Dr. Kristina Jacobsen, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology in the UNM Department of Music, is awarded the 2018 Woody Guthrie Book Award for the most outstanding book in popular music by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-U.S.).
“Jacobsen’s study of the ways in which Diné, or Navajo, country music musicians and fans articulate their sense of belonging and identity through country music, a genre deemed incongruous with and even antagonistic to Navajo sensibilities, is a remarkable example of popular music scholarship. Jacobsen’s work is particularly timely as the racialization of indigeneity continues to erase indigenous presence from popular music and cultural production writ large. Jacobsen’s reflexive positioning as a non-Diné (white) scholar as well as a performing country musician in bands with Navajo musicians, Jacobsen provides a strong model for ethical and sensitive ethnographic work.”
2019 Prize Committee (Kevin Fellezs, Alexa Woloshyn, and Kate Galloway), Woody Guthrie Book Award.
The Enchantment Brass releases first album!
The Enchantment Brass, the brass ensemble-in-residence at the University of New Mexico, has released their debut recording, A Brass Menagerie: The Music of John Cheetham, on all digital formats.
Students from Dr. Kristina Jacobsen’s class, “Diné (Navajo) Expressive Culture,” help build a shadehouse (cha’a’oh) as part of a service-learning project and cultural immersion camping trip to the Navajo Nation.
The class focuses on music, language, poetry, film and expressive arts in the context of sovereignty and contemporary politics on the Navajo Nation.
Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez: Imagining Something Better: Punk, Tejano, La Bamba, and Other Rolas from My Border Hi-Fi
Unrepentant border crosser, writer, ex-dj, and academic. Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez is an Associate Professor of US Southwestern Literatures, and Creative Writing in the Department of Spanish, and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico.