Fandango de Durham Connects Community, History and Tradition
On a spring weekend in April, the courtyard of the Ávila Center on the outskirts of Durham transforms into a living circle of music, memory and movement. Jarana-wielding musicians gather around a wooden platform, or tarima; dancers answer rhythm with rhythm in a style known as zapateado; and friends and families — some local, others traveling from across North Carolina and beyond — share food, stories and songs late into the night. This is Fandango de Durham, now in its fourth year and, for the first time, supported as a Duke Bass Connections project.
Founded in 2022 by Assistant Professor of Music Sophia Enriquez and Durham-based collaborators, Fandango de Durham centers son jarocho, a centuries-old Afro-Indigenous musical tradition from southern Veracruz, Mexico. What began as a grassroots cultural gathering has grown into a nationally recognized event, drawing participants from outside North Carolina each year while remaining deeply rooted in Durham’s Latino community.
Those ties are central to the project, which brought undergraduate students into the heart of the work. Rather than treating the fandango as a subject of study, students became organizers, researchers and collaborators. They conducted oral history interviews in Spanish, coordinated community outreach, managed logistics, supported local vendors and worked alongside longtime community leaders.