ENCONTRÉ UNA SANDIA EN EL DESIERTO (Spanish Edition)

The body listens along with the ears. The mind listens to the environment, not just the most highly symbolic content. Listening also pertains to my own subject position in relation to the words and moments voiced linguistically throughout this chapter, specifically, and the book more generally—my stance.

This concern, however, offers the possibility for critical reflection on how our present-tense social entanglement has the capacity to change the balance 68 CHAPTER 2 of politics, to short-circuit the authorial flows of power, in the hopes that we can discover how the self is dialogized. One can write so-called ethnography without experiencing these communicative frames in the guise of objectivity, but such an approach forcefully diverges from this listening I have described and in doing so reinscribes the distance between ethnographer and subject.

I keep this polemic in mind to demonstrate next how huapango arribeno fits into the landscape of Mexican vernacular musics. I draw on their critique of the limitations of genre— particularly the classificatory perspective—and apply these insights to the category of Mexican vernacular stringed music referred to as son. To return to a point made in previous chapters, the diverse variants identified as types of Mexican music have been historically constituted by shifting sociocultural processes and interrelationships of encounter.

Often viewed through a pri- mordialist lens, those deemed traditional are homologized with culture in ways that essentialize them as authentic practices of assumed heritage, fixed in time and space Madrid Taken to its logical end, this position considers all other sounds to be outside the borders of tradition. The practicing of son jarocho outside of Veracruz, Mexico, has raised questions of authority, repertoire, and the uses of tradition in new social spaces. Gonzalez ; Loa ; Loza ; Sanchez- Tello The questions raised through these intertextual tensions center around what tradition is and who gets to define it.

Ultimately, the myth of authenticity is a simulacrum, as. Reality, however, is not an es- sentialist bedrock of the real that exists behind myth but, rather, a recognition of the processes of resignification crucial to the construction of all expressive practices over time. Mendoza, to more contemporary accounts offered by Thomas Stanford andjas Reuter , huapango arribeno is not mentioned. At this historical juncture, educators, intellectuals, and state officials began the work of em- plotting grassroots expressions into a newly constructed master narrative of Mexican ethnoracial identity that deemphasized localized and pluriethnic cultural practices and subjectivities.

While some sought to craft a nationalist aesthetic in the image of high Enlightenment tradition, others were more attuned to vernacular criollista creole , indige- nist, and populist forms that would enable essentialist claims to mexicanidad Madrid Son variants, music scholars have come to suggest, are typified by the following: To treat the origins of hua- pango arribeno is to understand it as part of a similarly conceived process of syncretic exchange and building through which a diverse set of peoples carved out ways of life and means of expression under extreme circumstances.

The vihuela had dominated over the jarana until recently, but the latter is now becoming popular again. Similarly, the guitarra quinta huapanguera, while also mentioned as early as the s, did not become widely used until the late s and s. The more notable troubadours born in the s and s, who then emerge as practitioners in the s and s, are Candido Martinez, Angel Gonzalez, Asencion Meza, and Guillermo Velazquez.

The subsequent cohort largely populates the pages of this book; many of them are referred to using pseudonyms. As of late, the voice of ethnohisto- rian Rafael Parra Munoz seems to ring loudest in this intertextual exchange. This leads him to dismiss its most contemporary practitioners and their craft as inauthentic. This is never more audible than in moments like those described by Abel, a troubadour from Guanajuato, as he speaks of this shared entanglement within the topada performance: Comoquiera uno se tiene que estar cuidando para que la gente este captando el tema de que se trate.

Entre dos musicas se encadena y florece La gente esta entusiasmada para escuchar a uno y uno recibe el carino que ellos le estan mandando. No matter what, one has to be cautious so that the audience is cognizant of the poetic theme that is being attended to. Between the two ensembles there is a linking, and [performance] blooms The people are excited to hear you, and you receive the affection they give you.

To do so without critical reflection, however, is to passively accept the nationalist sentiments indexically connected to this genre, as described above. However, when taken intertextually, the simultaneous ordering and disordering aspects of genre become evident. The challenge is to follow the moves and flows of performance across physical and metaphysical borders— the inherent tension in its simultaneous cohesion and nonfixity—for the relationships within and across expressive forms necessarily produce order and disorder.

Intertextuality, or the construction of relationships among texts in this case, musical variants that produce generic links, also results in gaps between them. In parallel fashion, other institutionalized cultural forms i. Still, I do not mistake description for critical thinking. I trace a host of dynamic intertextual becomings such that any hoped-for or relied- on categories fall apart instantly.

On this very point, Guillermo Velazquez succinctly summarizes the changes in huapango arribeno over time: In momentary pauses, in between violins and patterned steps, a raspy, labored voice belts out verses, casting them out into the wind. The voice belongs to the troubadour Amador.

I walk up in the company of Gabino, a musician who is to perform later that evening. In the meantime, he grabs something to eat from a vendor and takes in the sights and sounds. Amador spots Gabino through the crowd and begins to improvise a decimal—a base quatrain glossed by a corresponding set of four decimas. Distracted while greeting others, I miss the beginning but am quickly pulled in by the rest. Who knows which feet are stomping, and winch are still?

