The Berkeley Folklore Roundtable Presents:

"From Potosí to Tennessee: Clandestine Desires and the Sounds of Crossing…"

Dr. Alex Chávez , University of Notre Dame
March 20, 2018, 5:00-7:00 PM
221 Kroeber Hall, Gifford Room
UC BERKELEY

How do Mexican migrant “voices” desire recognition and connection through performance? Lyrical greetings draw poetic lines of desire between San Luis Potosí and Tennessee, disturbing legal and nationalist logics on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The lecture explores how expressive musical negotiations participate in place-making and leverage “sound” as an aesthetic and communicative resource to negotiate the social structures they critically engage.

Alex E. Chávez is a Linguistic Anthropologist, Ethnomusicologist, multi-instrumentalist, and Folklorist whose research explores Latino expressive culture. His work documents how performance intersects with larger concerns surrounding mobility, race, and the intimacies that bind everyday life across physical and cultural borders. He is the author of Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke 2017) and a producer and performer of huapango arribeño ensemble music from north-central Mexico.

Sponsored by the Berkeley Folklore Graduate Program