Archaeology of a Performance

There are parallel historical rivers running in the veins of Latin and Black Americans: both traditions share the fundamental fact that their origin was defined by oppression and displacement. Both have been fighting for almost two centuries not only for their freedom, but also for the recognition of their humanity. Despite this common issue, Latin and Black America have followed different directions, sometimes even antagonistic, in the ways that they have defined their identities. The linguistic barrier that has set both Latin and Black Americans apart, however, may vanish or become thinner in other channels of expression. Music, for instance, is one of those channels, where sound and silence merge in one single torrent running straight into the spirit’s heart. Jazz has been traditionally regarded as a fundamentally black musical form, but if we allow history to whisper in our ears and hearts, we will discover that the roots of jazz are multiethnic. Whereas the winds or the strings or even the piano notes resonate in the air, jazz conveys both a communitarian experience of freedom and a deep meditation regarding musical collaboration. When the Eighth Cavalry Mexican Military Band arrived in New Orleans in 1884 to perform at the World’s Centennial Cotton Exposition, the members of the band directed by Encarnación Payén did not know that they were going to end working along black and Caucasian musicians from New Orleans. Perhaps due to the systematically negative representation of Mexicaness and Mexican culture throughout the United States since the 19th century, jazz historians have not heard the Mexican instrumentalism and instrumentalist influence of early American jazz. Musicians and composers who came with the Mexican Military Band, like Juventino Rosas and Florencio Ramos, popularized in New Orleans woodwind instruments. This musical encounter between Mexican and New Orleans’ musicians paved a pathway for further sonic encounters through immigration, such as the case of Mexican clarinetist Lorenzo “Papa” Tío, who taught several future jazz performers, including Jelly Roll Morton and trumpeter Don Albert. His son, Lorenzo Tío Jr., perhaps one of the first Mexican-American jazz musicians became also an influential jazz clarinetist. For the reasons mentioned above, and because the participation of the Mexican Band in the World’s Cotton Exposition between 1884-1885 completed the Gulf of Mexico cultural triangle Cuba-Mexico-Louisiana, this project aims at curating, at least in an incipient way, the musical and cultural influence of Mexico in the Louisiana area. According to Ned Sublette, “the Mexican Band’s presence [in the Cotton Exposition] had a significant impact on the music of New Orleans. An unknown number of band members stayed behind when the exposition ended, which is how New Orleans got its first saxophone player of importance, Florencio Ramos. Between the members of the Mexican Band and other Mexican musicians in town, taking music lessons from Mexicans was part of the training of number of young players who became the first generation of New Orleans jazz musicians over the next two decades” (284). The resonance and tinge imprinted by the Mexican Band and its musicians produced a Mexican music boom in New Orleans, to such an extent that local music publisher, Junius Hart, began a series of sheet music that pretended to archive “Mexican music” as played during the Cotton Exposition by the Mexican Band. The ultimate purpose of this project is recording an anthology of the “Mexican” sheets of music published by Hart. With the exception of Over the Waves by Juventino Rosas, which was first played in the Cotton Exposition in 1885, no other musical pieces from the Junius Hart series have been recorded to this date.