‘The Fandango and the Nuevo South: Mapping Mexican Migration and a New Mountain Music’ Lecture with Sophia Enriquez

What Perla Guerrero identifies as the newest iteration of the “New South”, the framework of the Nuevo South reflects how Latinx communities continue to expand and transform the economic, political, and cultural landscape of U.S South. Yet there is still little work that seriously centers the music and celebratory practices of Latinx communities in the South as ways to understand this transformation. This talk asks: what does the Nuevo South sound like? What role do music, food, and dance practices play in animating Latinx communities in the U.S. South, and how do these practices help us make sense of the shifting regional politics of place, race, and migration? Drawing on scholarship of the Nuevo South from Latinx studies, ethnomusicology, and folklore studies, this talk explores the significance of the fandango—a community music celebration of the son jarocho folk tradition from Veracruz, Mexico—as a meaningful site of community building and transformation in the Nuevo South. Telling new stories of belonging while also gesturing toward a forgotten Mexican southern past, the fandango becomes a way for us to consider a new musical way of knowing in the South—of mountain music(s) as a critical connective tissue of migrant histories, routes, and futures.

Sophia M. Enríquez (she/her) works at the intersections of Latino and Appalachian music, migration, and regional culture. She is an Assistant Professor of music at Duke University where she also teaches in the Program for Latino/a Studies in the Global South. Sophia earned her PhD in ethnomusicology at Ohio State University as well as graduate certificates in folklore and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies.

This lecture is part of the 2022-2023 Carolina Symposia in Music and Culture lecture series.