Keywords: music community<\/a>, fandango<\/a>, border<\/a>, participatory music<\/a>, son jarocho<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n the sound creation of the jaranera community: reflections on the practice of son jarocho at the tijuana-san diego border<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n This article reflects on the collective practice of the son jarocho on the Tijuana-San Diego border. Interviews and participant observation at places where the son jarocho is played point to music and sound production's role in forging a sense of community among the players of this musical genre that has taken root on the U.S.-Mexican border in the past two decades. In addition to the findings of research conducted between 2020 and 2022 in this border area, the discussion includes information gathered over at least three decades in the Veracruz region, Mexico City, and other countries. Finally, in order to reveal how this particular music is conceived as an alternative to the daily experience of living along the border, musician testimonies shed light on the history of this music along the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keywords: fandango, border, music community, participant music, son jarocho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being jarocho in exile The city of Tijuana currently has a population of 1,922,523 people, according to data from the inegi<\/span> (2020). Of this population, a little more than half are people who were not born in this city and, despite the existence of a population census, there is a flow of people with peculiar mobility characteristics that are difficult to quantify. Of this population, there are people with dual U.S.-Mexico nationality, or people of Mexican origin who lived in the United States. u.s.a. <\/span>and for some reason returned to Mexico. In some cases this return is not the result of their own choice, but as a consequence of deportation. In other cases, there are people who go in and out of Mexico as a result of deportation. u.s.a. <\/span> continuously, which are referred to as commuters, <\/em>There are also people from transnational communities, such as indigenous people from various Mexican states who enter and leave the country on a continuous basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The migrant population to Tijuana historically comes from various Mexican states such as Sinaloa, Sonora, Jalisco, Oaxaca, Michoac\u00e1n or Zacatecas; but also from Latin American countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Peru, Venezuela, Nicaragua and from other countries in the world such as Russia, Romania, Turkey and West African countries. In the years from 2016 to 2023, there was a strong migration of population from countries such as Haiti, Ukraine, China, Turkey, Romania and India, as well as from some African countries, each with their respective cultural practices.2<\/a> Despite the efforts of U.S. and Mexican agencies to quantify migration as a whole and the population migrating or transiting the U.S.-Mexico border, there is still a need to quantify the number of people migrating and transiting the U.S.-Mexico border. u.s.a.<\/span> and Tijuana, the data will always be inaccurate, especially with regard to clandestine migration and the deaths resulting from it.3<\/a> Today the Tijuana-San Diego border is the busiest border crossing in the world with 130,266 daily crossings in 2022, a year that saw an annual crossing of 43,769,488.4<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the many cultural expressions from different countries and social groups that come in and out of the Tijuana-San Diego border region, there is a very particular musical tradition called son jarocho. This tradition originally flourished in southeastern central Mexico, specifically in the state of Veracruz and the Sotavento region, but has spread to different cosmopolitan spaces in Europe, Japan and the United States, including cities along the U.S.-Mexico border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This traditional Mexican genre has had an important diffusion in the last four decades, perhaps similar to that of the mariachi in its moment of national effervescence. Unlike the latter, which has an openly commercial character abroad, son jarocho has established itself as a musical practice preferably communitarian and horizontal in different cosmopolitan cities around the world where people of diverse citizenships and cultural origins tend to live.5<\/a> The groups of Jarocha music lovers have spread to different countries around the world thanks, on the one hand, to the migration of people; but above all, due to the media diffusion of the genre, which we will call the musical migration of son jarocho.<\/em> It is necessary to point out that currently this musical migration, particularly in Tijuana, is nourished by several factors. On the one hand, there is the community infrastructure created by jarocho musicians or son jarocho aficionados who, upon leaving their homes, are inserted into a complex network of migrant solidarity, while at the same time there are the relationships that some musicians and cultural managers have with non-governmental organizations, state and federal institutions interested in the dissemination of son jarocho. Through these organizations, it has been possible to spread the genre and attract some musicians from the Veracruz region, as well as to cover the inputs for the promotion and diffusion of son jarocho as a transcultural and cosmopolitan music. In the case of Paris, civil organizations such as the one that emerged in the independent space Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de Verre, was carried out first from community networks already established by Mexicans in Paris, and then with the invitation of jarocho musicians.6<\/a> (Rinaudo, 2019). The diffusion of the son jarocho in the border region, both in u.s.a.