Intimacy, Georges Bataille describes, is achieved by surpassing the self, wffiere one's own body engages in ecstatic communication with another or many others, allowing for a type of communion, often realized along un- knowm paths that release the self from the enclosures of scarcity and utility. This aspect is guided by what troubadours refer to as fundamento — the foundational ground on which poetic claims are raised, loosely akin to worldly experientia, though better thought of as reflexive cultivations of a specific social-locational affinity based in situated knowledges.

Troubadours accumulate a vast corpus of material appropriate for an array of occasions—ranging from weddings, to baptisms, to birthdays, the New Year, and so on—during which they debate and engage one another with any number of thematic formulations. Angel Gonzalez, a troubadour native of Palomas in the municipality of Xichu, Guanajuato, declares: The decima espinela abbaaccddc has been popular throughout Latin America since the dawn of the colonial period. Presently, the decima espinela is the typical poetic form used in huapango arribeno and thus imposes certain structural constraints on the musics textual production.

There exists a balance between new and old that shapes huapango arribeno poetics, a constant negotiation between their reliance on a fixed form and their improvisatory newness. Of necessity, they are always new and always old. Philipa Rothfield describes this productive tension with the aid of Alfred North Whitehead: The rhythmic shift between old and new is not merely the relentless pursuit of the new.

The process of becoming past also enters that which becomes, connecting with the process of becoming itself. In that sense, a certain reverence is maintained for the old. The meanings embedded in social life are intertextu- 82 CHAPTER 2 ally constructed and subsequently recontextualized amid the in-the-moment signification and alignment of huapango arribeno poetics.

This sense of the democratic construction of performative discourse will be explored further in chapter 5 with specific focus on the saludado, or improvised greeting. Take Amador s decimal from earlier. His compositional effort is made possible through referencing Gabinos lifeworld as an artist, a huapango arribeno musician, a companero del destino.

The unfolding verses index an intimate associational linking, in this case, how Amador and Gabino have come to and continue to know each other as artists. All of these elements speak to Amador s relationship to the unfolding material, or his stance, which further reinforces how huapango arribeno hinges on the ubiquitous presence of a generic intertextuality as a means to align the experiential horizons of performers and audiences and thus achieve remarkable results that connect, satisfy, and move —physically in the form of dance and emotively in the form of evalual social engagement —and thus become socially legible.

Capacitación en propiedad intelectual

This configuration is composed and memorized beforehand, forming part of the troubadour's repertoire. When performing, the troubadour begins the poesia by singing the planta most often it is sung twice at the beginning ; the shape of its melody is chosen from a set of preestablished and commonly shared tonadas melodies , though troubadours embellish it to suit their aesthetic preference or to meet the needs of their vocal range. Once the troubadour begins singing the planta and strumming along on the guitarra quinta huapanguera, the remaining musicians in the ensemble immediately follow.

During this silence, the troubadour recites a decima, of which the tenth line is the first of the original planta. This structuring is called pic forzado literally, forced foot, referring to the adherence to a poetic base throughout Latin America, and it describes the practice of anchoring the final line of each decima abbaaccddc with the first of the base quatrain Abba or Abab.

Accordingly, in the poesia's structure only the first nine lines of the decima are recited, while the tenth is sung, for it is the first line of the planta which is sung again, at which point the music and singing resume. This sequence is repeated no fewer than four times and typically no more than seven. Below is a sample poesia authored by the troubadour Isaias; A: Nuestro paso es por el mundo B: This is why we must cherish our received existence for when our farewell approaches and one is in the coffin rejoice now in good health: The decimas used in huapango arribeno poesias can be anywhere from eight to sixteen syllables.

While the recitation of poesias and the singing of the corresponding plantas are forceful and invoke a sense of high drama, this vocality cannot be confused with the type of storytelling that is unfolding; in other w T ords, while performers convey the phonaesthetic sentiment of epic poetry the poetics are not epic in scope.

See appendix A, example 1. After the planta of the poesia section is sung for the final time, the violins, as expected, continue to play the tonada of the planta, while the troubadour begins to mentally grasp at the skeletal form of the decimas they are about to release as part of the second portion of the pieza arribena. This attenuated rehearsal is muted, subdued, phantomlike, with the performers eyes usually closed, lips softly mouthing words, while the music in waiting is subtly coaxed by the violinists as they lightly bow their instruments McDowell This planta anchors the decimal; however, unlike in die poesia, the planta is sung only once at the beginning of this section and never returned to.

These melodies exhibit a free rhythmic style and thus are performed a capriccio, a free approach to the tempo in cadenza-like fashion as the troubadour strums along with the guitarra quinta huapanguera. This pacing organizes the flow of improvisation prosodically. Here is a decimal example by the troubadour Graciano: This layering—of musical and phonological stanzaic parallelisms—is how im- provisational performance is managed and organized by the troubadour, but violinists in executing their own harmonic labyrinths also coordinate similar types of maneuvering.

Gabino now sits high up on the tablado, or the raised bench huapango arribeno ensembles straddle during topada performances. One of the women next to me is nodding off; she leans on the other, who is wide awake. Gabino, who is accompanying Flavio, is performing at the moment.

