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14: "Ay Que Lindo es Colorado”: Chicana Musical Performance from the Colorado Borderlands
- University Press of Colorado
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257 Yo no soy de Colorado Soy un Nuevo Mexicano Pero vengo a cantarles yo Esta cancion que yo compuse Para ustedes mis amigos Mis amigos de Colorado! “Ay Que Lindo es Colorado.” —Roberto Griego It is a busy Friday night at Señor Manuel’s Mexican restaurant in Colorado Springs. The delicious smells, spicy dishes, and colorful ambiente are served along with the musical sounds of a well-known Chicana solo singer performing popular Mexican and New Mexican songs while accompanying herself on guitar. This local singer is an indigenous trovadora (troubadour) named Michelle Lobato, and her amazing story reflects Colorado’s enduring Chicana musical legacy. Colorado’s troubadour singers are legendary, dating back to the region’s dynamic Spanish colonial period, turbulent Mexican era, and U.S. territorial days. In the early twentieth century, infamous trovadores were typically male, and they served as local decímeros (decíma composers), corridistas “Ay Que Lindo es Colorado”: Chicana Musical Performance from the Colorado Borderlands 14 Peter J. Garcia 258 “Ay Que Lindo es Colorado” (traveling minstrel ballad singers), rezadores (prayer leaders), and cantantes (singers) singing the traditional songs of Spain, Mexico, northern New Mexico, and southern Colorado while at the same time informing the public of important newsworthy events through their ballad singing. Today’s trovadores are modern bards, social commentators, and popular singers who in some ways resemble the folk singers of the 1960s in the United States. Southern Colorado has long maintained a strong ethnic heritage and has had an ongoing musical interaction with northern New Mexico since at least the 1850s. This important organic cultural interaction remains vibrant and dynamic today. Nuevo Mexicano native popular Chicano singer/songwriter Roberto Griego illustrates this point with the verse at the start of the chapter from his 1985 exito (hit) “Ay Que Lindo es Colorado.” This lyrical local cancion (song) is an unofficial Chicano1 anthem that hails many of Colorado’s local place names and Mexican people. Among Chicano communities throughout the Southwest borderlands, Colorado holds a special status. Because Nuevo Mexicano musicians have transcended cultural borders since before the Civil Rights Movement, their local indigenous regional music remains popular throughout many parts of the borderlands. In this chapter, I consider more critically the local grounded aesthetics throughout southern Colorado in relation to diasporic articulations of race, class, generation, and gender within the greater Latina/o musical culture. Today, the Chicana/o, Latina/o, Mexicana/o, and Hispana/o music of southern Colorado musicians expresses their own “grounded aesthetics,”2 original styles,3 eclectic sounds, and organic performances to express their homeland attachment, political struggles, passion and emotions, and unique socio-historical experiences. Colorado shares a similar traditional musical culture with Nuevo Mexico, including melancholy alabado (a para-liturgical unaccompanied chant lamenting Christ’s suffering and death) singing throughout Semana Santa (Holy Week observances), auto sacramentales (Christian liturgical mystery, nativity, and musical folk plays and ritual dances) such as Las Posadas (the Inn) and Los Pastores, (the Shepherds), and a strong and dynamic música de los viejitos (music of the people).4 New Mexico’s popular Chicano musicians, singers, and orquestas (dance bands) also maintain a very strong fan base in Colorado and express an aesthetic influence on the regional onda (scene). Greater diasporic Latino, Mexican, and Latin American popular and folk musics and musicians are enormously popular throughout Colorado today; as social demographics continue to change, further interest in Latin popular musics is increasing throughout the United States.5 [44.204.204.14] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:52 GMT) Peter J. Garcia 259 Michelle Lobato: La Nueva Mestiza Cantante de Colorado Michelle Lobato is a singer from southern Colorado who enjoys musical fame throughout the state. She performs local indigenous Nuevo Mexicano, Greater Mexican, and Latin American popular folk,6 regional (local), and traditional7 musics. She is a mestiza singer who maintains a strong organic link to the Southwest borderlands. Well-known primarily in southern Colorado and New Mexico, Lobato has cultivated professional relations with Chicano regional musicians, especially Albuquerque’s Lorenzo and Roberto Martínez. However, she has also forged her own unique musical style, local audience, and performance aesthetic expressing her Latina identity as a Colorado Mexicana native with long-standing ancestral roots in the region. Her musical highlights include several recordings and concerts throughout the state and New Mexico, Greater Mexico, and Latin America. She has long been a children’s liturgist at Corpus Christi Catholic School in Colorado Springs and works for...