Chasing María Teresa Lara: an autoethnographic account of trying to recuperate the story of a ‘lost’ woman composer

Abstract

Over the past decades, much has been achieved with regard to the recovery of ‘lost’ women composers. However, the struggle to re-create a more accurate and gender-balanced musical history continues. In Mexico, composers such as María Grever (1885–1951) and Consuelo Velazquez (1916–2005) – with pieces such as ‘Júrame’ or ‘Bésame Mucho’ – seem to be among the most widely performed and still scarcely known female creators of music. This chapter focuses on another Mexican woman whose work might be very popular and about whose life almost nothing has been published: María Teresa Lara (1904–84), the sister of the star bolero composer and performer, Agustín Lara. It is a fact that many songs attributed to her brother were copyrighted under her name. Still, there is no consensus as to whether María Teresa or Agustín composed famous songs such as ‘Noche de Ronda’ or ‘Adiós Nicanor’. This work aims to give an auto-ethnographical account of the struggle to encounter a ‘truth’ about a woman’s creative life. It narrates the journey of trying to untangle available sources and a field-trip to María Teresa Lara’s home-town Tlatlauquitepec in the state of Puebla, Mexico, where surviving friends, relatives and other contemporaries were interviewed. The methodology of auto-ethnography was chosen due to its focus on the intersection between individual and cultural constructions and its suitability for navigating the often thin line between facts and fiction. This was a lucky choice, as the life stories of María Teresa Lara and her brother turned out to be immersed in a web of confusion, in part deliberately created by Agustín to promote his mythical genius status. As such, rather than having been able to establish the ‘true story’ of María Teresa Lara, the exploration reveals the wider cultural implications and clashing political agendas of promoting the brother’s and/or the sister’s musical creativity.