Western Folklife Center

Elko, Nevada

Mission

The mission of the Western Folklife Center is to enhance the vitality of American life through the experience, understanding, and appreciation of the diverse cultural heritage of the American West. This mission is implemented through the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, performances, exhibitions, educational programs, media productions (radio and television), research, documentation, and preservation projects that celebrate the wisdom, artistry, and ingenuity of the West’s varied occupational, tribal, ethnic, generational communities and traditions.

The Western Folklife Center (WFC) was formed in 1980 and is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated both in Nevada and Utah. Since 1985 the WFC has worked to heighten awareness and broaden audiences for traditional arts. The WFC is best known for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering , which has arguably started a grassroots artistic movement in the West. The WFC also produces regional programs and regular programming for public radio and television nationally. The WFC maintains a year-round cultural center in Elko, Nevada, which provides exhibitions, performances, and a full array of educational programs.

Beyond Borderlands: Mexican-American Ranch Traditions in the American West

Exploring the cultural threads that link communities in Mexico and the U.S., focusing on the living legacies of family-based Mexican ranch culture—the corridos , band music, craft work, foodways, stories, and occupational skills—as expressed in the American West today.

Community Context

The Western Folklife Center's area of research and presentation is the western United States and it is most known for its work with rural communities within this region. In any given year a number of traditional, ethnic, and/or occupational communities within a local, regional, and national arena may be served by the Western Folklife Center. Demographic shifts are continually taking place throughout the American West, and these have been well researched and documented. Recently, the growing Mexican presence throughout the West beyond the border regions, combined with rapid growth and change in rural communities, highlighted a need to document traditional expressive arts amidst these transformations. The Western Folklife Center’s Beyond Borderlands project looks to a range of Mexican and Mexican-American experiences, from new arrivals to descendents of multi-generation Mexican-American families.

Beyond Borderlands: Mexican-American Ranch Traditions in the American West

In 2007 and 2008 the Western Folklife Center implemented a research project titled, Beyond Borderlands: Mexican-American Ranch Traditions in the American West. Beyond Borderlands explored the cultural threads that link communities in Mexico and the U.S., specifically focusing on the living legacies of family-based Mexican ranch culture—the corridos , band music, craft work, foodways, stories, and occupational skills—as expressed in the American West today. Goals for Beyond Borderlands included fostering creativity in Latino communities around the West, identifying key vaqueros and performers who would contribute to the 2008 National Cowboy Poetry Gathering , highlighting the importance of the corrido tradition as a vehicle for sharing news, personal stories, and experiences through song, bridging cultural differences, and contributing to mutual understanding in a changing West. Beyond Borderlands also served as a companion project to Western Folklife Center research and fieldwork being conducted simultaneously in the Mexican states of Sonora and northern Sinaloa—led by folklorist Jim Griffith.

Beyond Borderlands consisted of several research, education, and presentation phases. In June, July, and August 2007, Folklife Center staff—including consultant fieldworker Juan Díes—traveled throughout northern Nevada, eastern Oregon, southern Washington, and central and western Idaho, documenting such arts of ranching life as handcrafted horse gear, traditional music and songs (especially corridos ), visual art, poetry, traditional cooking, and other occupational ranch skills and folklife. Fieldworkers explored traditions and artforms that have remained essential and meaningful over time, and adaptations that accommodate new landscapes, resources, and needs.

This documentation has provided material for Western Folklife Center podcasts and video and radio productions, and now resides in the Western Folklife Center Archives. The Idaho fieldwork was conducted in collaboration with the Idaho Commission on the Arts and served the dual purpose of providing material for updating their survey of Latino/a folklife th roughout the state. By combining our resources and vision we were able to expand the extent of the fieldwork conducted in Idaho.

In tandem to the fieldwork phase of Beyond Borderlands, Western Folklife Center staff designed and produced corrido contests (utilizing an existing tradition of event-based contests in the region) and composition workshops in Idaho and Oregon in collaboration with local Spanish-speaking organizations, media, and individuals. In addition to fostering creativity and highlighting important song traditions, these contests were developed to serve as fieldwork strategies to find skilled artists respected by their communities.

The first Gran Concurso de Corridos took place in July 2007, at the Hispanic Cultural Center of Idaho, in Nampa, Idaho. Anyone with a corrido to share was invited to participate; individuals as well as musical groups were welcome. We had a musician on hand to help contestants who were not musically inclined perform their corridos . There were 12 contestants in Idaho and they performed to an audience of about 175 people. A panel of local corrido musicians and specialists in Mexican arts awarded five cash prizes to the best entrants. Western Folklife Center staff made high-quality recordings of the corrido contest and offered a free CD recording of each contestant’s song as a gift to the contestant. Staff from the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage were also on hand to document the corrido contest for its upcoming online exhibition Música del Pueblo , which features a national panorama of profiles of Latino musicians in their community settings.

