Ballads of la gente

Era una tarde muy triste

fecha la tengo presente ...

La gente andaba asustada

si no hallaba qué pensar.

It was a sad afternoon

on that date I remember ...

The people were wandering frightened

and didn't know what to think.

-- "El corrido de San Marcial"

In 1929 the good people of San Marcial, a dry little town in central New Mexico, found themselves cursed by rain. Tons of water had flooded the banks of the nearby Río Grande, making life even more difficult than usual. The waters revisited the people again in 1937 -- and the burden was such that la gente (the people) gave up their old lives and cherished homes. They abandoned San Marcial.

These days it's hard to relate to that kind of displacement,

to taste the fear and feel the confusion that befell the Hispanos of that sad little town. But when words and melodies and feelings consort with one another in just the right way, it's almost like being there, if only fleetingly. For many generations, the corridistas of New Mexico have been telling such stories of la gente in song. Indeed, the corrido, basically a narrative ballad about momentous events, has a long and glorious history in New Mexico -- as do other forms of New Mexican folk music such as the indita, romance, and nueva canción.

Nuestra Música -- a showcase of several of New Mexico's best traditional musicians that takes place at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Saturday, April 23 -- offers a rare opportunity to hear some of these powerful old songs and a few new ones as well. Featured artists include Chuy Martínez and Oti Ruiz, who perform music from throughout Latin America; Trio de Jalapeño, top-notch musicians who represent the local flavor of northern New Mexico and play dance music, polkas, waltzes, and a variety of regional styles; Voz del Pueblo, many of whose corridos tell the story of the Hispano copper miners around Silver City, N.M.; and Los Reyes de Alburquerque, one of the state's most popular folk groups. At 1 p.m. in Burro Alley, adjacent to the theater, Los Matachines will perform a traditional Native American dance that was heavily influenced by the early Spanish. The day's events and concert are produced in association with the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art.

"What we've tried to do is create a sense of real diversity," said master of ceremonies Jack Loeffler, a noted ethnomusicologist who has been collecting and documenting field recordings of traditional Hispano and Native American musicians for three decades. "In the Hispano music I know, there is such a deep soul, and it's filled with beauty and it's something I hope people radiate in. ... I'd like to see people who are not a part of Hispano culture appreciate a sense of the enormous beauty that lies within."

¡Ay, qué lástima de pueblo

cómo quedó destrozado!

Por en medio de las calles,

lomas de arena quedaron.

Oh, what a pitiful town,

how it was ruined!

In the middle of all the streets,

hills of sand remained.

Talk to any ethnomusicologist in the know, or any old-timer, and you'll find that much of the New Mexican folk tradition has been lost due to death, displacement, indifference -- the inevitable consequences of a rapidly changing world. During World War II, the many New Mexican men of Spanish descent who died on the battlefields or as prisoners deeply affected the passing along of this music from one generation to the next. Many songs were lost. Then amplified guitars and rock and roll came along and overwhelmed most types of acoustic music, be it bluegrass or Mexican folk tunes. Some New Mexican forms, like the indita, or "little Indian" song, which comes out of the mestizaje (a mixture of Indian and Spanish blood) experience, have become so rare that few artists can perform them with an authentic voice.

"A lot of people I recorded over the years have long since passed from this world," said Loeffler, who has recorded thousands of the old songs, produced CDs, and written books on the subject, including the important

La Música de los Viejitos (University of New Mexico Press, 1999). "We've lost a lot of this music. But a lot of it still survives, and it's a constantly changing thing, and it's rich -- extraordinarily rich." Indeed, a good portion of the folk tradition of New Mexico evolves according to new circumstances and often mingles with the music of Mexico, the greater United States, and even Western Europe.

"If you stay alive long enough you see how things gradually shift," Loeffler said. "There's more Mexican music coming up into New Mexico than there used to be. The international boundary used to divide musical cultures, but not anymore."

No soy trovador ni poeta

no tengo ninguna gracia,

pero sí pude trovarle

este corrido a mi plaza.

I am no troubadour nor poet,

no wit nor charm have I,

but yes, I was able to sing

this ballad for my town.

