Juan Suárez Ontaneda

“El nazareno me dijo”: The Musical Hagiography of Ismael Rivera

Abstract

In Ismael Rivera’s iconic 1975 song “El nazareno” (The one from Nazareth), Jesus Christ not only speaks to the Puerto Rican singer, but he also interrupts “un bacilón,” a party at its peak. Rivera decides to listen, leaves the party, and experiences an epiphany. In the song, Jesus gives Rivera a series of advice that he takes to heart, and after the chorus sings “El nazareno me dijo,” we learn that Rivera has become a convert. Central to his conversion is the Black statue of Christ located in the church of Portobelo, a primarily Afro-descendant port in Panama. Rivera visited Portobelo in 1969 and attributes to “El Cristo Negro” (The Black Christ) the ability to leave behind his heroin addiction.

In this presentation, it will examine the musical and spiritual relationship between El Cristo Negro from Portobelo and Ismael Rivera. Using the concept of “musical hagiography” to understand Rivera’s symbolic canonization as the most well-known Afro-Puerto Rican singer of the twentieth century, it will analyze how Rivera’s symbolic hagiography became entangled with that of El Cristo Negro. He argues that by examining this hagiographic mimesis, we can gain a new understanding of the circulation of racial, spiritual, and musical discourses across the Caribbean. Analyzing Rivera’s interviews, liturgical records, handcrafted souvenirs outside the church in Portobelo, and Daniel Nina’s novel El nazareno (2017), this presentation examines spiritual transformations through Afro- Caribbean popular music.

Bio

Juan Suárez Ontaneda is an Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Xavier University in Cincinnati. He examines the production of racialized discourses through performances in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru during the second half of the twentieth century. In particular, his work focuses on Abdias do Nascimento’s experimental theater, Nicomedes Santa Cruz’s radio broadcastings, Victoria Santa Cruz’s choreographies, Delia Zapata Olivella’s dance manuals, and Manuel Zapata Olivella’s street theater. In doing so, his research underscores how their performances created a vocabulary to denounce everyday experiences of racism and discrimination in Latin America. His research has been published in Modern Languages Notes, Alambique, and in the edited volume Fire Under My Feet: History, Race, and Agency in African Diaspora Dance (2021). He is currently working on a book manuscript that will come out from his dissertation.