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I perk my ears up. Isaias and the musicians atop the tablado across the way take the bait and during the third portion of their own subsequent intervention respond with a jarabe that includes a remate modulation in the key of A as well. On the next go-around, Gabino and Flavio offer up a jarabe of their own also containing a similar modulation. Bodies and minds begin latching on to this elaborate swerving: Indeed, the woman who is fully awake nudges the snoozing one, giving her a sharp elbow to the ribs, warning her not to go to sleep: This exchange and others like it are wrapped up in the tripartite pieza ar- ribeha, the musico-poetic arrangement with which huapangueros engage and improvise.

To a degree, it serves as the primary vehicle that guides the emergence of a collectively informed discourse that is necessarily polyphonic, both in terms of music structure and in the dialogic sense. These constitute the valona. One in particular is referred to as the valoneado, and it serves as the anchor of this melodic bundling. It is always played immediately after the decimal planta and repeated as many times as needed; the violinists loop this melody while troubadours ready themselves to sing their first improvised decima, at which time the violinists stop playing.

Thereafter, the primera vara decides what remate is to be played after each improvised decima, and the segunda vara follows. These subsequent remates are typically played twice, after which both violins return to the valoneado, which again is looped until the troubadour decides to sing the ensuing glossed decima. With respect to the shapes of the violin melodies, they are diatonic to the key of the piece and make liberal use of arpeggios in line with the overall harmonic movement within. Where nondiatonic notes are introduced, they tend to be a flattened seventh over the tonic chord before a movement to the subdominant chord.

Downbeats tend to contain strong chord tones—root third or fifth—with the weaker upbeats filling out the shape of the melodic line. Some exhibit a development of motifs that crescendo toward the end of the remate. Still others are a bit more intriguing from a metric standpoint. This final section features the violinists with minimal lyrical participation on the part of the troubadour. Here, the primera vara chooses what jarabe or son is to be played, and the segunda vara follows. This son base melody is looped as many times as the primera vara sees fit and is then followed by the paseado portion, which establishes the vocal melody for the corresponding son verse.

A i Florecita de rosal 13 2 del jardin de Guanajuato A i florecita de rosal 13 2 del jardin de Guanajuato; A 3 Vamos hablando formal 13 4 ay mamacita del alma, para platicar al rato A 5 nos vemos en el corral B 6 ay mamacita del alma, afuerita del curato Usually the vihuelero sings these sextilla verses, though the troubadour may do so at times. This sequence—entrada, paseado, verse—is repeated two to three times; after the final verse is sung, however, the violins proceed to play a closing remate to end with, which is a derivation of the entrada.

See appendix A, example 4. I know just what he means. In the moment, you hear a wave of whistles and cheers erupting, feet pounding even harder. These moments loop and seem to go on forever as the music widens and people dig their heels in hard while they stomp out the zapateado. This is how the jarabe plays out. For instance, violinists may play the jarabe planta and adjoin a single remate and repeat this particular coupling one to three times.

Or they may adjoin two to three remates de jarabe to the planta thereby lengthening this grouping and not repeat the bundle at all. At other times a planta and remate are repeated and then topped off with a final closing remate. See appendix A, example 5. The sequencing possibilities seem endless here. After having played a particular bundle, however, the violins always close with the standard vaiven, which signals to the troubadour to sing a verse in the form of either a quatrain or a sextilla, again, a capriccio.

The violins rest during this brief moment. In the heat of a topada, if the musicians are locked in and thus able to stretch the music, the people present are equally locked in, equally in it. Their patterned steps provide a type of percussive dimension, a response, and the energy of their pounding feet is excessive and reciprocal. In addition, the ability to shift the tonal center of a jarabe serves a very basic function within the topada setting—to signal a change in musical key to the other ensemble, or petition for one, and thus move the tonal structuring of the topada.

See appendix A, examples 6, 7, and 8. These shifts may be subtle or abrupt. Se con- sulta uno con el trovador, pero uno lleva esa responsabilidad. Do we change keys? You consult with the troubadour, but one ultimately has the responsibility. Valentin explained this to me and has guided me in this way during performances. However, as is sometimes the case, this tonal structure may be entirely ignored, and ensembles may opt to engage each other in musical keys that are less commonplace—the key of E or F, for instance.

Distinct from what Americo Paredes refers to as the contrapunto —the informal and secular form of decima flyting that took place along the Texas-Mexico border in the mid-nineteenth century—the topada is a highly formalized marathon event lasting anywhere from seven to twelve hours.

In this way, it also differs from other Latin American decima traditions, including the paya in Chile and punto in Cuba, for instance, most of which are highly impromptu. Troubadour Guillermo Velazquez explains: Tener fisicamente en frente a otro musico o a otro poeta significa ya un desafio Seria el espacio privilegiado de la formacion de un trovador y un musico, por la sabiduria misma de la tradicion. Ese es el espacio donde se demuestra la vocacion, donde se demuestra si verdaderamente uno asume el destino de ser lo que quiere ser y donde se gana o se pierde en cuanto reconocimiento de la gente.

Y no solo en una topada, tiene que ser a lo largo de muchas topadas y de muchos anos No puedes asumirte como poeta o como musico si no has estado en ese crisol. It is the privileged space in the formation of a troubadour or musician because of the knowledge of the tradition that it requires.