<\/span>. as in Mexico, has been possible thanks to the contacts and communications systematically established by border musicians with the jaranero communities of Veracruz origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What role do border, migrant and local musicians play in the cultural reproduction of this tradition? How do border musicians experience the musical foundations of a tradition in a context far from the original musical communities? To what extent do the participants of this musical movement deepen and appropriate both the sounds and their musical structures, as well as the social organization that accompanies them? What creative possibilities does son jarocho offer to migrant musicians and the border population to recreate their sonic cognition in a cosmopolitan society?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The objective of this article is to reflect on and analyze the conditions of the emergence and reproduction of musical communities associated with the performance of border son jarocho. For this purpose, we take up the testimonies provided by migrant and border musicians collaborating in this research, while examining the musical implications of sound reproduction, with the understanding that the performers possess diverse stimuli that make them participate in the reconfiguration of the sound universe of the northern border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An additional purpose of this work is to analyze and highlight music as a sociocultural articulator of the community environment on the border, so we include transcriptions, field recordings and testimonies that allow us to delve deeper into the subject. Prior to conducting this study, we participated in several fandangos and community meetings in the border region, whose primary objective was the performance and interpretation of son jarocho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being part of the jarocho community or being immersed with the people who are interested in son jarocho has allowed us to be part of the links that individuals live from within, as well as to analyze the community through their life experiences and their musical experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Musical migration is not a new phenomenon: instruments, influences and musical systems have enjoyed wide diffusion and mutual recreation between different cultures for centuries (Olmos, 2013: 1).7<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jarocho music is originally a peasant genre nourished by different traditions throughout history. Musical studies of son jarocho often exalt the African roots, the Andalusian influence and the indigenous influence (Loza, 1982; P\u00e9rez Montfort, 1992; Garc\u00eda de Le\u00f3n, 2002).8<\/a> It is well known that the son jarocho is nourished by the combination or crossbreeding of African music from the west coast that arrived in Mexico in the 20th century. xvii<\/span>The styles and sound universes of the ancient Nahua people of southeastern Mexico have been making up the musical mestizaje of what we know today as jarocho music. As will be specified below, the son jarocho is characterized for being a festive music, which is accompanied by jaranas: a stringed instrument in different tessituras, a bass or \"leona\" and a requinto or \"guitarra de son\", which performs the introductory melodies and counterpoints during the interpretation of the son jarochos. On some occasions, depending on the region and the possibilities of the performers, it is possible to include a tambourine, a donkey or horse jawbone, a harp or a violin. In the last decades, around 1990, the marimbol was introduced to the practice of son jarocho; however, this instrument had arrived in Mexico since the thirties of the 20th century. xx<\/span> with a Cuban group (Rebolledo, 2005). The marimbol, like the African sanza or mbira but larger, has a resonance box made of wood to which metal reeds are attached, which give it its own sonority when played with the fingers of the hands.9<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The artistic communities created from the son jarocho have discovered a reason to meet with the music, but also with their national imaginaries and in some cases with their regional ancestors. The portentous diffusion and creation of jarocho communities would be incomprehensible if we did not count on the history that made possible the diffusion of this tradition. Jarocha music, as Olmos (2020) has pointed out, emerges with a massive component of origin thanks to the jaranero meetings organized by Radio Educaci\u00f3n in Mexico City at the end of the seventies. The great live broadcasting of the son jarocho encounters was one of the most important components that triggered its expansion (P\u00e9rez Montfort, 2002). Some years later, the first three discs were published. lp<\/span> with the recordings of these encounters (Radio Educaci\u00f3n, n.d.). From then on, soneros from Mexico City and the center of the country also cultivated a taste for son jarocho. In this context, workshops and fandangos proliferated as natural places and spaces for the jarocho party (Garc\u00eda D\u00edaz, 2022). Workshops were held both in Mexico City and in the cities of Puebla and Xalapa. This situation also stimulated the youth of the late 1970s to take action on the vindication of the son jarocho of their places of origin. According to interviews with the producers of Radio Educaci\u00f3n, they themselves highlighted the leadership of Gilberto Guti\u00e9rrez, director of the group Mono Blanco since the early eighties, who together with other musicians and intellectuals of the region, such as Antonio Garc\u00eda de Le\u00f3n, were just some of the stimuli that brought together the youth around the son jarocho movement.10<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, in the Mexican-American scene, in which it is not possible to speak fully of jarocha communities but of diverse Mexican communities settled in California, we cannot fail to mention the incursions that Lino Ch\u00e1vez and Andr\u00e9s Huesca had in the cities of Tijuana and Los Angeles since the thirties, or Arcadio Hidalgo himself in the eighties (Cardona, 2011: 133; Pascoe, 2003: 46). However, in general terms, the expressions of jarocha music in u.s.a.