Stories from the HeART of Music in New Mexico

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.

This talk explores the relationship between trauma and identity by examining Arab music performance on the U.S.–Mexico border. Drawing on the musicking of Syrian and Mexican migrant communities, I interrogate theories of cultural and psychological trauma and borderland epistemologies to explore how border tensions influence the often-fraught views of identity.

Formed by Antonio Rosales (bass clarinet), Juan José García (doublebass), and José Luis Hurtado (piano), LOW FREQUENCY TRIO is one of the few ensembles in the world that plays music that was exclusively composed for them.

In New Spain, an institutional structure of merit and promotion hinged on the idea of reason as an intrinsically European attribute. This attribute differentiated ‘Europeans’ from people of mixed race claiming European status based on their skin complexion.

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.

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

Argentine soccer fandom involves a nuanced set of bodily practices and a vast repertoire of chants based on radio hits and broadcast advertisement. This talk demonstrates how chanting brings together sounds and bodies in an affective public practice that incites intense feelings of social cohesion and belonging meaningful beyond what is being said with words.

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.).