Performing Gender in Mariachi Music a Dissertation Submitted in Pa
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles How Musical is Woman?: Performing Gender in Mariachi Music A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnomusicology by Leticia Soto Flores 2015 © Copyright Leticia Soto Flores 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION How Musical is Woman?: Performing Gender in Mariachi Music by Leticia Soto Flores Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnomusicology University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Susan K. McClary, Co-Chair Professor Timothy Rice, Co-Chair In this dissertation, I engage in the ongoing discussion between popular music and gender scholarship through an ethnographic and archival investigation of women's performances in mariachi music, a musical expression originating in eighteenth-century Western Mexico. Historical evidence and ethnographic accounts referenced in this study reveal that women have indeed performed with mariachi ensembles since at least the turn of the twentieth century. While they were not encouraged to perform as mariachi musicians, those who did were occluded from historical representations or dismissed as trivial or novel. By presenting a critical analysis of women's socio-musical contributions, this dissertation situates the impact of gendered stereotypes in historical, social, and individual contexts. Presenting this analysis, however, calls for first understanding the mariachi tradition historically. As with other popular musics that confronted the coming of the mass media, mariachi music evolved also alongside the globalizing culture industry. Since the early twentieth century, ii select groups from Western Mexico traveled to Mexico City to secure their space in a promising performance scene. The music became such an important expression that it was featured in all emerging media technologies: the first commercial phonograph recordings in 1908, live national radio programs since 1925, the first sound film in 1931, touring caravans since the 1950s, and pioneer broadcast television programs since the late 1960s (Chapter Two).
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