In this essay, I present a concept of ritualized performance as an ideal way to approach the telematic medium, arguing that many longstanding performance rituals share characteristics that can be exploited in networked performance. After delimiting a notion of ritual, I introduce three aspects of this performative mode that make it a valuable approach to networked environments: 1) democratization of the space (a concept I explore through Victor Turner’s ideas on liminality and communitas), including integrating audience participation as well as moving beyond single-author models, 2) hybridization of media, merging audio and visual technologies, and 3) interculturalism and collaboration across geographically-defined cultures and traditions. Many artists in the 20th century have explored these ideas to create alternative approaches to performance, and in this essay I argue that they can be extended in new ways within the telematic realm. Drawing on theoretical and philosophical writings by various

authors and three case studies by artists whose work is related to each of the aforementioned aspects of the mode I am studying, I situate these ideas in relation to my thesis capstone project, Spatia and seek to contribute to the body of scholarly reflection on performance ritual in the era of telepresence.

This dissertation traces the discursive development of the term música popular, as it was attached to Ecuadorian singer Julio Jaramillo’s life, work and reception history, to show how it functions as a vehicle for racialization in multiple national contexts and along long-standing colonial lines. I reveal polysemic usages of música popular, specific to the Spanish-speaking Americas, that intertwine racializing tropes, nationalistic discourses, and media capital. I mobilize Jaramillo’s positionality as a working-class brown subject who rose to stardom, his hypermasculine figure, gifted voice and musicianship, and transnational music practice to study and theorize lo popular in various registers.

Chapter one follows Jaramillo and his listeners across Ecuador, México, and Colombia to theorize site-specific listening practices and racial formations. Focusing on venues Jaramillo performed at, I argue that a racialized popular subject was constructed as the archetypal Jaramillo listener. This subject signals a rupture to the mestizaje regime and its aural geopolitics. The chapter queries how and why this listener has been constructed as brown, lower-class, and masculine and unsettles these notions through primary sources. Chapter two explores lo popular vis-à-vis the Latin American music industry of Jaramillo’s time. Written in collaboration with record collector Henry Martinez Puerta, this chapter traces Jaramillo’s vast body of work and his widely transnational recording practice. Developing on Jesús Martín-Barbero’s concept of mediation, I show how J.J.’s recorded practice dialogues in complicated ways with hegemonic conceptions of media capital and culture industries. Jaramillo’s mediated music practice was a locus in which alterity was voiced, reified, and transgressed.

Chapter three considers the gender and race dynamics of música popular. Focusing on Jaramillo’s repertoire and his mediated persona, I argue that his music and figure mobilized heteropatriarchal and, often, misogynistic tropes. I contrast these representations with how masculinity is lived and perceived in Latin America to argue that Jaramillo was developed into a site of both masculine fantasy and moral admonishment. Chapter four focuses on Jaramillo’s voice and theorizes singing/listening as deeply embodied practices. Focusing on Jaramillo’s vocality, I unpack the vocal techniques he used to engage with the eclectic repertoire he performed and how he engaged with a wide array of auralities.