Transnational Encounters: Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Abstract

Bridging various approaches to border studies, this fascinating and far-ranging collection assembled by Alejandro Madrid is solidly grounded in the aural culture particulars of the US-Mexico transnational soundscape. Music is the thing, but not without critical considerations of identity, history, gender, sexuality, and generation, among other topics. Madrid insightfully sketches the historiography of borderland studies from early treatments by Herbert Eugene Bolton to Américo Paredes’s ethnographic work at mid-century (including the invention of the term “Greater Mexico” to designate the migrant diaspora beyond political boundaries). Especially important in this was the critical identification of Mexicans as people who commonly faced Anglo discrimination and violence in the US Southwest. This approach (similarly undertaken by Carey McWilliams roughly around the same time) defined border culture in terms of social, economic, and political struggle. Subsequent treatment by Chicano scholars officially gave rise to the field of border studies — a disciplinary undertaking that both paralleled social movement efforts while simultaneously challenging the hegemony of Anglocentric approaches in history, literature, and film studies. Ten years on, further articulations on the part of Renato Rosaldo and Gloria Anzaldúa (among others in both the United States and Mexico) invoked an expanded notion of the border to focus on itinerant subjectivities. “Align[ing] . . . with some of the projects in cultural and postcolonial studies, particularly the recognition of agency among marginal, subaltern border subjects . . . the notion of hybridity became central in arguing the fluidity of border subjects to navigate in and out of cultural networks” (p. 7). Although a rich undertaking by and large, the postmodern cultural turn — according to scholars such as Pablo Vila and others — “largely avoided a multiethnic discussion of the borderlands that would include non-Mexicans, African-Americans, as well as the large variety of indigenous and ethnic communities on both sides of the border” (p. 8). Under Madrid’s editorial vision, the many musical expressions discussed in Transnational Encounters (from reggae to cumbia, from rock and roll to rap to waila to pop to nortec and beyond) reveal a number of genres less associated with the borderlands. Further, their consideration makes available a way to “explore how music allows the construction of a wide variety of networks of belonging and how different understanding[s] of the border and the borderlands are born and challenged by these forms of musical expression and their performance complexes” (p. 9).Highlights include Alejandro Madrid’s treatment of spirituals sung by the Black Seminoles in small-town Coahuila; a history of the 1960s Tijuana Sound by Josh Kun; informative discussion of Monterrey’s alternative scene by Ignacio Corona; Cathy Ragland’s biographic consideration of key norteño personality, Golden Age comedian, actor, and singer “El Piporro” (Eulalio González Ramírez); Helena Simonett’s engagement with Sonoran rap (and in one case, its curious connections to traditional Yoreme local culture); and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera’s insightful class and cultural analysis of gay dance clubs in Phoenix.Throughout the volume contributors continually confound received knowledge of the borderlands. Sure, we get the backstory that upon first glance appears somewhat refrito, but soon fresh tracks can be heard. Rather than just replaying a soundtrack of scratchy corrido and norteño hits, Luis Alvarez reveals deeply grooved social networks centered on reggae music in and between borderlands communities. Sydney Hutchinson’s creative piece “Breaking Borders/Quebrando fronteras” helps us greatly in better appreciating the cultural and political meanings of social dance. Mark C. Edberg reminds us of the complexity that is the narcocorrido genre. Donald Henriques traces the rise of “the modern mariachi” constructed through electronic means. José E. Limón tells of intergenerational tensions among Mexican-Americans in regard to Tejano music. Joan Titus’s investigation of Tohono O’odham (Southern Arizona) waila dance, music, and contemporary festival is a revelation, while Jesus A. Ramos-Kittrell’s listening to cumbia in Monterrey shows how the genre has constantly been refreshed and renewed to fit the changing times. Margaret E. Dorsey and Miguel Díaz-Barriga engage in a bit of “necro-citizenship” in chronicling the “El Veterano” conjunto festival activities of South Texas. New Mexican “manito” (fellow nuevo mexicano, from hermanito or “little brother”) musical and dance history on the part of Brenda M. Romero suggests a specific New Mexican aesthetic, while Lillian Gorman’s review of “El gringo” unpacks the seeming cultural contradiction of being “más gringo que el McDonald’s, pero mexicano en el corazón” (p. 325).In sum, Transnational Encounters delivers readers equal parts substantial information and original research in sync with insightful social and cultural analysis. True to Madrid’s synthetic vision of an integrated border studies, the essays bring the region alive. Like an outdoor music festival with multiple stages and guided cultural tour all in one, readers will want to experience each of the different offerings while simultaneously dialing up the appropriate sound samples to play along.