This crucible is the generating force that transforms novice musicians into competent practitioners. Cuando apenas empezaba llegue a enfrentarme con los grandes. Una vez don Agapito Briones, creamelo que me dio mi buena desplumada, todavia me acuerdo de una de sus plantas. One time [against] Agapito Briones, believe me that he gave me a good trouncing, I still remember one of his plantas [base quatrains]: By the early s, both he and Mendez had become members of Los Leones de la Sierra de Xichu—Xavi on the vihuela for more on this group see the following chapter.

He recalls another scolding he received as he was starting out, this one from his father: Me baje del tablado a bailar un ratito. Fijese lo que le esta diciendo el senor! I stepped down from the tablado to dance for a little while. Listen to what that man is saying to you! There are spatial and material aspects to how the performance plays out. This back-and-forth usually begins in the early evening and lasts until midmorning. Still, there is no official decision declaring who has been vanquished, nor is there a moment when a victor is announced.

Nevertheless, how do I begin to describe the tense oppositions within the topada performance without giving a false impression of antagonism or a pecking order? How do I portray some sense of collaborative making rather than fighting, winning, and defeating? Second, in- tentioned collaboration exists long before the night of the performance. The two groups of four set out intentionally to build something together through musical and textual poesis, forcing, inviting, testing, and supporting each other upward in order to build an arch—an aural space made with purpose.

The performance takes shape—it is brought forth, resting on this resolution, this joining, this arch, this intimacy. It was subtle at first: It is reaching a climax and then dissipating. When the performance is over, the scaffolding of the tablados disappears, but the arch of the shared aural experience remains and binds all sorts of things—people, poetics, places. Ensembles negotiate within through this performative protocol and call this to the other ensemble's attention, especially when one or the other strays or is inattentive.

La mano can be ceded. Accordingly, it is within the parameters of these performative rules of engagement that musicians demonstrate their competence—they must be able to respond with sones and jarabes, perform in various musical keys, and attend to poetic themes and queries. Valentin outlines the means by which such engagement is sustained by violinists, in particular: Uno tiene que tener muchas plantas de jarabe y sones, que no toque el mismo, que sean diferentes y con diferentes remates.

One must have many jarabe and son base melodies. You can't repeat the same ones, they must be different, and with different remates. Estar preparado pa' si estando en la topada con el contrincante poder darle respuestas a sus peticiones. To be prepared to respond to the opposing musicians' requests within the topada. Si el contrincante te pide tonos, pues saber que tono te esta pidiendo y dar la respuesta.

To know T the musical keys. Uno se engancha en temas de son, de jarabe. When you are in a topada, one engages in themes as well; the violinist does so just as the poet [does]. One digs into son and jarabe themes. Dentro del complemento de los cuatro musicos, el varero es el que di- rige musicalmente la orquesta Tambien tiene sus cualidades el varero porque el varero se apoya del poeta y el poeta se apoya del varero tambien. Segun como sea la capacidad de quien sea, el varero pues, tiene que estar seguro de lo que hace tanto el poeta como el varero. Y si el varero decae pues tambien el poeta se acaba.

El poeta va ordenando su letra y el varero lo va acompanando. Y tambien otra cosa, el varero tambien va ordenando su soneria, su musica El poeta esta cantando lo de el, pero no sabe con que va salir el varero. Within the four-musician grouping, the violinist is the one who directs the ensemble musically The violinist also has his virtues because the violinist relies on the poet, and the poet also relies on the violinist.

And if the violinist falters, well, the poet is also finished. That is, to give it your all The poet is arranging his poetry, and the violinist is accompanying him. And also, another thing, the violinist is also arranging his sones, his music Like violinists, troubadours must also have a varied repertoire and within it a few poetic resources that aspire upward like the mutual building of the arch. In the former, the lines that form the decima are chained together in such a way that each line begins with the word or words that ended the preceding one.

Poesias de esdrujula also display a complex parallelism in their prosodic structuring. Esdrujula is a word whose pronunciation stresses the third-to- last syllable, for instance, the words molecula molecule and decima. Every line of each decima that makes up a poesia de esdrujula incorporates one or two such words, resulting in a distinct cadence that sits at near triple meter. The topada itself is a negotiated sequencing of distinct moments guided by those with la mano.

Troubadours typically begin the engagement with poesias and decimales that introduce themselves and their accompanying musicians and greet those in attendance the audience in general and also, though not always, the musicians situated across the way. Under the guise of fundamento, they then move on to speak thematically to the occasion in question. For instance, in the case of the celebration of an ejido, poesias and decimales often speak of the Mexican Revolution, the historical details of the community 7 in question, agrarian reform, and the like.

After having exhausted this portion, troubadours may then, though not always, move on to discuss a topic of their choosing— tema de fundamento foundational theme —that is not necessarily related to the occasion in question: Within the purview 7 of the pieza arribena, the poesia—which is composed beforehand and memorized—is where troubadours stake such positions; during the decimal a space is opened for dialogically improvised engagement.

Managing this petition is always delicate, yet during this portion the 10S — CHAPTER 2 engagement reaches a fever pitch and often reluctantly comes to a close, at which point troubadours give each other a reconciliatory greeting and make their final farewells. At times, ensembles might play assorted piezas polkas or huapangos huastecos to close out.

