Hutchins Lecture with Cathy Ragland

Hutchins Lecture with Cathy Ragland, visiting assistant professor in ethnomusicology, University of North Texas, “‘Orale Raza, here’s my brown soul’: The Mexican American Voice in American Popular Music.” Introduced by David Garcia, associate professor, Department of Music, UNC. The event will be held in the Kresge Foundation Common Room, 039 Graham Memorial Hall, adjacent to the Morehead Planetarium on East Franklin Street.

Dr. Ragland is an ethnomusicologist whose interests include music of the Borderlands, Mexico and the Hispanic Southwest, regional American and country music, Cuban popular music, traditional, and popular musics of Spain, North Africa, and the Balkans.Her book, Música Norteña: Mexican Migrants Creating a Nation Between Nations, was published in May 2009 by Temple University Press. A native of San Antonio, where she was a popular music and arts critic for the San Antonio Express-News, she spent several years in Texas and elsewhere as a public folklorist. Her talk will explore the impact of Mexican American music styles such as Tex-Mex conjunto and norteña on American popular music.