EDUCATOR GUIDE Story Theme: Street Art Subject: Los Cazadores del Sur Discipline: Music SECTION I - OVERVIEW ......................................................................................................................2 EPISODE THEME SUBJECT CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS OBJECTIVE STORY SYNOPSIS INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES EQUIPMENT NEEDED MATERIALS NEEDED INTELLIGENCES ADDRESSED SECTION II – CONTENT/CONTEXT ..................................................................................................3 CONTENT OVERVIEW THE BIG PICTURE SECTION III – RESOURCES .................................................................................................................6 TEXTS DISCOGRAPHY WEB SITES VIDEOS BAY AREA FIELD TRIPS SECTION III – VOCABULARY.............................................................................................................9 SECTION IV – ENGAGING WITH SPARK ...................................................................................... 11 Los Cazadores del Sur preparing for a work day. Still image from SPARK story, February 2005. SECTION I - OVERVIEW EPISODE THEME INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES Street Art Individual and group research Individual and group exercises SUBJECT Written research materials Los Cazadores del Sur Group oral discussion, review and analysis GRADE RANGES K-12, Post-Secondary EQUIPMENT NEEDED TV & VCR with SPARK story “Street Art,” about CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS duo Los Cazadores del Sur Music, Social Studies Computer with Internet access, navigation software, speakers and a sound card, printer OBJECTIVE Cassette player, CD player, or computer audio To introduce educators and students to the lifestyle program and challenges facing street musicians in San Francisco’s Mission District. MATERIALS NEEDED STORY SYNOPSIS Access to libraries with up-to-date collections of Jacobo Palacios and Rafael Cutillo left families in periodicals, books, research papers and videos Guatemala and El Salvador three and seven years Different examples of Latin American music (see ago to work in the United States. After working as Resource section) manual laborers, they decided to work instead as Pens, Pencils, Paper musicians and have since been playing music in restaurants and on the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District for tips. Spark follows their duo, INTELLIGENCES ADDRESSED Los Cazadores del Sur (The Hunters From the Logical-Mathematical – the ability to detect patterns, South) as they work tirelessly six days a week trying reason deductively and think logically. to make a living “hunting” audiences who Musical – the ability to read, understand, and appreciate and financially support their blend of compose musical pitches, tones, and rhythms. songs from all over Latin America. Bodily-Kinesthetic - the ability to use one’s mind to control one’s bodily movements. Interpersonal – the ability to understand the feelings INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES and motivations of others. To educate students about the concept of street Intrapersonal – the ability to understand one’s own music feelings and motivations To illustrate the reality of trying to make a living as a street musician To entice students to explore traditional Latin See more information on American music and acoustic instruments Multiple Intelligences at To better understand what motivates people to www.kqed.org/spark/education. become musicians and what kind of work is available to them 2 SPARK Educator Guide – Los Cazadores del Sur SECTION II – CONTENT/CONTEXT CONTENT OVERVIEW San Francisco's Mission District is home to numerous Though it has its social and musical rewards, the life roving bands of musicians that perform Mexican and of a wandering musician is difficult. Los Cazadores South American music for diners and revelers in the usually work three shifts a day, at lunchtime and neighborhood’s many restaurants and bars. In the dinner in the restaurants, and late in the night at bars. episode Street Music, SPARK trails the guitar players Since Palacios and Potillo are unable to travel in and Jacobo Palacios and Rafael Potillo, a musical duo that out of the country, it has been years since they have goes by the name Los Cazadores del Sur, or the seen their families in Central America. In the hunters from the south. meantime, they have makeshift families, composed of the people they see regularly in the Mission District: When they first immigrated to the US from rural the restaurant owners, cooks, servers, and patrons towns in Central America – Palacios from Guatemala they serenade every day. and Potillo from El Salvador – the two men worked as manual laborers, but they eventually learned to play guitar in order to