Here are portions of poetic examples documented in the field representing each of these sections. Huapango arribeno is an act in the making, a vigorous negotiation that, although grasped through a general sense of form, takes shape beyond any sense of fixity. It enters into a span of broader polyphonic and intertextual processes of signification. Indeed, this intertextual enactment is necessary to the production and reception of performance, where energy, technique, and sentiment enable musicians to elegantly communicate a sense of high drama— soaring notes, words, phrases, and melodies that wrap around everyone present.

Celso lleva la mano, and he and his ensemble have decided to forgo the key of A major entirely, shifting chromatically from D to E. Pablo and his musicians across the way follow, attempting to respond. As time passes, his violinists begin to struggle, however. Our friend Naro takes a break from dancing; he walks toward us, his sweaty body letting off steam. Uno anda zapateando pero con la cara toda torcida. He rests for the moment, hoping the next time around things will sound better. The key of E seems to suit him quite well.

Each troubadour is monitoring for aesthetic fit.

Pablo claims Celso is not attending to temas de fundamento; topically, the thematic focus of the topada—in honor of la mujer serrana the woman of the Sierra —is the organizing theme of the Festival del Huapango Arribeno y de la Cultura de la Sierra Gorda in Xichu this year. However, these metalinguistic enactments are themselves potential instances of object language. According to both troubadours, each has misfired Austin By sunrise, Celso and Cacho finally move to the key of G major, though they manage to sneak in a few piquetes in E minor. In this outward coursing, this aural saturation, the ligatures of sociality are embodied aesthetically; in these moments life paths cross and occupy a space contoured by an intimately and laboriously produced musico- poetic arch of communicative exchange.

This exchange is a calling—it is a vocation, competence in performance, an aesthetic commitment, but it is also a hailing forth, a voicing, a literal calling out to the other next to you, to those across from you, to the audience surrounding you. Calling out is a task performed by the body taken in by the ears. To call out is to animate interpersonally, to reach with the voice, to share aloud stories that will circulate in that moment and beyond it, remaining legible, if only in memory. The calling happens internally and externally Mario Gonzalez— within the broader perspective of the topada—suggests that this performative dynamic, although always on the brink of toppling over, must necessarily be balanced harmoniously.

It is called out, and the response is called back by listening, dancing, commenting, yelling, staying, and leaving. The calling is mutual. Uno transmite a los oyentes. Tienes que sacar tu mejor repertorio para que la gente te la jales para aca La gente es la que va a escuchar, a bailar. One transmits to those listening. You have to display the best of your repertoire so that you gain the favor of the people The people are there to listen, to dance.

The resolution, then, is neither a win nor a loss but an interaction with the audience, he suggests, though on the surface the interaction is framed around two juxtaposed groups, calling out to one another. Intimacy is embedded in performance, through poetic and sonic callings between the groups performing, but, more important, between the huapangueros and the audience. We take in the sound; our feet tap and burn and hurt; we hold each other close; our sweat is slick and smells like cafe dc olla cinnamon-laced coffee and beer.

The musical key suddenly changes, and the boot heels around me hit harder. He dozes, drinks, and then dances again. The sun peeks over the mountains; it rises, taking forever. Children join the crowd again after napping through the sonic filigree of A major. The dancing grows muted, but only for a moment—G major and the final poesiiis de bravata are on their way; you can feel it. Suddenly, the air becomes damp, the sky overcast, and the morning is now steamy from the dew—daybreak. Sunlight slowly begins to wrap around everyone and everything. Things, which are so often closed off and fragmented into singular presencing, open up to conjoin, meld, and happen.

From a Bataillean perspective, the excess of performance is a way of releasing humans in particular, but not exclusively from the enclosures established by the political economy—capitalist, from a Marxian viewpoint. Unbinding the singularity of being is necessary to the suturing of social fragmentation that happens through capitalism. When we are faced with a lack of intimacy and sovereignty, being human means searching for those things that are lost, and doing so along unknown paths. Kathleen Stewart describes this excess in different circumstances, but to a similar end: Huapangue- CHAPTER 2 ros move forward in this space, always changed by it, changed by each other, companions existing between a polyphony of destinos: Mentions of troubadour poets echo out from precolonial Mexico Ravicz and equally as far back as twelfth-century Occitania.

In the midst of this intertextual entanglement of aesthetics and society, situated knowledges are performed into being, often under duress and out of necessity as types of differential consciousnesses Sandoval Who opened a business? Who isn't afraid to reach the heavens? Who knows how to fight? Who goes out to protest and knows how to march? Who defends their rights, knows how to win?

Who knows how to live, how to share, how to coexist? Dexterous hands that build or assemble automotive parts hands that sow, that irrigate roots or assemble scaffolding to climb atop eyes capable of discerning agile minds and able fingers of farmworkers or machinists endless people whose skills have generated so much wealth: A son of migrant parents, Olmeca performs a brand of hip-hop that sounds of both inner-city U. His brand of politics has paired him with the likes of Dolores Huerta, Naomi Klein, Emory Douglas, and Zack de la Rocha at political rallies and in university settings.

Catálogo MICGénero by MICGénero - Issuu

Theirs is a Chicago in motion, a daily grind and hustle, a space of dreams and labor flows tethered to Latin America, of friends and family close at hand and far away, coming and going, separated by borders, calling both places home. They are at the center of what Chicago is: South and into northern centers of industry. To understand what Chicago as home meant to them in the s and s, we must similarly account for the realities of the day: You, perhaps, are familiar with the story.

