Mariachi presentation (R, T, J)
Mariachi presentation (R, T, J)
All:
Please read and respond (via "Comments") to at least 3 of the following observations/queries arising from this presentation. Both team members and other class members should comment, and should particularly focus on ways in which insights from this presentation reflect, nuance, or contradict insights from your own fieldwork. Make sure your comments address this latter point.
Website at http://www.freewebs.com/joshttu/
1. Good description about strategies for adapting fieldwork to what was schedule-feasible and how that might have evolved. As I have said in class, sometimes, when we’re “handed lemons, we make lemonade.” In other words, sometimes we have to take the necessary strictures of schedule/hours/etc and work within them—but it is important to “work smart,” and try to turn those limitations into advantages. How did time- or schedule-limits impact on your own team’s work? Give examples.
2. The comment was made that mariachi’s functions seem to include “remembering one’s heritage”; this in turn would seem to implicate issues of the construction of cultural identity. At the end of the semester, can we make observations across fieldwork situations about music’s use in the construction of identity? Each seminar member: please cite at least one (1) example of “music as a tool for constructing identity” from your own fieldwork, cite at least one (1) example of similar usage from at least two (2) other team’s work, and explain why the “identity-construction” in your fieldwork is similar to the “identity-construction” in the other two teams’ work. Be specific.
3. How can a fieldworker employ the subjectivity of informants’ “versions of history” versus the “factual” record? What role does “history” play in a community’s musical construction of identity? Provide at least 6 lines summarizing your own target group’s “community history” or “community myth.”
4. What does the ubiquity of mariachi in a very wide range of sub-community situations reveal? What are the implications of this “soundtrack” for this part of the Hispanic community? Articulate a comparison to the target music’s role in your own fieldwork: give at least 3 examples of the target music’s use in your informants’ lives, and compare/contrast to that of the mariachi community’s.
5. Issues of adaptation of outside repertoire into the insider style: how can a style “stamp” or “re-brand” a song originating with one culture with an Hispanic cultural activity? Can a song from outside Hispanic community culture be thus “re-stamped”? What about “appropriation” (meaning: the symbolic acquisition of cultural materials, the “claiming as one’s own” materials that might formerly have been alien)?
6. Good observations about ways in which fieldwork can the fieldworker’s own growth and cultural enrichment. In the best of all possible fieldwork situations, both informants and fieldworkers conclude that they have gained by the experience; this is how ethnographic fieldwork is transformed from being “only” scholarship, growing to also encompass communication, relationships, mutual enrichment, and a better world. What have you gained from your individual experience of fieldwork?
7. Good commentary about shifting repertoires in different contexts or for different (ethnic) audiences. Please provide examples from your own observations about ways in which your informants adapted musical repertoires, styles, or behaviors to fit within (or to transform) contrasting situations.
8. Insights about musicians’ (and music’s) cross-cultural adaptability. Almost by definition (and as we have seen from numerous readings) musicians have to be especially skillful at moving across cultural boundaries which non-musicians may experience as much more problematic. Please provide examples from your own fieldwork of ways in which your informants used (or didn’t use—and if so why not) music to move across such social/cultural boundaries. Did their strategies provide strategies which you think you could use in your own life and career? Describe these, and explain how they might play out.
9. Excellent use of glossary as heard in rehearsals. “what people hear” is a crucial indicator of how they experience the world. Please provide at least 3 examples of specific dialect, terms, adjectives, or other jargon, unique to your sub-community, which your informants used repeatedly to describe certain desirable or undesirable results. What do these specific words imply about how your informants saw the world, the music, and their own individual places within both?
posted by CJS at 2:07 PM
6 Comments:
1) Time and schedule limits impacted our group a lot. Because of my own personal schedule, I was unable to ever attend fieldwork at River Smith's. To make up for it, so to speak, I attended fieldwork at Mar y Tierra, and was at least able to observe similarities of repertoire and audience for each time that I was there. I was also unable to attend the Diez y Seis de Septiembre festival because of an out-of-town marching band requirement. Scheduling also made it extremely challenging for our group to do fieldwork together. The only thing we all attended was the Mi Tierra rehearsal. In retrospect, we could have branched out from just working with Mi Tierra. There is more than just one mariachi group in Lubbock, and maybe, instead of trying to work with just one group, we could have found one or more other groups who may have had easier-to-work-our-schedule-around performances and rehearsals. Then we would have also gotten a bigger perspective on the whole of mariachi music in Lubbock, rather than just that which falls around Mi Tierra.
