviews should be between 1,500 and 2,500 words, in accordance with the journal’s guidelines. Submissions are to be made through the Contrapulso platform. The final submission deadline is April 8, 2025.

The relationship between song lyrics and literature, particularly poetry, stands as an inter-artistic area of study that underscores the need for a theoretical and critical interdisciplinary approach. In recent years, intermedial studies have analyzed objects of study that stand out for their lack of specificity and multifaceted nature, such as the lyrics of popular songs. Here, both musicological and literary studies have highlighted the need to create theoretical and methodological bridges to address an artistic object where text and music come together through singing, and which also serves as a medium for expressing social, historical, and political conflicts, as well as emotional impact through listening.
This dossier proposes to explore the intersection of Latin American popular song from the 20th and 21st centuries with poetry, as well as the concepts of poetics and aesthetics, recognizing the impact of extra-literary influences of the poetic act on popular culture. Through the articles that will make up the dossier, the goal is to offer a deep understanding of the complex interactions between music and poetry in the contemporary context, highlight the characteristics and concepts that define the discursive framework of these creations, explore the common elements between their different traditions of origin, and critically and theoretically address the relationship of these creations with historical memory and the socio-political particularities of their territories. Topics for articles may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Literary approaches to song lyrics
• Music, poetry, and territories
• Musicalization of poetic texts
• Poetry written by musicians
• Memory and social conflicts in popular song
• Poetics and aesthetics of rock

The dossier is coordinated by Gabriel Meza Alegría, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia (Chile ANID Fellow); and Israel Holas, Convenor of the Spanish and Latin American Studies Program at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Contact email: [email protected]