His killers shot him and mutilated his body, which they then disposed of in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it down with a cotton-gin fan. The versatile jazz and blues stylings of Nina Simone echo out a decade later: Eisenhower and John F. In response to the explosion of Mexican migration—or the browning of that state—California most famously passed the Save Our State voter initiative , better known as Proposition , which aimed to exclude undocumented migrant children and their parents from virtually all public sendees.

Cold War politics in the s.

The answer was nafta. The crucial piece in this equation for Mexico, however, came three years earlier, in , when de Gortari rewrote agrarian reform law, ostensibly doing away with article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and bringing an end to ejido land policy which also included subsidies, price protections, and access to basic agricultural resources , thus making it easier for portions of low-producing lands to be used for large-scale commercial agriculture Bohorquez Molina et al. Increased migration flows across the U. Decades later, efforts to sustain this festival have taken hold among U.

During this period, huapangueros reimagined their lives across this transforming social landscape—moving between rural areas and centers of industry. Amid an analogous time of economic crisis, they shaped dynamic and newly intelligible shifts in huapango arribeno's performance as a localized aesthetic negotiation of the global political and economic vicissitudes of the s, a time when 1 post-Fordist labor flows were reconstituted in new and fluctuating arrangements—deskilled, mobile, and highly expendable Giddens —and 2 U.

After World War II, countless Xichu natives were left jobless once the mineral wealth was exhausted in that township. Velazquez was subsequently born in the great metropolis in as his father and then-pregnant mother migrated from Xichu to Mexico City in search of work. In his late teens, Velazquez began to pursue a life in the clergy. Soon after, he returned to Mexico City in search of work, just like his parents: Me fui a Mexico a buscar trabajo. Yo habia estado en el seminario hasta ese mo- mento.

Decidi, a partir de la muerte de mi padre y otros factores, pues volver a cero Me costo mucho trabajo hallar empleo. Lo encontre en una fabrica de munecas-Estoy los tres anos ahi. In I was at a crossroads in my life. I went to Mexico City in search of work. I had been in the seminar ' up until that moment. After the death of my father and other circumstances, I decided to start over It took a lot of work to find employment.

I found it in a doll factor I remained there for three years. Finding employment was a challenge, but he eventually managed to secure a factor ' job. He describes the routine he encountered: Al entrar yo a trabajar, a estar en contacto directo con el ambiente obrero, a tomar el camion en la manana, a tomarme un licuado antes de chequar mi tarjeta, estar desde en la manana hasta en la noche, regresar cansado, dormir unas horas y tener que levantarme muy temprano, tambien estar enfrentando al mismo tiempo una crisis depresiva en la que estaba y que fui remontando a base de agallas tambien—eso me abrio los poros a mu- chas cosas para las que yo no habia sido suficientemente consiente.

To enter the workplace, to be emerged in factor 7 life, to take the bus in the morning, to drink a milkshake before clocking in, to be there from morning to nightfall, to return home tired, sleep a few hours, only to wake up early again, all while suffering from a deep depression that took a great amount of -willpower to overcome—all of that made me conscious of a number of things that I was previously unaware of.

This consciousness, he goes on to describe, was the pivotal realization that his life in Mexico City was contingent on circumstances—social, political, and otherwise—impacting the world at large. As Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki argued, monetary instability was a direct result of too much democracy—the active participation of the masses in civic and political life had to be tempered with repressive rule. Concurrent mobilizations of workers, women, students, the unemployed, intellectuals, artists, and activists also formed part of the popular movements and social rebellion during this time in cities like London, Paris, and West Berlin and in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, and the United States.

In addition, also witnessed U. Martin Luther King Jr. While visiting his brother in Mexico City, Velazquez unwittingly found himself in the immediate fallout of this most tragic episode: Esos arios fueron decisivos para mi porque por un lado alcance a definir el rumbo de mi vida y por otro cobre conciencia de muchas cosas que esta- ban pasando en el pais. Estamos hablando de la primera devaluacion fuerte en el gobierno de Echeverria, estamos hablando de que en ese tiempo es- taba gestandose todo lo que fue la guerrilla armada, que yo no sabia nada de eso, pero ahi estaba. He remained there for thirty-six years.

And it was there that he reconnected with huapango arribeno. He came across a few huapangueros, befriended them, and slowly began to pick up the violin. Me dio por agarrar un instrumento en el estado de Mexico Tocaba con otros musicos quienes andaban alia trabajando o que venian de la sierra a las tocadas Gente de la provincia que se iba a trabajar al DF, pues se llevaba la raiz y ahi se iba uno acoplando y trabajando.

I would play with other musicians who were there working or who came from the sierra to play Folks from the province [i. At the age of twenty-four, he began sitting in with musicians in Mexico City and on his trips back to Guanajuato, but he never participated in topadas.

Tenia ganas, pero me faltaba valor. I had the desire, but I lacked courage. He participated in his first topada in the mids, playing across from Guillermo Velazquez. The circulating lives of the Sierra Gorda migrant huapangueros whom Salinas would learn from assembled a trajectory of cultural transmission that circled out from Xichu to Mexico City and back, binding life in both places. Huapangueros labored both in factories and in performance, producing a type of cultural adjacency between places through music making.

