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November 9, 1998

Lecture and demonstration will feature Mexican folk music

By Jennifer McNulty

In collaboration with San Jose's Mexican Heritage Corporation, UCSC is presenting "Sones de Mexico," a special lecture/demonstration featuring folk musicians and scholars from Mexico. The event will be held on Wednesday, November 11, from 4 to 6 p.m. at Stevenson Dining Hall. The presentation, which will be conducted in Spanish, is free and open to the public.

The son is a distinctive genre of traditional Mexican music characterized by strong cross rhythms and improvisation that are essential to its instrumental, lyrical, and dance elements. The son is found throughout Mexico with notable regional differences in instrumentation and performance style.

Participants include Los Camperos de Valles, a folk ensemble specializing in sones huastecos, and Chuchumbe, an urban ensemble from southern Veracruz that specializes in sones jarochos. In addition, two scholars from Mexico will accompany the group. Armando Herrera is the director of culture in San Luis Potosi, and Antonio Gracia de Leon is an ethnomusicologist from the University of Veracruz. Artemio Posadas, senior scholar and director of the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, is the artistic director of the presentation.

The presentation will be conducted as a roundtable discussion hosted by Olga Najera-Ramirez, associate professor of anthropology; John Schechter, associate professor of music; Guillermo Delgado, a lecturer in Latin American and Latino studies; and Russell Rodriguez, a graduate student in anthropology who performs traditional Mexican music.

Stevenson College is hosting the event; cosponsors include the Chicano/Latino Research Center, the Latin American and Latino studies program, the Anthropology Department, and the Student Affairs Division.

For more information, call (831) 459-3108.


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