Jacqueline Peña Benitez She is a research associate at ciesas in the modality of scholarship for training in research techniques and methodologies. She is part of the research project Muerte y resurrección en la Frontera. Procesos de construcción de la cultura en el noreste de México y Texas, which was financed by the conacyt. She is a graduate of Sociology from the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León.

Temáticas

The Lives of the Accordion. Repairers and Social Life of a Musical Instrument in Monterrey

  • Jacqueline Peña Benitez
  • José Juan Olvera Gudiño

Keywords: accordion, anthropology of music, anthropology of crafts, craftsmen, Monterrey, cultural life of the instrument.

This article explores the practices and meanings surrounding the profession of accordion repairer in the metropolitan area of Monterrey, Mexico, making use of the cultural study of musical instruments and the anthropology and sociology of work. It describes the diversity of services offered under the term "repair" and highlights the amount and variety of knowledge required to maintain or embellish this "sound machine". It also describes the different ways to obtain and update them. In these processes, the skills of a technician can be identified at certain times, or of a craftsman at others; skills conditioned, but not determined, by the global processes of manufacture and circulation of this instrument.