Roberto Martínez, who leads the group Los Reyes de Alburquerque, is old enough to remember some of the old inditas and will perform them Saturday. He has been playing the old violin and guitar music of New Mexico for more than four decades. His group boasts three generations

of the Martínez family on various instruments. Martínez is well-known

for writing one of the most powerful and enduring corridos of his time,

"El corrido de Río Arriba," about the Hispano revolt over land rights that led to violence in Tierra Amarilla in 1967. He and his son Lorenzo, who have toured nationally and worked with the Smithsonian Institution, are widely credited as major figures who are reviving an interest in New Mexican folk music.

"What we've always striven for is not just to entertain people," said Martínez, a soft-spoken man with a heavy Spanish accent. "When people leave that theater, we want them to take with them a little bit more understanding of the humanness of our culture. ... Mostly we'll be doing northern New Mexico violin music and, of course, some Mexican songs, but with a New Mexican flavor. Violin music is something that our ancestors had when they first came here and settled in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado many hundreds of years ago. They were isolated. They had organs in the churches but, according to what I've heard, the main instruments were guitar and violin. At social events -- dances, weddings -- they used those two instruments, usually playing corridos, polkas, inditas. ... That's what we're going to try to present. But we have incorporated guitarrón (acoustic bass guitar), trumpet, vihuela (acoustic guitar).

"We play original music and older songs. We could have modernized our style, but that's not what it's all about. We're about preserving and perpetuating this style of music, which is beautiful. Our New Mexico music, with emphasis on the violin, is in very bad shape. I don't see much more developing in this type of music. I have concerns about it surviving."

Martínez explained that related forms of music, Mexican mariachi music in particular, have thrived because they have incorporated elements of popular music and been championed by pop singers (Linda Ronstadt, for instance, in the case of mariachi). But he said this has not been the case for the violin music of New Mexico, despite his and Lorenzo's modest success. "Maybe what this music really needs is promotion and mentoring," he said.

"In the days of yore the normal combination was guitar and violin, and maybe the mandolin," added Loeffler. "But now for some reason there's a dearth of young violin players. I don't know why. But a lot of the songs are still remembered. While the violin may not be as popular as it was

30 years ago, the folk music of the Río Grande del Norte is alive and well. The important thing is that music prevails in the nuevomexicana tradition."

Now in its fifth year, Nuestra Música has drawn larger and larger audiences. The crowd is mixed -- as many Hispanics as non-Hispanics, a rarity at upscale performing arts centers in the state. For many in the audience it will be a unique lesson in regional history -- an opportunity to empathize with the people who were flooded out of San Marcial or cheated of their land in Río Arriba County -- that cannot be fully gleaned from old newspapers or history books. Even for those who don't speak Spanish, the feelings of the songs are unmistakable. For, as the

corridistas of New Mexico know all too well, only through song can certain emotions be truly explored. Q

details

Nuestra Música, a celebration of traditional New Mexican music

Saturday, April 23

1 p.m. Los Matachines dance in Burro Alley east of the Lensic, no charge

8 p.m. Music by Chuy Martínez & Oti Ruiz, Trio de Jalapeño, Voz del Pueblo,

Los Reyes de Alburquerque

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St.

$10, no charge for seniors; Lensic box office, 988-1234

Recommended CDs

La Música de los Viejitos: Hispano Folk Music of the Río Grande del Norte (UNM Press, 1999)

This three-disc set, which will be available in the lobby at Nuestra Música, is the companion piece to Jack Loeffler's book of the same name. Featuring 93 songs and more than 50 forms of New Mexican folk music, it offers as complete an overview as you're likely to find.

Hispano Folk Music of the Past (Albuquerque Museum, 1998)

This compilation, available through the Albuquerque museum and produced by Jack Loeffler, is particularly strong in the area of New Mexican dance songs. It also boasts corridos and other vocal forms.

Music of New Mexico: Hispanic Traditions (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1993)

This unpolished anthology includes a couple of standards and lots of lesser-known regional fare. Some of the material explores rough subject matter -- including "Los Comanchitos," a song about Spanish captives taken by the Comanches during raids against the settlements.

Music From El Testamento: Spanish Folk Music of Northern New Mexico & Southern Colorado, performed by Alex J. Chávez (Cantante)

The debut recording for Cantante, the label of the John Donald Robb Trust Committee, features Chávez's Spanish balladry from Robb's

archives at the University of New Mexico. Born in 1922, Chávez toured extensively, championing New Mexican folk music.