5) A style can easily re-stamp a song. For example, Mi Tierra sang a Frankie Valli song with a mariachi spin to us on more than one occasion. I think that they did this more to just have a song that they can sing to the "white people" that is in english and has some kind of cognitive meaning rather than it being appropriated into the culture. There was more than one time where the vihuela player would whisper "en engliais" to the guitarron player when we were present, which kind of seemed a lot like they were assuming things about us like...assuming we don't speak any spanish or don't want to hear the regular mariachi music. The song could have been re-stamped because it had special meaning to one of the players, or because they heard a version of it which had already been re-stamped by somebody else and they really liked it. I do not think that in our specific case, there was any immensely deep cultural reason for them re-branding "Can't Take My Eyes off of You."
8)Like I mentioned with the Frankie Valli song, Mi Tierra used that song to cross the socio-cultural border between the mariachi regulars and the "other people" who have maybe only heard it on the riverwalk in San Antonio or in restaraunts, who may not speak spanish, and for whom it carries no significant meaning. They played the song with a "mariachi spin" sort of to say "Yes, our music is different from yours, but no, we're not going to exclude you. We want you to enjoy it as much as we do, so we're going to relate it to you in the best way that we can." This is a great strategy for any musician to use. For example, a classical musician could relate the Firebird Suite to Fantasia for an audience who may not have a deep database of music, but can remember their Disney movies. Dr. Houck once related early and traditional music to post-tonal modern music for me, which really put them both into a completely different perspective and helped me gain a different kind of appreciation for them. Finding ways to relate to people and using that, with your music, to educate them, "brainwash" them, or just show them that some musics just really aren't that different from others is something we all need to know how to do.
1. Time was a factor with the VOL team. In the beginning, we were going to find churches to go to and make observations. This was a facotr because all of us had church obligations and could not go every Wednesday and Sunday to do observations. I agree with Jeremy that we had limited time to do things with the worship projects because there is always limited time do do these fieldworks. Luckily VOL fell into our laps because they met for rehearsals on Saturdays, and I was able to go almost every week. Bob was only able to make it 3 times, and James wasn't able to make it at all, but luckily we had another avenue to pursue in VOL.
2. I think music was a tool in constructing cultural identity. VOL definitely made their own cultural identity by using this choir to make their own worship music. They talked about their heritage and how it related to the music that they made. I think the ballet folklorico also used their heritage to make their own cultural identity. The group talked about a dancer who went down to Mexico a lot and did dancing there to make sure that he stayed with his heritage and did the dancing right. Another group was the Asian worship because they also created their sense of cultural identity by having their own worship space. We are similar because we also used our own space to worship and used our own heritage to make our culutal identity.
6. I think I have gained a lot from the fieldwork that I did. I learned that I shouldn't judge people before I see what everything is really about. I had my own pre-conceived notions when I first went into the rehearsals and group, and most of them changed. I did not think that it would be as spiritually charged as I thought. Everyone was so inviting and nice to me. They tried to help me out as much as possible. Anything that I needed, they tried to help me in achieving that. I couldn't have been more grateful.
1. time, the great equalizer. all of us had things going on all semester, both private & school-related that kept us from fully immersing ourselves in the work at hand. what we ended up doing was getting the help of the community (our informants)...Zenaida lent us a book & was very willing to sit down w/us & go over some of the questions we had regarding the steps, the dresses, etc...Daniel got us some SW collection interviews he had done, but not transcribed yet. he also helped us fine tune some of the questions (without us actually asking him directly).
2&5. identity construction: the entire idea of ballet folklorico seems to be re-construction, with the understanding that new ideas will be incorporated as needed. the Aztec dancers from NM were a great example, taking from Native American and Native Mexican American indigenous cultures to form something that represents what the descendants of those groups hold dear now. We saw the same thing in the mariachi groups, taking pop, motown, & rock songs into their repertoire because that's what the audiences want, (& probably because that's what some of the group members grew up with & played at one time).
1. I knew that when the semester began, I would have an immensely busy schedule by mid October into the beginning of December. One of my other teammates was quite busy at the beginning of the semester. I like to keep in touch by phone more than any other means. It's more personal and has an immediate response. So, due to this, I put a focus on recording in any way possible. Since I owned a video camera, I thought this would be the best means for sharing information with other teammates that could not be present.
2. The first event my team attended was a Mexican independence festival. That should say everything about remembering ones heritage. Yet, it's interesting that for the two day festival there was only one live mariachi group. But, there were numerous ballets.
1.Time and schedule conflicts had a great impact on our team’s work. Zanaida’s group meet Monday, Tuesday and Thursday early evenings. We all had classes during this time. I was trying to look ahead and see when I can miss a class for the sake of research, but it never worked out. I had to rely on the videos Liz captured from the time she could wiggle out.
6.I was able to further connect to a few friends of mine. I found out through this experience that they had Ballet Folklorico in their younger years. I was so socked that I never knew things like this from good friends. It helped me ask the right questions when learning more about my friends from Mexico. There are tons of things I don’t know about the people I see everyday. I learned that those things are sometimes the coolest things you can learn.
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