Songs and Stories from the Migrant Songbook
Join acclaimed East Los Angeles-Veracruz son jarocho
ensemble Cambalache, author and MacArthur Fellow Josh Kun, and Dartmouth Professor of Music William Cheng, for a special night of songs, stories, and musical scholarship. Based
on Camblache’s songs about immigration, gentrification, and memory and Kun’s research and writing on music and immigration, this collaborative hybrid performance has been assembled especially for this one of a kind evening.
Cambalache (from
a Spanish word that means exchange), is a group of musicians from East LA., who play son jarocho music from Veracruz, Mexico, popular on the Gulf Coast, a cultural region shaped by indigenous, African, and Spanish culture. Cambalache promotes traditional Son
Jarocho music that draws the audience in to participate in their performances in the spirit of the fandango, a traditional celebration based on music and dance. Cambalache was founded in 2007 and is led by Cesar Castro (Master Luthier Sonero and Jarocho from
Veracruz, Mexico).
Josh Kun is
an author and editor of several books about music, Los Angeles, and the US-Mexico border, most recently The
Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles (UC Press, 2017). He is Professor in the Annenberg School of Communication and the Department of American
Studies and Ethnicity at USC and is the winner of a 2006 American Book Award and 2017 Berlin Prize. He is a 2016 MacArthur Fellow.
William Cheng is
Assistant Professor of Music at Dartmouth College and formerly a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He is the author of Just Vibrations (U
Michigan Press, 2016) and Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination (Oxford
UP, 2014), and coeditor of the new Music & Social Justice series via U Michigan Press.
Saturday, October 21st, 7 pm, House Center B (The
Cube).