203 W. Holly, Ste. 317, Bellingham, WA 98225 Autumn 2012

Raíces Culturales Healthy Communities, Social Justice, & Dignity for oneself, others and the environment.

Vol. 1, No. 1, Sept. 28, 2012

Son Jarocho Project We are very happy to announce the continuation of Raíces Culturales Son Jarocho Project for autumn 2012.

Raíces Culturales started as an enrichment program for low-income immigrant Latino youth and farm workers between 8 and 19 years old who live in Whatcom County. Programming occurs throughout the year in six week sessions with an emphasis on developing a space that the youth can call their own where they can develop leadership and critical thinking skills. Our program offers a structured and safe space for healthy play and learning about topics that are important to the youth and their families.

The Son Jarocho Project will focus on the cultural, historical and theoretical relevance of traditional string music. We will learn about the lyricism and poetry of the genre, while at the same time learning how to sing, play jarana and to dance zapateado. Ultimately we hope that the youth are able to learn the fundamentals of composition, arrangements and improvisation of Son Jarocho through their participation in Fandangos.

Son Jarocho is a traditional string music genre from the south of Veracruz, Mexico. The music is played by strumming a guitar called a Jarana,

improvised call and response singing, and rhythmic dancing called zapateado on a stomp box called a tarima. A fandango is a convivial celebration in

which Son Jarocho music is traditionally played.

October Events Sunday

October 14 Bellingham

Sunday October 21 Bellingham

Monday October 22

WWU

October 26-31

Bellingham

Zapateado workshop

with Annahí Saoco Hernandez & Seattle Fandango Project

Jarana, Zapateado &

Voice workshop

with Son Altepee

Fandango w/ Son Altepee

Film & Discussion: “Ayer,

Hoy, y Mañana”

With ManoVuelta & Altepee

Son Jarocho workshops

with Tomás Madrigal

What is Son Jarocho?

Thursday November 1

Fandango & Presentation:

Day of the Dead

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Learning from Los Cojolites

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SEATTLE, WA – On August 12

Raíces Culturales went on a field trip to Seattle with the support of volunteers from Community to Community. The youth group arrived in Seattle’s Historic Washington Hall in the Central District where they met master musicians Nora Lara Gomez and Noé Gonzalez Molina, who are members of Los Cojolites from Jaltipan, Veracruz, Mexico.

Raíces Culturales Youth learned

This summer, Raíces Culturales youth went on a field trip to Seattle to learn how to play Jarana and to dance Zapateado.

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the history of Son Jarocho, how to take care of the instruments, how to

play jarana and zapatear to the song, "El Colas" in a fandango.

The group split into two, half focused on learning to play the jarana with Noé and the other

group learned to zapatear with Nora.

Noé started the workshop by talking a little bit about who the

Jarochos are. He explained that in Veracruz, people, usually of

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peasant origin including Afro-descendants had ethnically mixed with Spanish and Indigenous people of that region, and they are known as the Jarochos.

The music, the Son, was also influenced by this mixture with Spanish, African, and indigenous heritages, thus the music came to be called the Son Jarocho, traditional string music of the region of the Jarochos in Southern Veracruz.

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Los Cojolites became an ensemble in 1997. Their namesake, Cojolites, are wild pheasants that are native to the southern part of Veracruz that are known for their morning song.

Los Cojolites have pleased diverse audiences all over the world. In many ways Los Cojolites represent the living breath of this traditional baroque, afro-descendant and

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indigenous hybrid that has survived for hundreds of years in Veracruz.

Their sound bridges the past with the present, maintained by the tension between the poly-rhythms

of Nora Lara Gomez’ zapateado and Benito Cortez Padua’s jarana, accented by the ancient melodies of

Noe Gonzales’ requinto picking and the group’s guttural call and

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response singing. They are well known for their original compositions that sing of revolution, love, and the everyday life of the people, flora and fauna of

their beloved Veracruz.

Los Cojolites

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BLAINE, WA - Two years ago we

started this journey of learning Son Jarocho. We started with a movie called “La Familía Raíces” a ManoVuelta Film that we screened at the Loomis Trail Garden, which back then was Cooperativa Jacal. The film presented a Oaxacan family who played Son Jarocho at the barricades of Oaxaca during the 2006 uprising.

After seeing the film, the youth began a discussion about the film that they related to their experiences here in Whatcom County. It was during this discussion that they decided that they would like to learn to play Son Jarocho too. The first project the youth engaged in was to build a

tarima, a dancing platform made of wood and start learning how to play the jarana.

Thus, Raíces Culturales began to learn the history, music, and political capacity of Son Jarocho.

One of the first steps was to

arrange an encuentro with the Seattle Fandango Project. Some of the members of the Seattle Fandango Project came to the Loomis Trail

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Garden to play Son Jarocho and meet the youth. Very soon

afterwards the youth went on their first field trip to Seattle to learn with the Seattle Fandango Project. That’s how the Son Jarocho Project began!

Son Jarocho Workshops

Students who participate in workshops will learn the following:

1. ZAPATEADO 2. SINGING 3. JARANA 4. FANDANGO

The Son Jarocho project depends upon

the community support of

Annahí Saoco

Hernandez

Sunday October 14, 2012 - From

Xalapa, Veracruz, master musician Annahí Saoco Hernandez will host a workshop for Raíces Culturales

on zapateado here in Bellingham. Annahí is a community organizer in Xalapa, Veracruz and is known throughout Mexico as a member of Son de Madera a Son Jarocho ensemble. She will be accompanied by members of the Seattle Fandango Project who have also been very involved in teaching Son Jarocho to the Raíces Culturales youth since the project began.

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This fall, five members of the Magonista inspired Altepee Collective from Acayucan, Veracruz will be coming on tour to Bellingham. The collective is touring their new film, “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” that is about their political activism that engages traditional string music in Veracruz.

Beyond the film, the collective will engage in community dialogues about the recent political situation in Mexico around electoral fraud, the negative effects of the U.S. war on drugs in Veracruz as an aspect of Neo-liberalism.

MANOVUELTA FILMS:

The Altepee collective will be accompanied by filmmaker Simon Sedillo, who is a founding member of the ManoVuelta Film Collective

Sunday October 21 - Son Altepee

will be in Bellingham to host a traditional string music workshop

with our youth.

MISSION STATEMENT:

“We are a group of youth from different parts of southern Veracruz who see string music as a tool of social consciousness in a shared

Community  to  Community  Development    

203  W.  Holly,  Ste.  317    

Bellingham,  WA  98225    

(360)  756-­‐2330    

http://foodjustice.org  

SON ALTEPEE

environment: the huapango, a traditional celebration of our indigenous communities. We promote community based organization and participation.

We believe it is possible to achieve a common good through community values, as opposed to the social structures imposed by the high circles of power. The mass media and official educational structures show us that individualism, corruption, violence, and oblivion are the foundations of modern day life.

Through our contact with elder musicians from our region we have learned that there are many different ways to live this life, which can be based on a sense of community, memory, collective work, respect and equality. These are the foundations we have to build a society based upon the collective inheritance of our peoples.”