This was the means by which Salinas and others intimated the flows of migrant life. Shortly after arriving, he was approached by local huapangueros who had noticed his musical talent and encouraged him to give it a try. He was familiar with huapango arribeno from his childhood in Xichu and had even dabbled briefly in songwriting while living in Mexico City, yet he had never imagined becoming a huapanguero. After some convincing, he picked up the guitarra quinta huapanguera and studied the decima, and his life as a troubadour was set in motion.

A mi me toco recibir la tradicion como se acostumbraba siempre. Prim- eramente, acercandome por instinto, por un llamado poderoso a donde sucedia la musica y la poesia sin entender que era una decima, sin entender que cosa era una topada, que era un son, que era un jarabe, pero estar ahi cerca en el calor de la fiesta Y luego a pegarmele a los cantadores Apart from learning the rudimentary skills—technical know-how? Velazquez's and Salinas's formations as huapangueros are inextricably linked to migrant life in Mexico City.

In the case of Salinas, the shifting geographies of performance are clear. Expressly, vernacular performance is an active, reflexive, and interpretive experience that involves both listening to the world in which audiences live and voicing the existential problems that fit their experiences. Velazquez contextualizes this idea in relation to the process of poetic composition: El trovador es un condensador de la colectividad, es un antena que concen- tra en si lo que en la comunidad es inquietud, es anhelo, es sueho, es me- moria, es necesidad de expresion.

En ese sentido, el trovador expresa los intereses de la comunidad y los suvos propios, que muchas veces pueden ir mas adelante o mas atras de la comunidad. No por el hecho de que vo sepa hacer un verso quiere decir que va soy capaz de expresar el interes de la CHAPTER 3 comunidad—eso se logra a traves de mucho tiempo, de mucha dedicacibn, de mucho deseo de llegar a traducir en los versos lo que la gente quiere decir.

In that sense, the troubadour expresses the interests of the community as well as his own, which many times may be ahead of or lagging behind those of the community. Merely because I know how to craft a verse does not mean that expressing the interests of the community is a given—that is attained across a great span of time, of commitment, of the desire to translate through verse what the people want to say.

Huapangueros, in contrast, reconstituted performance practice amid the shifting geographies of social life and voiced the existential conditions of migrancy in the most crucial of spaces—the flows of the topada. He replied to these petitions with the following: In those poesias I incorporated the lived experience of my father and what I saw at that time, a tangible phenomenon experienced by the people who migrated from the Sierra [Gorda] to Mexico City Mirrored there is what I personally lived and what I saw that was occurring at that time.

It chronicles the arduous search for employment in Mexico City, capturing the nervous flows of everyday work. Yet, after the discovery of Mexico's petroleum reserves, the Sistema Alimentario Mexicano Mexican Food System was created in 19S0 with the express goal of encouraging farmer self-sufficiency and agricultural production through increased access to loans, among other incentives. Thus, he bids Lopez Portillo farewell and in the second poesia poignantly elaborates on the hardships that led manv to migrate to the United States.

The embargo, it was explained, was enacted to prevent the introduction and spread of the Kamal bunt fungus, a pathogen found in a relatively small geographic area in Mexico. This safeguarding of U. Their experiences and knowledges of migrancy informed the axis of their fundamento and have been part of their survival. Troubadours, as Sierra Gorda natives explain, occupied a particular role in provincial life throughout most of the twentieth century, for they recounted matters of local history, regional geography, and global significance through topada performance at a time when there was little access to radio, television, or public schools in the more remote parts of the region.

This is still the case, yet the festival now begins on December 29 and concludes on January i. Through a chance meeting with Leonel Duran, the director of the Direction General de Culturas Populares General Directorate of Popular Cultures , the brothers garnered financial support for organizing huapango arribeno workshops throughout the Sierra Gorda of Guanajuato and a festival in Xichu to honor veteran huapangueros. Hobsbawm and Terence O.

Entradas recientes

Ranger in reference to the innovation of symbolic and ritual practices The organizing committee now relies on grassroots fund-raisers and modest donations from Sierra Gorda natives. While the festival is rooted in Xichu and its history of topadas at the start of each New Year, it is by no means isolated from other places. The vectors that attach Xichu to Chicago and other sites in the United States also exist when organizing and fund-raising. These connections play out through personal relationships and necessary transnational flows of resources, much like what happens in the binational civic efforts organized by hometown associations Bada Because of their close relationship since childhood, Esperanza organizes fund-raisers in Chicago for the Xichu festival.

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She has lived there for twenty years and has been collecting funds for the festival for six. The importance of women in the happening of huapango at events like this is vital. Lay folklorist Socorro Perea, for instance, began recording and performing on the radio with Los Cantores de la Sierra in the late s. She was bom in the Xichu mine settlement and grew up alongside Guillermo Velazquez in Xichu proper. At the age of twelve, she joined the church choir, where she developed her powerful vocal style.

