Mariachis and globalization

Dr. Josh Kun—professor, editor, cultural scholar, nonprofit co-founder, exhibition curator and Latin music TV and radio host—knows his way around popular music from many cultures and its international influence.

Next week, Kun will come to Portland State to give a lecture titled “Tijuana Dreaming: Music and Life at the Global Border.” The evening event, to be held Tuesday, April 10, will explore how Tijuana’s music scene has impacted the Mexican city’s economy over the years.

The following day, Kun will host a workshop, “The Politics of Publics: Curating Beyond the Campus,” which will mine the cultural politics of music curating. He will discuss how scholars and critics conceive of audiences and public spaces like museums.

Kun is a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He holds a doctorate in ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

His research focuses on the art and politics of cultural connection with an emphasis on popular music, the cultures of globalization, the U.S.-Mexico border and Jewish-American musical history. 

Among his many projects, Kun is the director of the Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center, a research and public policy center that studies the social, political, economic and cultural impact of entertainment on the world.

He also co-edits a book series for Duke University Press about American popular music, and he co-authored a history of American Jewish music, And You Shall Know Us By the Trail of Vinyl, which highlights American Jewish artists from Barbra Streisand to Hasidic progressive rock outfits.

PSU’s Portland Center for Public Humanities, based in the Department of English, invited Kun because his scholarship dovetails nicely with the center’s mission to engage public life through the study of the humanities.

The Vanguard had a chance to talk with Kun about his forthcoming lecture.

Vanguard: Can you give us an overview of what you’ll be covering?

Josh Kun: The talk I’m going to be giving is specifically about music. It’s going to be an opportunity to use the long and very rich history of popular music on both sides of the United States-Mexico border as a way of thinking about the border [in the context of] contemporary identity and culture in the present moment.

VG: You’ll also be talking about how the Tijuana music scene has affected the city’s economy. Are we talking about music tourism like you might see in a place like Austin or Nashville? The kind of creative economy we’re used to in Portland?

JK: Absolutely, the music has been part of the tourist trade. But the city of Tijuana is a very important place in the current moment of economic globalization. I’m really interested in talking about—and getting people to think about—how important border studies are in exploring the impact of globalization. I’ll be talking about 1965 to the present period, when manufacturing really takes off in the city and it becomes a global manufacturing center right next to one of the most prosperous countries in the world.

VG: It sounds like you’re presenting popular music as part of a larger discourse or as a way to access the ideas that the border studies field deals with.

JK: Music is in all cases a guide to understanding larger questions of identity, culture in society and on and on. The U.S.-Mexico border, to my mind, has always been a site of sound. It’s an acoustic space, a place where we can listen to music as a way that culture is formed. Since the early 1900s, there’s a long archive of songs on both sides of the border that deal with the experience of living on the border, or dreaming of the border, or crossing the border back and forth. What I’m trying to do is use music as a familiar way to start thinking about these issues and questions of identity and culture.

VG: So in the case of Tijuana, has the music changed alongside the city’s economy?

JK: The music definitely changes. If you follow the music of Tijuana in the 1920s, it’s all about tourist trade. There’s this myth and stereotype of Tijuana as a sort of Disneyland, as a kind of theme park in San Diego’s backyard. As you move forward after World War II, especially after the ’60s and ’70s, the rock scene starts to take place. There are punk and rap movements that all respond to the city becoming a site of economic globalization and to the rise of manufacturing.

VG: What about traditional music? Are there genres specific to Mexico that you see being used to comment on these issues?

JK: To an extent. Tijuana as a border city has always had a complicated relationship with its Mexican heritage. Norteño music and banda music are important guides to thinking about the city in the present moment. Mariachi music in Tijuana has also been an important part of the city for a long time, especially in the bull rings, and has played a large part in the American imagination of Tijuana as well.

VG: It seems like a lot of your scholarly work focuses on the intersection of politics and music, or maybe on the immigrant experience. I think I see some parallels between the work you’ve done with contemporary Jewish American music, for example, and the approach to music you’re taking in this lecture. How does your thinking about Tijuana fit into the larger picture of your professional interests and projects?

JK: In general, I’m interested in how popular music overall can be used to think about a politics of cultural connection. Whether it’s U.S.-Mexico border issues or Jewish American music, I’m interested in music that gets us to think about the politics of identity, nation, culture. So it is all part of the same project.