"Music is a wonderful way to connect people," says the director of Chicana/o and Latinx Studies at UW-Oshkosh, Juan Garcia Oyervides. As the first director of the new interdisciplinary program, he was looking for ways to engage the campus and larger Fox Valley communities with the culture and history of Wisconsin's Latinx communities. The first thing he did was look around the Fox Valley to find out what was already happening and what community members were interested in. What resulted was a series of events, funded in part by a grant from Wisconsin Humanities, called 'Wisconsin’s Mariachi Academia Popular.'
"Every time we share a theatrical event with someone else, there is a beautiful instant that comes with the end of each piece where audiences can recognize each other’s emotions as well as their own. We can also further appreciate the ways in which our differences become relevant and irrelevant," Juan explained in April, just before one of the first events at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. The events continued through the spring in Oshkosh and Appleton, offering many opportunities to hear live performances by Mariachi bands and engage in conversations about the music's history, evolution, and importance in communities in Wisconsin.
Why Mariachi Music?
Mariachi popular, or mariachi campesino as it’s sometimes referred to, can be traced back to the 1500s. In local celebrations for weddings, funerals, or other religious events, musical trios were often accompanied by dancers. “These traditional practices spread throughout the Spanish colonial territories of what was then called 'New Spain,' yielding a vast repertoire of music that people continued to call Mariachi," Juan explained in a brief history of Mariachi music. The Mexican revolution in the early 20th century brought the music to the cities, and eventually to the United States, and these musical forms and traditions have evolved to be the theatrical, large ensemble performances seen today in both Mexico and the U.S. You can read more of this history here.
'Wisconsin’s Mariachi Academia Popular' events included live performances by Mariachi bands from Wisconsin and Texas followed by discussions with musical experts, scholarly keynote addresses, as well as lectures on the UW-Oshkosh campus that were made accessible to the community. All events were free and open to the public. Together, the program showcased an increasingly popular form of music that is meaningful to Wisconsin's diverse Latinx population.
'Wisconsin’s Mariachi Academia Popular' brought people together for shared experiences and offered time to reflect and learn more about a tradition that continues to evolve within Wisconsin communities.
We invited project director Juan Garcia Oyervides to tell us more about the project and the impact it has had in the Fox Valley.
WH: What was the inspiration for your project? What need did you notice in your community?
Juan: The inspiration came from multiple sources, but the most important was the input we got from the community members themselves. As a new academic program in a regional university, we were particularly interested in aligning ourselves with the needs of the community, but also with the ongoing efforts to address these needs. So, the first thing we did was reach out. We learned quickly that there was a growing interest in learning more about Mexican American culture in the region, and that a few businesses and student groups were already trying to get more visibility to the cultural contributions brought about by the emerging Latinx communities in the Fox Valley. The connection became obvious at that point, few things are flashier and louder than a mariachi ensemble.
WH: How has the project evolved? What have you learned?
Juan: The project started as simple as possible, given the fact that this would be a first for us, and for many of the folks involved. So we planned to engage with the mariachi ensembles that were already known to the community. We reached out to Mariachi Monarcas de Milwaukee, who already had done some work in the area and was an ensemble already known. During their visit we had an interesting discussion about being famous, and I think they were pleasantly surprised to see that they were already famous in this area. People have worked with them here, and they remember them too. When we got in touch with Mariachi Paredes de Tejastitlan, and their then music director, Dr. Torres, the conversation shifted significantly. Their experience, and the fact that they were a university ensemble really made a difference in our approach. On the one hand, we are not only looking at what our local institution could do for the community, but how our collective institutional affiliations could engage with the efforts that were already ongoing locally. In a sense, the more people got involved, the more changes we had to make, but that also made this experience so rich and unique. Each individual brought about an enormous amount of cultural wealth to the conversations, and to the engagements themselves.
WH: How can you tell if a "Building Community" is happening? Can you describe one of the events that was particularly special or effective?
Juan: This is an important question, and one that I keep asking myself over and over. I think it is important to recognize that every community is different, and that they change over time. This means that the ways in which those communities build themselves up can also look very different. In our case, we were really lucky to see those important moments of growth and rediscovery happen in real time. The project was able to initiate new conversations by bringing people together that had never met before, but also by reconnecting people who had known each other for years and never had the opportunity to think about mariachi music, and the role that the folk arts and its appreciation play in strengthening those preexisting relationships.
WH: How has the project impacted the campus? Oshkosh more generally?
Juan: I like to think that it has had a big impact on it. On one hand, we were able to bring a significant number of people who had never set foot on campus before. Many of the attendees for our larger events were community members. On the other hand, we were able to establish a huge precedent by occupying spaces on campus that had never before been dedicated to celebrate Latinx arts and their connections to the broader knowledge ecologies in our academic community.
WH: What did funding from WH allow you to do?
Juan: It completely expanded the scope of what we were able to achieve. And it wasn't just the money, but also the award itself contributed to the visibility of the project, and the uniqueness of the project itself. The institutional weight of the Wisconsin Humanities, for example, opened up a lot of doors for us, and that is important, because that meant we were able to get peoples trust and recognition. For the Chicana/o & Latinx Studies program and for the project, both elements are essential.
WH: What is next for the project? Anything else you would like to share?
Juan: The reception we got everywhere we went was great. A lot of people asked us when we would be back, and I think that is a great sign. We also learned what worked better and what we needed to improve to meet the needs of the community more effectively. So, we are already planning on a second iteration of the project for next year. We hope to continue building up the relationships we formed along the way, and invite more people to engage with this initiative in 2025.
WH: For people who were not able to attend or want to learn more, how can they dig in or support your work?
Juan: We are working on a website to serve as a depository for all the materials we collected in this project. We hope to make it available by the end of June. People will be able to find short clips of the events and other important information through the website.
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