How did son jarocho become a music for the immigrant rights movement?

ABSTRACT

Chicana/o activists and artists in Greater Los Angeles have turned son jarocho, a traditional music genre from southeastern Mexico, into an organizing resource and a means to express the plight of immigrants. Building on a movement that started in Mexico to reestablish the communal celebration of the fandango as the centre of the son jarocho tradition, these Chicana/o activists have reinterpreted fandangos as the enactment of community. They have also repurposed son jarocho and its lyrical content to articulate demands for the rights of undocumented immigrants and other social justice causes. These endeavours take place in community and cultural centres founded and led by a mix of immigrant generations: veterans of the Chicana/o civil rights movement of the 1970s, first generation immigrants and their adult children and grandchildren. These actors embrace fandangos as a metaphor and blueprint for community participation as they write new lyrics to demand justice for immigrants.

KEYWORDS:

• Son jarocho
• fandango
• immigrants
• Chicana/os
• community centres
• Los Angeles

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Musicians and scholars have recently emphasized son jarocho’s black roots (Hernández 2013) but others question this claim and call for more research that demonstrates how African rhythms influence the genre (Kohl S. 2010).

2. These poetic forms are prevalent in the Spanish and Latin American songbook and shared by son jarocho, Cuban and Venezuelan son, boleros and many other genres (Pérez Montfort 2003).

3. Gilberto Gutiérrez Silva, founder of Mono Blanco, explained that son jarocho is not a narrative genre at a workshop he offered in Los Angeles. I verified this claim by examining Meléndez de la Cruz’s (2004) compilation of the most popular verses of traditional sones.

4. Gottfried (2009) argues that these rules become less relevant in urban fandangos.

5. García de León (2009) states that the decline of fandangos was the result of the emigration of rural musicians who were drawn to the cities by the commercial success of the genre.

6. Tlacotalpan, Veracruz, hosts the most important son jarocho festival, which is organized to coincide with the patron saint celebrations of the Virgen de la Candelaria. On Tlacotalpan and its seminal relationship to son jarocho, see García Díaz (2016) and Pérez Montfort (1992).

7. To be sure, son jarocho does not exist in Mexico as an apolitical traditional music. A few sones, such as “Señor Presidente” (Mr. Presidente), explicitly address political themes. As early as 1996, Grupo Mono Blanco played at gatherings against neoliberalism organized by the Zapatistas in Chiapas. In Veracruz and elsewhere, jaraneras and jaraneros participate in demonstrations to protest government corruption and police repression. Collectives, like Centro de Documentación del Son Jarocho and Colectivo Altepee, both located in Veracruz, are using this music as part of community organizing projects, and well-known musicians, like Patricio Hidalgo, have written new lyrics with social justice themes. Interestingly, a group of jaraneras played in the June 2018 final campaign event of the left-of-centre candidate and now president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.

8. This reinterpretation of the fandango jarocho as the enactment of community was also aligned with the ideals of the jaranero movement in Mexico. However, the generation of musicians and cultural activists that led the movimiento emphasized the retrieval of the fandango jarocho as tradition (see Saucedo Jonapá 2013). According to Ávila-Landa (2013), this emphasis on tradition has produced a partnership of “strange bed fellows” between the state and the movement.

9. Encuentros de jaraneros are essentially son jarocho festivals modelled after the famed festival of Tlacotalpan, Veracruz. After the various son jarocho ensembles perform, the encuentro culminates with a fandango.

10. Similar scenes take place in cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, San Antonio, Austin and New York. Southern California Chicana/o activists have played a role in starting a son jarocho and fandango movement in some of these cities.

11. Son jarocho scholar, Rafael Figueroa Hernández (2016), argues that the portability of jaranas and requintos facilitate their use in demonstrations and political rallies.

12. The following lines are a composite of my participant observation in son jarocho workshops in Los Angeles, facilitated by local and visiting master jaraneros. See also Carolina Sarmiento’s (2008) M.A. thesis on an “immigrant-serving organization” in the Greater Los Angeles area and its connection to son jarocho.

13. The term 1.5 generation conceptualizes the experiences of foreign-born individuals who live part of their upbringing and schooling in the country of origin and part in the country of destination (Crul et al. 2012).

14. The bodies of jaranas and other guitars used in son jarocho are carved out of a single piece of wood, usually white cedar, instead of assembled out of wooden planks.

15. The creation of new verses—either improvised in situ or previously written for the occasion—is a regular practice in son jarocho. Singers chant these verses to the tune of existing sones (Figueroa Hernández 2016). But migration and the struggle for immigrant rights are largely absent as themes in the traditional son jarocho songbook in Veracruz. This is not surprising given that until the 1990s, Veracruz had been a state with low levels of U.S.-bound migration.

16. “The people organize and demand equality/ Your struggle is my struggle and you can count on me”.

17. “Hurray, hurray/ I am not with ICE/ And I never would be”.

18. “My dear iguana, what will you do now?/ I am going north in search of work/ is it a lie or is it true?/ that in those lands you earn more”.

19. “We have a long history together/ I was just a child/ When we wandered across the border/ That dividing line/Today immigration reform/ It is a fleeting message/ I won’t take one step back/Until I achieve this/ But in order to begin/ Not one more deportation”.