<\/span> in the first half of the century xx<\/span> and until the 1970s were cultivated in a marginal way with respect to the local Jarocho region and the Mexican national culture itself. As mentioned by Cardona and Rinaudo, the Chicano population appropriated the African roots of son jarocho to fight against white racism in Mexico. u.s.a.<\/span>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some musicians of the jaranero movement connected to the academic world appropriated the themes of afromestizaje, of the inscription of son jarocho within what Garc\u00eda de Le\u00f3n (1992) called \"el Caribeafroandaluz\" and of the history of this cultural heritage in the Sotavento (Delgado, 2004), with the objective not of \"blackening\" this practice, that is, of its definition as \"black\", but of \"de-blackening\", of reincorporating its African heritage, along with the indigenous and Spanish, in musical projects (Cardona and Rinaudo, 2017: 5).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Afro-Andalusian claim has been well mentioned in virtually all research on son jarocho. However, except for the research by Delgado and Garc\u00eda de Le\u00f3n, relatively few studies have delved into the primordial indigenous component of son jarocho as part of this Afro-Mestizo musical expression.11<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the relationships established between Chicano organizations in the major cities of the region and the u.s.a.<\/span> at no time did they consider the possibility of spreading the expressions of jarocho music to the border. It must be recognized that since the 1950s, the son jarocho continued through musical channels and networks of Chicano groups, exalted in well-known characters such as Ritchie Valens or Los Lobos (Loza, 1982; Hern\u00e1ndez, 2014). However, in the last two decades, the focus of jarocho diffusion in both countries coincided in the Fandango Fronterizo held at the Tijuana-San Diego border in 2008, despite the fact that there were already some fandangos and musical gatherings in border cities both on the Mexican side and in the United States.12<\/a> The history of the Chicano son jarocho and the local history of Tijuana coincided at the end of the first decade of the year 2000 with the creation of the Fandango Fronterizo, but in reality, with respect to the history of the son jarocho in other cities of Tijuana, the history of the son jarocho in other cities of the country, the history of Tijuana and the history of the son jarocho in other cities of u.s.a.<\/span>. these are very different historical and musical processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The concept of community in anthropological sciences has been changing throughout history, since the local community referred to by anthropologists 50 or 60 years ago has changed radically (Aguirre Beltr\u00e1n, 1967; Bonfil, 1987; Lisbona, 2005). In various anthropological investigations, Roughly speaking,<\/em> the community is defined as an entity articulated by solidarity networks where each of its participants knows his or her role and fulfills it for the collective benefit. This role is carried out as a religious duty or derived from the uses and customs established by a historical structure that also depends on the positions, commitments and responsibilities agreed upon collectively within their societies. In the words of Manuel Delgado, \"wherever human beings are related by their own will in an organic way and are affirmed among themselves, we will find one or another form of community\" (Delgado, 2005: 40).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Participants in the sonorous community<\/em> who have formed around son jarocho are from the most diverse social strata and nationalities: workers, professionals, academics, musicians, bureaucrats, housewives, married and single women and men, Mexicans born in the United States, Mexicans born in Veracruz and other parts of Mexico, Americans without Mexican ancestry and a myriad of possibilities of the profiles of each of those who enjoy this genre. In this context, the participants assume different responsibilities: some lead workshops, others learn music and others manage the spaces and economic support. In addition to the help they can get from civil and governmental organizations, jarocho musicians are often hosted in the homes of the same local jaraneros who organize the fandangos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As some anthropologists such as Kearney (1991) and Gardu\u00f1o (2017) have specified, the transnational community finds some features that do not belong to the classical definition of community as an entity that establishes ties of solidarity and cooperation while sharing a historical and socio-cultural reality. Now the community is transnational back and forth in a constant cyclical movement, so that the musical influences end up being reciprocal and mutually influential of the communities that we used to call communities of origin and destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
has no other explanation,
the same sad reason
happens all over the world
and in the same trough
have us all drinking,
by force and in any case
capital drags us down,
that damned animal
that is killing everything.
Fernando Guadarrama<\/em>1<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nIntroduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Historical notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\n <\/i>\n <\/a>\n <\/figure> <\/div> \n <\/div>\n Son's community at the border<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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