The corrido is a famous narrative metrical tale and poetry that forms a ballad. The songs are often about oppression, history, daily life for criminals, the vaquero lifestyle, and other socially relevant topics. Corridos were widely popular during the Mexican Revolution and in the Southwestern American frontier as it was also a part of the development of Tejano and New Mexico music, which later influenced Western music.
Gregorio Cortez Lira was born in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico on June 22, 1875 and became a folk hero to the border communities of the United States and Mexico. After an altercation in which he killed Sheriff W. T. (Brack) Morris, Cortez went on the run from the Texas Rangers for thirteen days. He became the target of the largest manhunt in U.S. history from June 14, 1901 to June 22, 1901. He was accused of murdering two sheriffs and finally convicted of horse theft.
Barry Jean Ancelet is a Cajun folklorist in Louisiana French and ethnomusicologist in Cajun music. He has written several books, and under his pseudonym Jean Arceneaux, including poetry and lyrics to songs.
Jeff Todd Titon is a professor emeritus of music at Brown University. He holds the B.A. (1965) from Amherst College; and the M.A. and the Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He taught American literature, folklore, and ethnomusicology in the departments of English and Music at Tufts University (1971-1986), where he co-founded the American Studies program and also the M.A. program in Ethnomusicology. He taught at Brown University (1986-2013) where he was director of the Ph.D. program in Ethnomusicology. He held visiting professorships at Amherst College, Carleton College, Berea College, East Tennessee State University, and Indiana University's Folklore Institute. His published books include Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis, Powerhouse for God: Speech, Chant and Song in an Appalachian Baptist Church, and Toward a Sound Ecology: New and Selected Essays. He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology and general editor of Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples. He was editor of Ethnomusicology, the journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology, from 1990-1995. In 1998, he was elected a Fellow of the American Folklore Society, and in 2020, he received their Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award. In 2015, his field recordings were chosen for preservation in the National Recording Registry, Library of Congress. Titon is known for developing collaborative ethnographic research based on reciprocity and friendship, for helping to establish an applied ethnomusicology based in social responsibility, for proposing that music cultures can be understood as ecosystems, for introducing the concepts of musical and cultural sustainability, and for his appeal for a sound commons for all living creatures and his current ecomusicological project of a sound ecology. His definition of ethnomusicology as "the study of people making music"—making the sounds they call music, and making music as a cultural domain—is widely accepted within the field.
Américo Paredes was an American author born in Brownsville, Texas who authored several texts focusing on the border life that existed between the United States and Mexico, particularly around the Rio Grande region of South Texas. His family on his father’s side, however, had been in the Americas since 1580. His ancestors were sefarditas, or Spanish Jews who had been converted to Christianity, and in 1749—along with José de Escandón—they settled in the lower Rio Grande. The year of Paredes’ birth was the year of the last Texas Mexican Uprising, which was to portend the life Paredes was to lead. Throughout his long career as a journalist, folklorist and professor, Paredes was to bring focus to his Mexican American heritage, and the beauty of those traditions.
The Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies is a research center focused on the production and distribution of cultural studies research. As part of the University of Texas at Austin, the Center pulls on many different disciplines and departments. The center was founded in 1967 as the Center for Folklore Studies by Americo Paredes, who received a Ph.D. from the UT-Austin English Department in 1956 and joined the faculty in 1958. Scholars historically associated with the center include Richard Bauman and Steven Feld.
Richard Bauman is a folklorist and anthropologist, now retired from Indiana University Bloomington. He is Distinguished Professor emeritus of Folklore, of Anthropology, and of Communication and Culture. Before coming to IU in 1985, he was the Director of the Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas and a faculty member in the UT Department of Anthropology. Just before retiring from Indiana, he was chair of the IU Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, as well as an important member of the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Communication and Culture.
John Holmes McDowell is a Professor in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University Bloomington. He also serves as Director of the Diverse Environmentalisms Research Team (DERT) headquartered at Indiana University. Broadly speaking his work is centered on performance and communication as well as the interplay of creativity and tradition. Geographically most of his fieldwork has been in Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Ghana. His interests include Speech play and verbal art; the corrido of Greater Mexico; music, myth, and cosmology in the Andes; ecoperformativity; commemoration; folklorization; ethnopoetics; Latin America; the United States.
Beverly J. Stoeltje is a professor in both the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University (Bloomington). She also serves as Affiliated Faculty in African Studies, American Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and at the Russian-East European Institute.
Roger David Abrahams was an American folklorist whose work focused on the expressive cultures and cultural histories of the Americas, with a specific emphasis on African American peoples and traditions.
Dan Ben-Amos was a Palestinian-born Israeli-American folklorist and academic who worked as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he held the Graduate Program Chair for the Department of Folklore and Folklife.
Judith O. Becker is an American academic and educator. She is a scholar of the musical and religious cultures of South and Southeast Asia, the Islamic world and the Americas. Her work combines linguistic, musical, anthropological, and empirical perspectives. As an ethnomusicologist and Southeast Asianist, she is noted for her study of musics in South and Southeast Asia, including Javanese gamelan, Burmese harp, music and trance, music and emotion, neuroscience, and a theoretical rapprochement of empirical and qualitative methods. Becker teaches at the University of Michigan. In 2000, Becker was named the Glenn McGeoch Collegiate Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan, and she was named professor emerita of music in 2008. From 1993 to 1997, she was a Senior Fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows.
Linda Dégh was a folklorist and professor of Folklore & Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, USA.
Donald Knight Wilgus was an American folk song scholar and academic, most recognized for chronicling 'Hillbilly', blues music and Irish-American song and his contribution to ballad scholarship.
Judith McCulloh was an American folklorist, ethnomusicologist, and university press editor.
Portia Katrenia Maultsby is an American ethnomusicologist and educator. She is a professor emerita at Indiana University who specializes in African-American music. She founded the university's Archives of African American Music and Culture in 1991.
Mellonee Victoria Burnim is an American ethnomusicologist. A professor emerita at Indiana University Bloomington who specializes in African American gospel music, she previously served as director of the university's Archives of African American Music and Culture.
With His Pistol in His Hand is a book about Gregorio Cortez written by Américo Paredes. It was published by the University of Texas Press and first printed in 1958.
Ellen Stekert is an American academic, folklorist and musician. Stekert is a Professor Emerita of English at the University of Minnesota and a former president of the American Folklore Society.
Marcia Alice Herndon was an American ethnomusicologist and anthropologist. She specialized in the ways culture and music reflect each other. Herndon grew up in a family of country music performers in North Carolina. After completing her master's degree in 1964 at Tulane University, she performed classical music for several years. Earning a PhD in anthropology and ethnomusicology in 1971, she taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Maryland. She is widely known for her contributions to Native American music studies with books such as Native American Music, as well as collaborating on Music as Culture, and Music, Gender, and Culture, which analyze the overlapping of musical forms and cultural structures.
