Xóchitl Chávez: "Collective Songwriting across cultural spaces and virtual platforms: Transborder collaborations with Oaxacan wind band, Mujeres del Viento Florido"

Musical practices and sonic formations organized by indigenous Oaxacan women musicians in brass bands merit recognition and this paper intends to acknowledge the creative process of collective songwriting (Gonzalez 2014) through a transnational and feminist lense. The goal of this presentation is to elaborate on the processes of music-making across cultural/linguistic contexts and virtual platforms via two case studies. First, I will focus on the process in which musicians wrote the lyrics and create the musical arrangements for the title track song "Mujeres" as a way to voice their place as Indigenous women musicians. Second, how band members of Mujeres del Viento Florido of Oaxaca, Mexico and participants of Redes de Mujeres Transfronterizas continue to forge networks and write with university students in California and Texas.

Dr. Xóchitl C. Chávez is the first tenure track Chicanx assistant professor in the Department of Music at the University of California, Riverside. She is a scholar of expressive culture and performance, specializing in Indigenous communities from southern Mexico and transnational migration. Her current work focuses on second-generation Zapotec brass bands in Los Angeles, California and transborder relationships with their communities of origin in Oaxaca, Mexico. Dr. Chávez's forthcoming book manuscript with Oxford University Press titled The Guelaguetza: Performative Crossroads, Ethnicity, and Greater Oaxaca documents the lived and performative movements of how Oaxacan communities in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, California reproduce the annual La Guelaguetza festival, one of the most prominent indigenous celebrations of communal dances and musical forms.

Free and open to the public. This lecture is presented in association with the Department of Cultural Anthropology and the Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South.

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