Stories from the HeART of Music in New Mexico

The latest from the Department of Music
Music Newsletter Summer 2024Music Newsletter Winter 2024
Embodying Fandom: Chanting in Twentieth-Century Argentine Soccer

Embodying Fandom: Chanting in Twentieth-Century Argentine Soccer

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.

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Heterophony: Texture, Technique, and Social Commentary

Heterophony: Texture, Technique, and Social Commentary

This lecture is in two parts: the first draws from my research on the 1960s jazz avant-garde and musicians’ interests in heterophonic musical textures. For the second part, I perform original music that utilizes heterophony and “noise” in a solo electronic and improvised format.

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The Gay West: From Drug Store Cowboys to Rodeo Queens

The Gay West: From Drug Store Cowboys to Rodeo Queens

The masculine ideal represented by the American cowboy is variously interpreted by spectators, dancers, musicians, and contestants at gay rodeos and country western dances across the U.S. Examining embodied gender practices within these communities, this talk articulates the sonic, social, and geographical spaces of the gay American West.

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The Cruelty of Jazz: Toward a Hemispheric Politics of Sound

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. 

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Music from the Americas presents Versus 8

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..

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A Day in the Life of the Bosavi People

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.

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