The second Gran Concurso de Corridos contest was held in August 2007, in Woodburn, Oregon, and was hosted by the Farmworker Housing Development Corporation at the Cipriano Ferrel Education Center. There were 17 contestants, five cash prizes were awarded to participants, and over 180 people attended the event. In addition to receiving the free recordings distributed at the event, winners of the Gran Concurso de Corridos were invited to showcase their songs at a festival celebrating KPCN-LP Radio Movimento’s first anniversary on the air. The festival was held the following day at the Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United (PCUN) union hall in Woodburn.

In conjunction with the corrido contests, Western Folklife Center staff collaborated with local Title One educators in Caldwell and Woodburn to produce two four-day corrido composition workshops for high school students. Students learned about the historical roots, themes, and structure of corridos through listening to and studying popular corridos , and writing their own corridos to commemorate a personal or community story. The workshops focused primarily on corrido writing—with topics ranging from honoring family members to immigration. Participants also worked with local and visiting musicians to put their corridos to music. Students illustrated their final corridos using a monoprint illustration technique. Corridos from the Woodburn workshop were displayed at the Woodburn contest and a student corrido writer was selected to be honored with the winning contestants.

Throughout 2007 and 2008 the Western Folklife Center produced media programs for the Beyond Borderlands project. The radio program Immigrant Song aired on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday and chronicled the Western Folklife Center’s fieldwork documentation of corridos . The program reveals that immigration is a recurring theme in many of the new corridos being written and sung by Mexicans living in the American West. Corridos were also featured in three Western Folklife Center produced podcasts: Corrido de los Latinos Unidos , Working for Dollars , and Sangre de Indio . Two What’s in a Song video productions featured Idaho musicians who are actively composing music and songs. The WFC also produced at short film called Sharing Sonora Music as part of our 2008 Guerilla Video Project, where videographers make short films about the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering . All of these programs can be experienced by visiting the Western Folklife Center’s website at www.westernfolklife.org .

In January and February 2008 the Western Folklife Center presented performances, films, events, and workshops featuring Mexican culture as part of the 24 th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. Cowboy and vaquero traditions have always been entwined, and the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering provided a rich background for exploring common ground—a unifier in not so unified times. Idaho corrido contest winner Lalo Barca and his band were invited to perform at the Gathering alongside musicians from Sonora, Mexico. Other programs exploring Mexican and vaquero contributions to ranching culture in the Wes t included cooking workshops, tortilla-making demonstrations, a corrido writing workshop for young people, music jam sessions in the Folklife Center’s Pioneer Saloon, corrido presentations/performances, education programs in the schools, two community dances, special interviews, local ranch tours, specially commissioned essays for the Gathering program book, round-table discussions about land use and border issues with ranchers from the borderland regions, presentations about local food production and issues in Sonora, Mexico, lectures and readings, and the exhibit The Rugged, Beautiful World of the Sonoran Vaquero which was curated by Jim Griffith, with Meg Glaser and Christina Barr of the WFC, and installed in the Western Folklife Center’s Weigand Gallery.

We hope to extend the life of this project by using the material collected and produced to provide grist for future collaborations and Western Folklife Center programs. In addition, this work is being shared with folklorists and others working throughout the region to facilitate new relationships and nurture these arts regionally. Special resources used to develop and implement these programs included: consultations with western states’ folklorists and other cultural specialists; Latino/a organizations, businesses, and traditional artists; Spanish-language media; and other social and information networks. Ultimately we hope that the outreach strategies we have developed during the Beyond Borderlands project will be used as models for future program development and community-based collaborations.

The Beyond Borderlands project was made possible, in part, by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Idaho Commission on the Arts, Oregon Historical Society Folklife Program, and many community partners in Woodburn, Oregon, and Boise, Nampa, and Caldwell, Idaho.

Learn more

Many of the media programs produced as part of this project, and performances by some of the Mexican artists featured in cybercast National Cowboy Poetry Gathering performances, can be found at www.westernfolklife.org . The exhibit The Rugged, Beautiful World of the Sonoran Vaquero is on display at the Western Folklife Center through September 2008. Essays relating to this project can be found in the 24 th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering program book. This project also produced a wealth of documentary material in the form of audio recordings, photographs, film, databases, and much more—all of which are housed in the Western Folklife Center Archives. Ultimately the Idaho survey portion of this project will contribute to the Idaho Commission on the Arts traditional artist database and the ICA website.

The Idaho-based corrido contest and the fieldwork leading up to the event were covered in a front-page New York Times article, Sad Songs Act as Heritage of Community.

Contact

Christina Barr

Program Outreach Coordinator

Western Folklife Center

501 Railroad Street

Elko, Nevada 89801

Office: 775-738-7508, x236

Cell: 775-340-0427

cbarr(at)westernfolklife.org

www.westernfolklife.org

Photos, top to bottom

Middle school students in Caldwell, Idaho, learning to write corridos.

Contestants at the Western Folklife Center's Gran Concurso de Corridos in Woodburn, Oregon.

Maria Lydia Martínez León teaches National Cowboy Poetry Gathering workshop participants to make Sonoran style flour tortillas.

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