Her love of music, she shares, is in part due to her father, Ruperto Flores, also a huapango arribeno troubadour. Mi papa intluyo mucho a mi y a una hermana que tambien canta Cuando eramos asi ninas, mi casa en Xichu era un a posada para toda la gente que llegaba de las comunidades No habia carreteras antes, en- tonces toda la gente que llegaba el fin de semana se tenia que quedar para hacer sus compras, para ir a misa el domingo, para arreglar algun asunto, entonces tenian que pedir permiso en las casas para dormir ahi.

En mi casa llegaban alrededor de cincuenta a cien personas Todo lo que yo iba aprendiendo en la escuela lo haciamos los fines de semana; haciamos como un especie de teatro para la gente que llegaba. Igual, incorporabamos a las muchachas que llegaban de los ranchos; las poniamos a bailar, o a can- tar, o a declamar, o a hacer juego Luego tambien empezamos a cantar algunas canciones.

There were no roads at that time, so all the people who arrived on the weekend stayed to do their shopping, to go to mass on Sunday, to go about their business, so they had to ask permission to stay in the homes of the locals. Everything I was learning in school we would perform on the weekends; we did a sort of theatre for the people who arrived. Her familiarity with huapango arribeno came by way of observing and listening to him perform, in addition to encountering the music at topadas.

Their mother forbade them to do so. Still, she smiles as she reminisces about how she wanted to be a part of it, sneaking off with her sister to dance when they managed to escape their mother s gaze while strolling around the plaza during topadas. He explained why he had left his studies and told her about his time in Mexico City and his decision to pursue huapango arribeno. She remembers that he shared with her some of his poesfas: Empece a tomar conciencia de que es lo que hacian los trovadores I began to be conscious of what troubadours did These old childhood friends fell in love and married in After Los Leones de la Sierra de Xichii released their first studio recording in , the group was invited to perform some of their material in Mexico City.

From that point forward, both became members of Los Leones de la Sierra de Xichii. She participated in a poetic controversia with Guillermo Velazquez in the form of a decimal on the latter album. There, they played the roles of transnational migrant and wife, engaging each other in a jocular exchange on the topics of migration, domestic life, and gender roles. I include it here: Y tu de desobligado Ch: What else can I tell you?

I am not a man of means Ch: Further, as a full member of Los Leones de la Sierra de Xichu she has exerted her voice, at once shifting the male tinge of the music itself. On the whole, her presence has reoriented the tradition to be more inclusive of women because she stands out as a powerful voice and performer, both onstage and on recordings.

Think of Xichu in this way: It is why they help fund the festival, and, for those who can, it is why they return I head down to the dry stone streets, gazing over quiet backyards; a boy is washing the sidewalk in front of his mothers shop. She watches the work being done. The panaderia bakery opens and closes on its own time. I just sit on a white iron bench and drink some cafe de olla.

I take my time. I once ran into Valentin, but not today. People know him as Giiero fair-skinned because of his light complexion. Teenagers are hanging streamers from the church to a house across the way. The town is now filling up with people who will soon parade up and down the streets—a caminata, as they call it—announcing to all that the festival has officially begun. Children, men and women, and several towering mojigangas giant puppets will follow the musicians to the top of the hill at the entrance of the town, where decimas will be recited with a sense of beginning.

I will walk down the hill again, this time with someone I know, reconnecting with each step. Artists and performers, invited or otherwise, understand the festival in terms of a necessary and unique cradle of creativity that carries with it a particular life-giving politics. At the twenty-sixth annual festival, the organizing committee proclaimed in a public statement: En esta hora tan difi'cil de Mexico, esta en manos de los ciudadanos libres que cultivamos la esperanza desde distintos oficios y actividades, el no permitir que la mediocridad y corrupcion de los politicos, la voracidad de los grandes empresarios, los intereses de lucro y comercio, o el crimen organizado, coarten nuestro derecho a vivir con dignidad, con alegria, con libertad; asi mismo, tampoco podemos permitir que nos impidan ejercer nuestro derecho a disffutar lo mejor del arte y de la cultura, y preservar valores como el de la solidaridad y el sentido de pertenencia a una colectividad.

Everyone, including those same artists and organizers, realizes the festival is also a space of conviviality and music making, es fiesta. Within this palimpsest of meanings, we may locate the vitality that Xichu represents, as a locus of energy for huapango arribeno, as a transnational place where a topada happened, happens, and is expected to happen. The density of this layering is about lives, bodies, and stories that are themselves part of Xichu as a singular location, but equally about how huapango arribeno can aesthetically voice the ugliness and beauty, dread and desires, of life and mobility.

You feel the poetry. You feel all manner of places—Xichu among them—and you present yourself to them and within them, and then carry them with you as you cross into other places With a wider smile that speaks of her fondness for him, she says her husband is working in Florida, picking oranges. He was in Atlanta before that. The fact that both he and I live in the United States means, to her, in some distant way, that we have something in common.

Later, during the topada, as the ensembles are playing in their tempestuous rhythm, I see Lidia again, at about midnight. We smile and greet each other, and she invites us for breakfast after the topada. We agree, and she eagerly makes arrangements. She wants to talk about the United States, her past experiences working there; she wants to make a connection with us. She misses Jose, who can only ever come home for a few weeks at a time.

In between visits, she waits for his phone calls at the public telephone stall As the topada is ending that following morning, she guides us to her home. She apologizes in advance for the modesty of her dwelling. As she cooks, I look out over the mountains. Provide feedback about this page. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web.

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