“Place, Time, and Space in Huasteca Music”

Dr. Raquel Paraiso

206 Ingraham Hall | VIRTUAL
@ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Dr. Raquel Paraiso

About the presentation: In the Huasteca region of northeastern Mexico, music plays a central role in festivals and celebrations related to religious and secular (agricultural and life cycle celebrations). Traditional music can transmit continuity and transformation, two basic aspects in the development of social groups. Through music, symbolic and identity processes that are basic to the constitution of such groups are constructed. These processes take place in spaces that are built through music, a symbolic anchor. In this presentation, I analyze the construction of place and space through music and particularly, through sones performed during Xochitinih, Carnival, and Xantolo celebrations in three communities in the Huasteca region of Veracruz and Hidalgo. The production of place and space is a process marked by ideology/belief and determined by collective experience, memory, intention, and meaning. Listening practices are an intrinsic part of the musical/social experience.

About the presenter: Raquel Paraíso, a researcher, musician, and educator earned a B.A. in violin performance from the Conservatory of Music in Salamanca, Spain. She holds a Master’s in Violin Performance, a Master’s in Ethnomusicology, and a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her areas of interest focus on cultural politics of music and music production of place, identity, and ethnicity in Latin American music at large and Mexican music, in particular. Her current research in Mexican traditional music examines issues of symbolism, embodiment, and sound in contemporary gendered, globalized, and transnational scenarios. Her research and field recordings have been published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge Scholars, and Penguin Random House, as well as El Colegio de Michoacán, the National Institute of Anthropology (INAH) and Revista de Literaturas Populares (UNAM). She has presented her work at numerous national and international academic conferences for both academic audience and the general public. In her serie of podcast Músicos tradicionales de México/Traditional musicians from México (Spotify & Raquel’s YouTube channel), Raquel explores new ways to talk about music and musicians while experimenting with expressive ways to write about the topic. Versatile as a musician and scholar, she teaches violin at CIMI-Universidad Veracruzana, and is actively involved with the practice and performance of Latin American music with the group Sotavento, recepient of a FONCA-SACPC (2021-2023) grant from the Secretary of Culture of Mexico for their composition project El viaje de Papalotl, Mexican traditional music for children of all ages.