Ethnomusicologist Brenda Romero to visit UNM
October 22, 2015 • 2:00-3:30 PM • Keller Hall
Inditas reflect the coming together and coexistence of First Nations and Spanish peoples in the northernmost part of New Spain, and refer to Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, and Comanche, Spanish, and Mexican peoples, but mostly are the products of mestizos (Indo-Hispano, Chicano). The songs are an indirect history of encounter in New Mexico over time. New Mexican ethnomusicologist Dr. Brenda M. Romero will sing and discuss a selection of Inditas and will project song translations for non-Spanish speakers.
Brenda M. Romero is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of Ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She has worked extensively on the pantomimed Matachines music and dance and other New Mexican folk music genres that reflect both Spanish and Indian origins. Since 1998 she has extended her fieldwork and research on Matachines to Mexico and in January 2007 to Colombia, and has published various related articles. She is co-editor with Olga Nájera-Ramírez and Norma Cantú of Dancing across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming). In 2000 she was awarded a Brenda M. Romero Fulbright Research Scholarship to conduct field research on the Matachines music and dance in Mexico. She received the 2005 Society for American Music’s “Sight and Sound” award, a subvention toward the production of her 2008 CD, Canciones de mis patrias: Songs of My Homelands, Early New Mexican Folk Songs. In recognition of her work to promote diversity at CU, she was awarded the President’s 2007 Faculty Award for Diversity.
The Cruelty of Jazz: Toward a Hemispheric Politics of Sound
Rooted in concepts of affect and Empire, this paper argues that jazz operated in various 20th century Latin American settings as a vital touchstone bearing the risks and benefits of urban modernization, hemispheric geopolitics, and transnational cultural production, “cruelly” echoing the United States’ cultural, political, and economic dominance in the hemisphere and beyond.
Music from the Americas presents Versus 8
Percussion music in the Americas is one of the most exotic, visually attractive, and antique forms of expression since pre-hispanic times. Preserving, promoting and creating music for the percussion family of instruments is at the core of Versus 8’s mission through international collaboration with composers, performers, students, and cultural centers that contribute with their resources to the cycle of music, namely: creation, performance, and listening..
A Day in the Life of the Bosavi People
A 90 minute, 4K, 7.1 surround sound eco-rockumentary concert of a day in the life of the Bosavi people and their rainforest home in Papua New Guinea, directed and produced by Steven Feld and based on recordings and images from 1976-2018.