«While most of the recent English-language scholarship on son jarocho has focused on its use as a platform for activism and identity formation in the US, Randall Kohl's La Muìsica de Todos en la Casa de Nadie takes a refreshing look at the genre's practice in its home state of Veracruz. A long-time resident of Xalapa, Veracruz and prolific scholar of the genre, Kohl draws on a variety of methodologies to convey how modern son jarocho is sustained by professionals and non-professionals alike in this vibrant capital city. At the same time, his work offers an excellent introduction to the genre for the unfamiliar, including son jarocho's history, revival, style traits, subgenres, and recent fusions with other idioms. This is a wide-ranging and accessible book, and an important contribution to our growing understanding of this rich regional tradition.»
(Gregory Reish, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University)
«In La Música de Todos en la Casa de Nadie, guitarist-ethnomusicologist Randall Kohl brings something special to the surging feast of scholarship treating Mexico's renowned regional music, the son jarocho. Part history and part cultural analysis, and both qualitative and quantitative in approach, the book treats the artistic-intellectual Stridentist movement as both background and foil in order to expand our understanding of this signature tradition of Veracruz. Exploring music as music, music as business, and music as a dynamic expression of Mexican social history, Professor Kohl of the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa interweaves original research with a half century of scholarship to chart key vectors in the evolution of a music, a culture, and a region.»
(Daniel Sheehy, PhD, Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Museums and Culture; Interim Director, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings; Director & Curator Emeritus, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)
«Randall Kohl's deep understanding of son jarocho shines through in this book. Built on years of ethnographic immersion in the musical community of Xalapa and its environs, this book expertly traverses the textual, performative and cultural terrain of this important musical vernacular of Mexico. This first book in English on the son jarocho will be an invaluable resource for both scholars and general readers with an interest in the genre.»
(Anandam Kavoori, Professor, Department of Entertainment and Media Studies, Grady College of Journalism and MassCommunication, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA)
Once associated principally with the Veracruz countryside, the son jarocho music and dance tradition is now establishing itself as a twenty-first-century urban practice caught in a struggle between firmly established customs and newly adaptive strategies. Taking inspirational cues from the Stridentist movement of the 1920s, this book presents an overview of the music's history and musical characteristics along with specific looks at its texts, iconography, past and present academic trends and other details. It also examines the local centro de cultura, La Casa de Nadie, as a focal point for son jarocho activity in the city of Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.
About the Author: Randall C. Kohl is on the Music Faculty of the Universidad Veracruzana (UV) in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico and a member of Mexico's Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (National System of Researchers). He received his BA in Music from the University of California at Santa Cruz, an MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Hawai´i at Manoa and a Doctorate in History and Regional Studies from the UV. He has published widely on the son jarocho tradition as well as on the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Mexican guitarist Octaviano Yáñez and on the Hawaiian slack key guitar. He is also an accomplished guitarist and composer with several recordings under the name R. C. Kohl.