become street musicians. With a repertoire of over eighty songs, Palacios and Potillo can play something for everyone, including songs from their native countries, as well as those from other South American countries and the states of Mexico. Los Cazadores are well-versed in a range of styles, including conjunto, a blended style from the Texas border area, norteño from Northern Mexico, to cumbia from Colombia. They can also play rancheras, corridos, and boleros, among other types of songs. (See The Big Picture section for an explanation of song Los Cazaderos del Sur, Jacobo Palacios (left) and Rafael styles.) By expanding their repertoire in this way, Potillo (middle) play the Mission District in San Palacios and Potillo have transcended their respective Francisco on a busy Saturday night. Still images from nationalities and become Latinos in a broader cultural SPARK story, March 2005. sense – brokering a cultural form that incorporates many if not all of the Spanish speaking populations in the Bay Area. Like the other traveling musicians of the Mission District, Los Cazadores frequents taquerias, bars, and family restaurants, serenading patrons in the hopes that they will show their appreciation by tipping a few dollars. In Latin America, finding audiences by moving from place to place is known as working al talon, meaning literally “on the heel.” Regardless of their specific location, street musicians must possess a keen knowledge people, the ebb and flow of crowds, and the ability to establish good relationships with business owners and fellow musicians. 3 SPARK Educator Guide – Los Cazadores del Sur THE BIG PICTURE Music as a means of expression and identity has been features an accordion and a bajo sexton (see an intrinsic part of Mexican culture for hundreds of Vocabulary). The songs are either in a 2/4 tempo, years among the indigenous populations but also like a polka, or in a 3/4 tempo like a waltz. beginning with the corrido, brought to Mexico in the form of Spanish ballads. Much like an African griot, Throughout the early 1900s, conjuntos popularized the corridistas, or corrido singers captured elements of the corrido as well as the Central American cumbia culture and historical events in song to be passed on rhythm among the marginalized and economically orally. Over the course of time, these songs became disadvantaged communities of Northern Mexico and assimilated into Mexican culture as vehicles of later the Texas-Mexico border through what became expression and national identity, covering topics that known as norteño music. Norteño, which means range from love, courage, adultery, war, the northern in Spanish, is a a form of conjunto based soldaderas (women who contributed to the largely on corridos and polka, with the accordion being Revolution, such as the song La Adelita), and its signature instrument. Mexico’s oil industry (Corrido del Petroleo). Today, In the 1950s, the spread of conjunto and norteño music they continue to address contemporary topics, such into southern Texas gave rise to another blended as labor rights, the immigrant/migrant experience, form of music called Tejano, or “Tex-Mex.” In its and the drug trade. modern version, Tejano is also influenced by rock and roll and swing music. Norteño influences are also audible is banda, a similar form of community-based music played with brass instrumentation. Norteño music continues to be popular today in Northern Mexico and among immigrant Mexican laborers. One example of a well-known band is Los Tigres del Norte, a norteño group that writes corridos about current events affecting the Mexican people. One example is the song “José Pérez León,” a corrido about a young man who suffocates to death in the trunk of a car as he attempts to cross the border. The Los Cazadores del Sur roving for audiences in the Mission District. Still image from SPARK story, song directly refers to the real event in which 16 February 2005. immigrants suffocated inside a truck in Texas attempting to cross the border into the US in 2003. During the Mexican Revolution from of 1910-1919, Another Los Tigres corrido is “Las Mujeres de Juárez,” corridos and boleros were made famous by José a song that openly criticizes the government and the Guadalupe Posada, an artist who created illustrations police for not doing more to solve the murders of for the lyrics of songs and printed them on paper over 300 women in the border city of Ciudad Juárez leaflets called broadsides. Corridistas would sing the that have occurred in the last since 1993. songs and sell these broadsides for a few pesos. Although most of the Mexican people were poor and Conjuntos also play a song style called a cancion illiterate, the effort was successful – becoming one of ranchera which is very similar to corridos, but has a the first “multimedia” strategies for selling music.