In this book, anthropologist Alex Chavez focuses on the central Mexican huapango arribeño, a poetic and improvisatory song tradition that is often supported by a combination of violins, jaranas huastecas, and guitarras huapangeras. More specifically, he explores how this music is tied to the experiences of Mexican migrants, fitting his discussion within the broader discourse of music and migration along the U.S.-Mexican border. This discourse is rich with works from several ethnomusicologists who have focused on distinct U.S.-Mexican traditions, including Manuel Peña’s work on Tejano musics (1999), Helena Simonett’s work on banda (2001), Sydney Hutchinson’s work on quebradita and duranguense (2007), and Cathy Ragland’s work on música norteña (2009). However, as far as this reviewer is aware, Chavez is correct when he notes that, with regard to huapango arribeño, “no other major source exists on the topic” (76). Furthermore, he assumes a unique interpretive lens in considering transnationalism as an active process of migration that musicians regularly engage with, rather than seeing the Mexican transnational experience as constituting a separate space that migrants create and inhabit (22).
Chavez’s broader goal with this work is to demonstrate how “huapango arribeño music and poetics . . . are the creative embodiments of social and individual engagements with the U.S.-Mexico transnational social and political-economic formation” (19). He accomplishes this mostly through an analysis of huapango lyrics he collected during his fieldwork, although he also considers the aesthetics and experience of huapango performance from the perspectives of both performers and audience members. Overall, Chavez interprets his ethnographic findings through a wide variety of theoretical frameworks that include cultural poetics, intertextuality, phenomenology, spatiality, transnationalism, and ethnonationalism. Along with this multi-faceted treatment of ethnographic data, Chavez also includes extensive literature reviews focusing on discussions relevant to his discussion, such as those in border studies. In fact, the author’s masterful oscillation between critiques of existing literature and his own ethnographic reflections makes for a wonderfully engaging and convincing book overall.
The pervasiveness of Chavez’s critiques can hardly be overstated. It is more common than not for this author to critique not only scholarly discourses but also the theoretical frameworks he is using. He even explains why he decides to use certain terms over others, for example “aural poetics” instead of “cultural poetics” (7); a more polysemic form of “voicing” instead of a strictly musical one (20-21); “migrant” instead of “immigrant” (21); and “crossing” in conjunction with “transnationalism” (22). No source alluding to huapango is safe from Chavez’s critical discussions; not even, in one instance, a bachelor’s thesis (73-74). The benefits of this extensive critical lens are twofold. First, the author demonstrates his awareness of the relevant literature, and thus asserts his authority to comment on it in the context of his research. Second, this significantly broadens the book’s audience. Readers who are not particularly interested in huapango but still wish to engage with broader Mexican or U.S.-Mexican academic discourses, have much to gain from Chavez’s discussions on the Mexican construction of the rancho (44-45), portrayals of musical practices in Mexican cinema (37-39), historical and scholarly uses of the term son (71-72), the history of the corrido (211-214), and even the academic idea of death as a Mexican totem (293-297), to name just a few examples.
The chapters in this book delve into different aspects of the huapango tradition and can roughly be split into three sections. The first, which consists of only chapter 1, outlines the historical development of sonic constructions tied to Mexican identity in the twentieth century, both in the United States and in Mexico. The second aspect, treated in chapter 2, focuses on the social, musical, and poetic structures that form the fundamental characteristics of huapango music. Finally, a third section—chapters 3 through 6—explores different themes presented in huapango performances and how they are connected to the migrant experiences shared by both performers and listeners.
In chapter 1, “Aurality and the Long American Century,” Chavez looks at how the development of Mexican identity, and the sounds tied to this identity, became increasingly emblematic, even in the United States. Furthermore, Chavez discusses how Mexican cinema not only shaped the types of sounds that became coded as Mexican, but also shaped how those sounds were perceived in Mexican and U.S. society. The world of the Mexican rancho indexed by these sounds essentially became the source of an “authentic” Mexican culture, but while many listeners favored the pastoral scenes expressed through this national imaginary, others resented the antimodern sentiments expressed by these portrayals that, to them, presented Mexico as “backward” and “primitive” (47). Understanding this history is essential for understanding why some U.S. listeners may conflate multiple forms of Mexican music—including huapango—as part of a stereotypical “Mexican sound” that indexes “primal festivity, carefree and unserious expression, and pastoral backwardness” (42).
