Music, Memory, and the Re-Constitution of Place: the Life History of an Ecuadorian Musician in Diaspora Francisco Lara
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2005 Music, Memory, and the Re-Constitution of Place: The Life History of an Ecuadorian Musician in Diaspora Francisco Lara Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MUSIC Music, Memory, and the Re-constitution of Place: The Life History of an Ecuadorian Musician in Diaspora By FRANCISCO LARA A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music in Musicology Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2005 The members of the Committee approve the Thesis of Francisco Lara defended on April 25th, 2005. ___________________ Dale A. Olsen Professor Directing Thesis ___________________ Frank Gunderson Committee Member ___________________ Michael Uzendoski Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii For my Father. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the members of my committee, Dale A. Olsen, Frank Gunderson, and Michael Uzendoski for their guidance, patience, and support. In addition, I am indebted to several friends and colleagues for their continual encouragement, advice, and technical help, especially Trevor and Sara Harvey, Rebecca and Scott Macleod, Amanda Marks, Sarah Arthur, and Leon Garcia. To my family and parents in particular, I am forever grateful for their unfaltering love and understanding. Without the help of those mentioned above, the completion of this thesis would not have been possible. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ................................................................................................vi Abstract ......................................................................................................vii Preface ................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Introduction........................................................................................4 Reflection One ................................................................................................19 Chapter 2: Leo: A Life History............................................................................22 Reflection Two ................................................................................................48 Chapter 3: Bridges of Cultural Understanding: Music and Memory...................51 Reflection Three ................................................................................................64 Chapter 4: Memory, Identity and Place ...............................................................66 Epilogue ................................................................................................73 APPENDICES ................................................................................................75 A Leo and Kathy Lara, Artistic Resume...................................................76 B Informed Consent ..................................................................................79 REFERENCES ................................................................................................81 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ..............................................................................86 v LIST OF FIGURES 1. Hermeneutical Arc .........................................................................................13 2. “La Plegaria a un Labrador” by Victor Jara (Giurar 2004) ............................27 3. “Que Dira El Santo Padre” by Violeta Parra (1976).......................................31 4. “El Palomo” from the cantata “La Vigilia” by Oswaldo Torres (Lara 1988).58 5. “Karas-Karas,” traditional san juan, province of Cañar, Ecuador (text provided by Leo Lara) ............................................................................61 vi ABSTRACT Building on literature dealing with memory and hermeneutics as they relate to music and musical experience, this thesis explores the role of music and memory in the negotiation of place within the context of displacement through the life history of Eulogio Leonidas Lara (Leo), an Ecuadorian immigrant musician currently residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Active as a musician, social activist and educator alongside his spouse, Kathy, since the early 1970s, Leo maintains a strong connection to his homeland through music and his use thereof despite his estrangement. Through his work as a musician, he not only bridges his life and experiences within Ecuador and the United States, but with the greater community as well. In so doing, he manages to fashion a unique sense of place that, while fundamentally rooted in his experiences as a musician within Ecuador, traverses both worlds. In the end, I argue that it is through music and memory, as they inform perception and understanding, that Leo negotiates his sense of being and place as an individual living in diaspora. vii PREFACE “Mamá, where are you playing tonight?” I call down from upstairs. “The Minneapolis Urban League, . why, do you want to come?! We’re leaving in five minutes.” With only momentary hesitation I respond, “Ah, sure. Just give me a moment.” “Yippee!” she says, clapping with pleasure. “It’s good to have you home, Pacho.” It’s good to be home, I think to myself, sighing. I quickly switch into fieldwork mode, mentally preparing as I gather the necessary equipment: camcorder, tripod and videotapes – check; digital camera – check; Sony Minidisk recorder and microphone – check. “Pacho, nos vamos!” yells my mother from below. “Ok, ya vengo,” I yell back, padding myself for anything I might be missing – a pen and paper. Basic, I think to myself shaking my head. I race out the door just as my father is pulling out of the driveway. It is a chill Thursday evening, December 9, 2004 in Minneapolis, Minnesota – my home. I arrived only the day before from Tallahassee, Florida where I spent the previous two years working towards a masters degree in ethnomusicology. My interest in music is without question a direct result of my upbringing. Music was and continues to be an integral part of our home. Both my father, Leo, and my mother, Kathy, are musicians and educators who interpret the traditional and folkloric music of Latin America, specifically the Andes region (i.e., Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina). The walls of our home seemed to reverberate constantly with the sound of my father’s powerful voice, coupled in harmony with my mother’s own as they would sing countless songs by such poets and songwriters as Violeta Parra, Daniel Viglietti, and Victor Jara. The charango, guitarra, and bombo driving the rhythms of a cueca, san juanito, or a huayno, danced in counterpoint with the innumerable Bach fugues and Beethoven sonatas I studiously learned and played as a child. 1 It is little wonder, then, that at the age of 19, I chose to attend the school of music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where I eventually earned a BM in Western music theory. It was during my undergraduate studies, after taking an introductory course in non-Western musics, that I began to take a renewed interest in the music of my parents. My curiosity piqued, I took advantage of several courses being offered at the time dealing with the music and cultures of Latin America. Not only did the text and professor speak to me, I found, but of me, or at least of my own experience with these musics and traditions. It was then that I began to realize the significance of the cultural and musical heritage that my parents continually strive to maintain and pass on. It was then that I began a journey that I now realize to be ultimately one of self- discovery. The irony of that quest does not escape me for the more distance my studies and life happenings take me from my home and my family, the closer I seem to get. And while I suspected that my studies would lead me to a better understanding of my family and myself with respect to the music and our cultural roots, I never expected to turn the scholarly lens inward. Though biography (also known as life history in anthropology) as a valid research method is extensively employed in anthropology, sociology, folklore, history and historical musicology, it remains vastly neglected in ethnomusicology. And yet within the last ten years there has been an evident growth of life histories within the discipline as indicated in a January 2001 issue of World of Music dedicated entirely to biography: a recognition of the value and potential of life history methods in addressing the complex relationship between the individual and society and the significance of music therein. In accordance with this recent shift re-evaluating the respective place of the individual within ethnomusicology, this thesis presents a life history of Eulogio Leonidas Lara, known variously to many throughout the course of his life as an Ecuadorian, an immigrant, a musician, an educator, and a social activist. To me, however, he is known simply as my father. To place one’s own family, let alone one’s own life, under the critical scrutiny of academic scholarship is, as Ruth Behar poignantly expresses in The Vulnerable Observer (1996), to make oneself vulnerable. Only recently and with a certain amount of 2 reservation has anthropology considered the value of self-reflexivity in ethnography—of sincere introspection and reflection by the ethnographer on the interpersonal relationships which constitute