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. This book offers an overview of the music’s history and musical characteristics.
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, the late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century Mexican guitarist Octaviano Yáñez and Hawaiian slack key guitar.