Musicology Colloquium
The University of New Mexico Department of Music and The Latin American and Iberian Institute
Thursday April 2, 2020
2:00-3:30pm
Latin American and Iberian Institute Conference Room
This talk will consider performances and recordings by singer Linda Ronstadt to propose what I refer to as her Americanish musical songbook. The suffix “ish” here intends to accentuate the “somewhat” or “to some extent” of “American” that Ronstadt—Tucson born and raised—lived and sonically imagined through her extraordinary musical career.
Deborah R. Vargas is Associate Professor and The Henry Rutgers Term Chair in Comparative Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University. Vargas is currently at work on two manuscripts, “Brown Soul: On Blackness and the Cultural Politics of Chicanidad” and “Americanish: Linda Ronstadt’s Brown Sound.” Vargas has contributed a number of oral histories with Chicana singers to the Smithsonian Institute’s Latino Music Oral History Project and is a member of the editorial boards of Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture and Latino Studies.
“Reclaiming ‘the Border’ in Texas-Mexican Conjunto Heritage and Cultural Memory”
The Texas border town of San Benito is the subject of this talk which examines how memory and legacy operate within a community of “self-appointed” cultural brokers and a local municipality inspired by capitalist notions of urban development, economic growth and cultural tourism.
Sones de allá para acá: Son Jarocho from Mexico to USA
Son Jarocho is a genre of traditional Mexican music performed in southern Veracruz that has gained prominence in Chicanx communities in the United States. In this talk we will analyze the origins, rhythms, musical forms, and dances both in Mexico and the United States.
UNM Music Students and Community Members to Perform on KUNM 89.9 on 5/11 @7 pm
The UNM Honky Tonk Ensemble, an ensemble that teaches students how to play in a band and that emphasizes the style of classic country music from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, to come into KUNM’s Studio A to do a studio session of songs they’ve performed over the course of the semester