Global Education and Field Study
Panama - MU228: Puente Del Mundo - Musical Crossroads

MU228: Puente del Mundo - Musical Crossroads
Panama City, Portobelo, Chitré - Panama
Last Offered: 2024-2025
This course will offer students the unique opportunity to participate in an immersive musical and culture-based learning experience in Panama. Situated at the crossroads between North and South America, Panama’s vibrant cultural mosaic reflects the multiple migratory epistemologies of peoples across the region. Our course will be a hands-on exploration of the rich sonic and culinary tapestries that make up the nation’s musics and foodways, where the sounds and cuisines of Panama’s Indigenous populations and African immigrants combined with the music of its Andalusian settlers to create a unique set of soundscapes and culinary cultures.
After our introduction to the capital city, the course will take students across the country: from exploring Panamanian Jazz, salsa, reggaeton, and folk music, to traversing Caribbean beaches that carry the sounds of Afro-Antillean music cultures, to the coffee-growing highlands that are home to the Ngobe Buglé Indigenous group, and finally to the Azuero peninsula—the heartland of Panama’s traditional típico music.
Course led by Prof. Liliana Carrizo
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Last updated: 09/15/2026