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Music scholar highlights "neglected" New Mexican influences

Peter Garcia

Peter Garcia began his life in a small village outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, the city in which he eventually would receive a Bachelor of Music Education at the University of New Mexico. For a year or so thereafter, he taught high school band in Albuquerque. "What happened was the arts were being severely cut in the public schools, especially in the Southwest," Garcia said, noting that while he loved saxophone performance, the historical situation contributed to his decision to further his education.

He moved to Tucson, Arizona, to earn a Master of Music degree in Classical and Concert Saxophone Performance at the University of Arizona. "This was about 1989. It was the period where my interest in ethnomusicology began," he said.

"Linda Ronstadt had just released Canciones de Mi Padre. She was from Tucson, where mariachi music had been growing within the city. The Tucson International Mariachi Conference had been going on for years." Garcia noted that despite the thriving regional music scene surrounding the university, it had maintained a tradition similar to the classical conservatory.

"Then the director, David Woods (former dean of IU School of Music), decided to start a Hispanic music program. It wasn't an ethnomusicology program, but Woods wanted to offer some academic courses [arising out of Hispanic culture] and get a mariachi ensemble going within the school of music. Woods' program eventually led to the hire of an ethnomusicologist."

It was out of this milieu that Garcia's attention toward Mexican and Southwestern music grew. And so he began doctoral work in Latin American ethnomusicology under the guidance of Gerard Behágue at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also directed the university's Mariachi Paredes de Tejastitlan ensemble. His research specializations span Indian, Hispanic, and Anglo music, including folk, traditional, and popular forms from within Mexico and the Southwestern United States.

But Garcia's dissertation takes a more focused regional frame. It is entitled "La Onda Nueva Mexicana: Multi-Sited Ethnography, Ritual Contexts, and Popular Traditional Musics in New Mexico."

"My research is basically trying to shift the focus away from the study of Spanish colonial folk forms and genres, and looks at more current Mexican popular musical styles and artists that have influenced New Mexican music. If you were to see music studies on New Mexico, based on the research, you would see there has been a bias towards older folk influences. More popular musical styles and Mexican influences have been neglected in what's being written," Garcia said.

His dissertation's focus begins in the 1940s, and considers a range of popular forms, including those attached to ritual context, "particularly," he said, "the fiestas in Bernalillo, New Mexico." His fieldwork also brought him to the Hispanic Cuarto Centenario of 1998, a rather controversial festival marking four hundred years since Spanish settlement in New Mexico.

"I was looking at the Mexican immigrants," Garcia said, "and how they introduced popular musical styles into the area that were embraced by the local populations." The three styles on which he primarily concentrates are the conjunto norte¤o, the mariachi, and the orquesta t¡pica.

Garcia's broader knowledge of Hispanic culture and musical practices came into play in his summer teaching appointment. Hosted by the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology during summer session one, he taught "Musics and Cultures of Latin America," a section enrolling graduate students and undergraduates from among departmental majors and other disciplines, such as anthropology.

Because of his students' diverse backgrounds - some of which did not include musical performance - Garcia took time getting to know their learning goals, and encouraged them to develop their own specialized research projects. "The course is going great," he said early on.

Soon after the session's close, he defended his dissertation, after which he'd planned to prepare for a tenure track position that began this fall. Garcia will join Arizona State at Tempe's Chicana and Chicano Studies Program. He was hired on the merits of his research, as well as for his extensive experience performing both mariachi music and classical saxophone, and directing ensembles.

- Written by Amy Locklin