Fully aware that this book is the first major work of its kind, Chavez, in his second chapter, “Companions of the Calling,” discusses the musical and poetic structures that are fundamental to huapango music. However, the author emphasizes that huapango is not a rigidly fixed style; he comments on the improvisational nature of the poetry and the wide array of non-lyrical sonic options available to instrumentalists. Chavez includes lyrics and Western-style music transcriptions to support this discussion, and he includes a fuller collection of both lyrics and music in two appendices. Next, he deals with the expected rules of engagement between competing huapango musicians and explains how these rules are realized or negotiated in practice. As support, he references his own experience as a huapango musician and his ethnographic observations of other performers.
Chapters 3 through 6 elaborate on how different, yet shared, migrant experiences are expressed in huapango music, with a heavy emphasis placed on the lyrics. The author thoroughly discusses and contextualizes historical trends throughout the late twentieth century before delving into discussions on how huapango engages with them. For example, in chapter 3, “Verses and Flows at the Dawn of Neoliberal Mexico,” Chavez discusses economic policies such as NAFTA that led to economic disenfranchisement among Mexican farmers who would then migrate across the northern border in search of work. After this context is firmly established, he proceeds to discuss how huapango musicians are able to connect with their audiences through lyrics referencing the shared experience of labor migration along a migratory circuit connecting rural Mexican communities to diasporic communities living in Mexico City or the United States. Chapter 4, “Regional Sounds: Mexican Texas and the Semiotics of Citizenship,” adopts a similar approach, but this chapter places far greater emphasis on the ethnonationalist sentiments in the United States that fuel efforts to marginalize Mexican migrants. Chapter 5, “From Potosí to Tennessee: Clandestine Desires and the Poetic Border,” explores notions of spatiality and how far-away spaces are called to and imagined through huapango performance. Chapter 6, “Huapango sin Fronteras: Mapping What Matters and Other Paths,” considers not only how singers map out the many spaces that are scattered along migratory circuits, but also how listeners are united through inter-affective engagements along these circuits through huapango performances that engage with shared experiences tied to shared spaces.
The depth of Chavez’s critical discussions is often remarkable. The dedication of almost an entire chapter to huapango’s formal and sonic characteristics is most welcome, especially considering the author’s primary specialization in anthropology. However, although the singing voice is frequently mentioned with regard to lyrics, and instrumental practices are discussed at length in chapter 2, a treatment of the sonic characteristics of the singing voice is notably absent, beyond the occasional—and brief—comment describing a singer’s vocal quality (77), or the “chantlike” organizational nature of décima singing in huapango improvisation (89). Although this absence does not compromise Chavez’s argument, a space is left open for considerations on how certain vocal timbres work with or against huapango lyrics.
An example: early in the book, Chavez recalls a group conversation he had with some of his interlocutors, noting that as one of them told a story, he would shift the “timbre of his words,” and elevate “the pitch of his voice, as if calling out to someone across a distance” (17). Although the interlocutor was not singing, he was calling out across space and time while telling his story; this reviewer cannot help but wonder if such vocal adjustments are present during the performance of huapango themes discussed in chapter 5, especially since those themes focus on how performers bridge and cross “geographic distances between people and places” (259). By extension, this reviewer wonders if there would also be an inter-affective element tied to particular instrumental phrases. Chavez notes that some listeners do indeed respond to sonic elements of huapango performance such as key changes (94), and he further notes how references to other genres are occasionally inserted into huapango performance (100). Could such strategies, along with the presence of recurring improvisational figures, point toward other ways that performers and listeners engage with inter-affectivity or geographic crossings?
Sounds of Crossing offers a worthy introduction to huapango arribeño through its engaging ethnographic accounts, critical dialogues, lyrical and musical materials, and highly effective photographs. Furthermore, the book offers a contemporary critique of U.S.-Mexican border studies in anthropology and ethnomusicology that any reader can benefit from. Although the sheer density of academic engagement interspersed throughout the book may be unappealing to some non-academic readers, all readers can learn from Chavez’s skillful presentation and critique of multiple voices, whether they come from within the academy or from the migratory circuits along which huapango arribeño travels.
Works Cited
Hutchinson, Sydney. From Quebradita to Duranguense: Dance in Mexican American Youth Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007.
Peña, Manuel. Musica Tejana: The Cultural Economy of Artistic Transformation. College Station: Texas A&M; University Press, 1999.
Ragland, Cathy. Música Norteña: Mexican Migrants Creating a Nation Between Nations. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009.
Simonett, Helena. Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
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[Review length: 1649 words • Review posted on May 28, 2020]