I have been pretty busy though, despite a couple of weeks dragging around barely surviving.

Last weekend I had a great time at this Southern music conference down at UNC.  This was an exploration of the global in Southern musical cultures. And like a lot of music conferences, there were not only interesting papers on musical topics, there was a fair bit of music being played as well.  Conferences are always much better with live music sufusing them. Historians, take note!

 Here you can see the array of topics, fascinating stuff.  One of the most interesting ones was Erich Nunn's totally unexpected paper on South African musicians who modeled there music and their yodeling on Jimmie Rodgers.

The conference worked out perfectly for my research into some different Mexican migrant music cultures and music at Virgin of the Guadalupe celebrations.  I'm especially always happy to talk about jaripeos, Mexican rodeos that take place throughout the South and especially in North Carolina.  I believe you could hit a jaripeo every weekend in the warm months. And all of the jaripeos feature music.

 Check out this promotional video for a jaripeo in Wendell, North Carolina in 2012. (sorry, can't get the embed code to work). This captures some of the energy of these events.  Pay attention to the dance competitions. 

Gives you a different view of North Carolina, to say the least.

If it all works out, and the funding materializes, I plan to complete a project on these jaripeos this summer.

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