This article describes the challenges we faced in building a social science outreach website specializing in popular music studies in northeastern Mexico and south Texas. It makes explicit the problems related to the models of social science communication that we have encountered. These challenges include communication and negotiation processes with those who collaborated in the construction of scientific knowledge and now do so in its dissemination stage, to which are added publicists or technicians in social communication. All of them always have similar and/or alternative visions to ours. The complexity of the dissemination work is highlighted and the notion that identifies it as a dispensable complement to the construction of scientific knowledge is combated.

Popular music constructs cultural narratives about romantic love, makes visible meanings of being a man and a woman, and practices related to gender violence. In this article we analyze the construction of romantic love as well as couple ideals in the lyrics of Sinaloa norteña and banda music. We conducted a thematic content analysis of 29 romantic ballads. We present the results in the categories of couple search, daily coexistence, eroticism, and separation from the couple. We conclude that myths and beliefs about romantic love are disseminated in the lyrics of the songs. These meanings recreate roles and interactions established by gender mandates, and crystallize conditions of violence and inequality between men and women.

This paper explores the role of music and emotions in the construction of transnational ties, based on two ethnographic vignettes related to nostalgia. On the one hand, this emotion prevails in the daily life of Mexican migrants in Houston, through their diverse practices, behind which Mexican popular music is present along with images of the terroir. On the other hand, in the context of the visit of migrants and their families to the places of origin in northeastern Mexico, popular music is heard to express their nostalgia and induce a nostalgic attitude in the spaces of family and social reunion, creating a distinct soundscape of the season of migrants' absence.