Country music: a melting pot

A visiting professor at UTRGV says the country music genre includes contributions from many races, not just white.

Nadine Hubbs, a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, presented a research workshop and lecture last week for “Sounding Mexican American Life, Music and Art,” which was hosted by UTRGVs’ Center for Mexican American Studies and Center for Latin American Arts.

The event also featured a performance by the Texas SweetHearts last Wednesday outside the University Library on the Edinburg campus.

Hubbs said the main focus of her research is the engagement and the contributions of the people of Mexican descent to U.S. country music. 

She said country music is not only white, but also Mexican-American music. 

“There is a history of the [music] industry excluding non-white people,” Hubbs told the audience gathered Wednesday in the University Library on the Edinburg campus.  “…  In the 1920s, when the recording industry started, the recording executives said, ‘When it comes to working-class music, this is going to be hillbilly music, and that is going to be race records,’ which we now know as R&B. We now know hillbilly music as country music, and they segregated the sounds.”

She said people when people make the “liberal arguments” proclaiming that country music is white, they exclude the Black, brown, Asian, indigenous and LGBTQ+ musicians who are reclaiming country music at the moment.

Katherine McAllen, an assistant professor of art history and director of the Center for Latin American Arts at UTRGV, said the event was focused on the one-week residency of Hubbs at UTRGV and celebrating National Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month.

McAllen said the experience has been full of lectures and roundtables examining country music as a genre and how it could be expanded and should be expanded to include Mexican-American traditions, sounds, instruments and rethinking ideas about women and gender studies.

“We’re looking at how we can celebrate and include more Latin American traditions and Mexican-American identity into genres that traditionally were not thought of as inclusive of that,” she said.

The Center for Latin American Arts received three grants to host Hubbs: The Raul Tijerina Foundation, which supports the Rio Grande Valley; the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, which supports LGBTQ+ women in Texas; and the Rae Charitable Trust.

“[Hubbs has] been mentoring the students and talking to them about research and the importance of that and how research can take on many forms,” McAllen said.

The event’s theme tries to convey awareness and appreciation of Latin and Mexican-American art, thinking of the common heritage between the two and supporting students to connect with their own history, according to McAllen. 

The Texas SweetHearts, of Weslaco, have been playing together for 10 years and performed last Wednesday as part of the event. The Tejano group consists of accordionist Elisa de Hoyos; her mother, lead singer and guitarist Mari de Hoyos; her sister, bassist Diana de Hoyos; and drummer Minnie Loredo. 

They played “Cowboy Cumbia,” by Javier Molina; “That’s Alright Mama,” by Arthur Crudup; and “Yo no fui,” by Pedro Fernández. 

The Rider asked Mari de Hoyos how the group came together.

“That was the furthest thing in my mind, but it just so happened to work that way,“ de Hoyos said. “So, for me, it has been an honor playing right alongside my girls. It is just the icing on the cake.”

Learn more about Hubbs’ research through her book “Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music” (University of California Press, 2014).