An Interview with Chris Strachwitz of the Arhoolie Foundation
Our April 8 lecture will feature music from the Arhoolie Foundation's Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican-American Recordings, presented by long-time collector Chris Strachwitz. Recently, Chris took a few minutes out of his day to talk to us about the collection and the Arhoolie Foundation's efforts to make these rare recording available to everyone. Here's what he had to say:
1. Can you tell us briefly about the Arhoolie Foundation and the work you are doing?
The Arhoolie Foundation was established in 1995 as a not-for-profit educational organization for the purpose of documenting, presenting, preserving, and disseminating authentic traditional and regional vernacular music. We have accomplished a number of projects ranging from a documentary film about the use of the steel guitar in the House of God Holiness Church, to a film about the pioneer urban old-time music group "The New Lost City Ramblers," to presenting live corridistas at several International Conferences on the Corrido. By far our biggest project has been the digitization of the Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican-American Recordings. Inspired by the late Professor Guillermo Hernandez of UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center, we have completed the digitization of approximately 17,000 78 rpm discs (34,000 selections) which can now be accessed via the UCLA Digital Library web site via www.arhoolie.org. This project was funded by the Los Tigres del Norte Foundation, the NEA, the Grammy Foundation, and the Fund For Folk Culture. We are now continuing this project by digitizing the roughly 23,000 45 rpm discs in the collection.
2. How did you become interested in this project, and why do you feel it's important to preserve these recordings?
As a life long collector of vernacular music on records, I became aware that hardly anyone else was collecting or paying much attention to the incredibly rich musical and cultural content of Mexican and Mexican-American commercial records. I personally had become very fond of the sounds of Norteno music with its lilting accordions and crying rural vocal duets, which were very pervasive on all my many trips driving through south Texas and the southwest. But I also got interested in other regional Mexican genres such as mariachi, Texas conjuntos, bandas, Jarocho and Huastecan music, conjuntos from Michoacan, and of course the incredible historic content of the corridos. Guillermo Hernandez was the first scholar to seriously visit my ever-growing collection in the 1970s. Guillermo made me aware of what a unique treasure trove I was accumulating, especially since many of the discs are one of a kind -- where the original masters no longer exist. As the digitization of such artifacts became available in the 1990s, I was advised to donate the collection to a foundation while I could hold on to them in my life time!
3. What do you see as the ultimate goal of your project? What would you like to see as a final result of your work?
I want this material to be available free on the internet to everyone -- especially the people whose culture created it. Unfortunately, since copyright may apply to many of the discs, if listeners find them on the UCLA web site, they can at this time only listen to 60 seconds -- but they can hear the entire performance if they visit the library in person. I hope that this will soon change and that all of the records (along with the encyclopedia which we are also developing about this music) will become available for downloading either for free or for a very small royalty.
4. What can people expect if they come to your free lecture on April 8?
Time permitting, we will give you an overview of the incredible variety of sounds and songs in the collection -- from the early days of recorded music (the first mariachi was recorded in 1908 as Cuarteto Coculense), to the amazing comedy skits of the carpas in the 1930s, the great singers and instrumentalists from the border area such as Lydia Mendoza and Narciso Martinez, the bolero singers like Chelo Silva, the early string bands and orchestras, on to the wonderful duets of the past. We will give a special emphasis to songs dealing with the Bracero Program and the subsequent struggles of "mojados" -- and of course present some significant corridos dealing with intercultural strife.
We will present the program in English but our digitizer, Antonio Cuellar, will hopefully be there and respond in Spanish. Tom Diamant will do the computer work, and hopefully we will have a good sound system and screen for your pleasure!