Flamenco Flows from the Río Grande to Houston
By Maria Luisa Ornelas-June.
Serendipity marked my path to becoming a Texas Folklife Fellow.
B. C. (Before COVID)
When COVID forced everyone to stop, I,too, stopped. But as everyone looked forward to the easing of restrictions, I took the time to look back. I looked at my ancestors and at
my history in South Texas and northeastern Mexico. Soon, my Facebook feed gave me an ad for an online flamenco class from Ballet Hispanico. I had taken Classical Spanish dance classes as a child and dropped out in middle school, just as we were segueing into flamenco. So, I signed up and met my teacher, JoDe Romano, a former principal dancer for the José Greco Company. She was from Houston but took her first flamenco classes with two teachers from Laredo, Maria Luisa Marulanda and Rogelio Rodríguez. Maria Luisa was my Tía Lucy’s teacher and Rogelio was my sister’s teacher. Above is a picture of me dancing in JoDe’s class with my dog looking on. JoDe gave him the flamenco name, El Rubio. This was my first step in this serendipitous journey to becoming a Texas Folklife Fellow.
Río Grande Rhythms
Being a history nerd, I wanted to know why little girls from South Texas often learned flamenco, but not necessarily folklórico dancing. While the old social hierarchies of the Spanish casta class were involved, there was more to the story.
My inquiry led me to the conversos (Sephardic Jews that converted to Catholicism after the Alhambra Decree in 1492) that moved to the northeastern corner of the Spanish empire in the Americas. One of the first expeditions to this area of Mexico was by Luis de Carvajal who gained a concession from the King of Spain that allowed him to bring people on his expedition that were not vetted by the Spanish government. Carvajal brought conversos, many from Andalusia, in 1578 who were otherwise prohibited from coming to the Americas. In 1748, José de Escandón encouraged people from Nuevo León to help him establish settlements in the area now known as Tamaulipas, including the South Texas Texas settlements along the Río Grande.
These people were the conversos from Andalusia who had earlier sought a home far from the eyes of the Spanish Inquisition. So many joined in starting these new settlements that one historian from Nuevo León said that Escandón just about depopulated Nuevo León in doing so.
My Serendipitous Encounter with Texas Folklife
In May 2023, the Society of Crypto-Judaic Studies accepted my paper about flamenco in South Texas for presentation at their 2023 conference in El Paso. In July 2023, a Chicana folklorist, Dr. Norma Elia Cantú, gave a talk at the Austin Public Library. Being a fan of Dr. Cantú’s work, I attended the talk. After the talk, I met Dr. Jeannelle Ramírez, who heads up the Texas Folklife Fellowship program. After chatting with both Dr. Ramírez and Dr. Cantú about the work I had done on the history of flamenco in South Texas, they encouraged me to participate in the summer workshop.
They also encouraged me to apply to the Texas Folklife Fellowship program and tell my story through a podcast. Once again, my curiosity brought me to another serendipitous moment. I was elated when I found out that I had been selected.
The Texas Folklife Fellowship
Texas Folklife provided classes to teach how to do our podcast. The classes took place online throughout the fall, winter, and spring. I took some of my classes while traveling on some trips I’d put off during the pandemic. I participated from Oaxaca, Morocco, and even Albuquerque where I was attending an adobe (the mud kind) workshop.
In this picture, you can see the wooden vigas of the adobe structure I stayed in during my weekend at the adobe workshop.
Texas Folklife lent us field recorders to use in recording our interviews and provided a fabulous selection of instructors to help us learn interviewing skills, gain an appreciation of ethnography, as well as acquire technical skills related to podcast creation and community outreach.
My Project: The Fun Part
Although I knew about the history of flamenco in South Texas, I still needed to learn how it got to Houston. I went to the Houston Public Library to do my initial research. Because Houston wasn’t part of the old Spanish settlements along the Río Grande, I knew that history would have a twist.
I went to the Julia Ideson Building which houses the Houston Metropolitan Research Collection. The building sits next to the Houston City Hall and was designed in a Spanish Renaissance style. I loved researching in such beautiful surroundings. Even better was how helpful the librarians were in guiding me through the collection. Ultimately, I used microfiche to find some old ads from old telephone directories for dance studios, something I had not done since my days in college in the 1980s.
By Christmas, I had a feel for the timeline and knew that I was ready to gather interviews. One of the flamencas I interviewed is in her 70s and lives in Houston. The other is in her 80s and lives in Laredo. As I was going to Laredo for the Christmas holidays, I knew that was a perfect time to interview her. As I recorded their voices, I loved thinking about how I am helping to preserve the voice of artists and elders in my community.
When I interviewed Lucía Rodríguez Sanchez, she prepared breakfast for me, including some scrumptious scones!
From the interview process, I learned a great deal about preparing the interviewee with tips to help make the recordings easier to work with. Of course, I learned this skill only by doing it which meant I had to work with my own subpar recordings. Natural consequences are an effective and unforgiving teacher. Throughout this trial and error, I learned additional interviewing and editing skills.
Another Houston dancer, Patricia Maldonado, provided wonderful stories and photos from the perspective of a student of flamenco in Houston in the early 1970s.
In Laredo, Yolanda Gutíerrez-García had an old picture of me in college when I signed up to take a one week workshop with José Greco in Laredo.
Serendipity.
My Project: The Hard Part
After collecting interviews, I had to edit them. I had anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes of interview audio with each of the three interviewees. I had to think about the structure of the story and redact my interviews. Ultimately, I used only 2-3 minutes of audio from each of the three interviews.
Next, I had to write and record my narration. I used my son’s closet where I covered surfaces with blankets and used clothespins to clip up my manuscripts to read from. I used the field recorder from Texas Folklife to make the recordings.
After recording my narration, I had to splice in music, ambient sound, and interviews. I got all my music from the Free Music Archive.Finding music was actually fun. First, I got to listen to quite a bit of flamenco music and, second, I got to imagine where I would place it.
The process is very time intensive. While I was working on tying together my interviews and narration for a cohesive story, I happened to attend the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) in Kansas City during February 2024. I was surprised to find a panel on podcasting. Yet another serendipitous moment. Attending the podcasting panel made me realize how much I’d learned through Texas Folklife. Being at the conference also gave me space to think ahead about how much I might accomplish if I continued the process.
After I made a master draft of the interviews and my narration, I had my high school nieces, Ava (who got a state award for podcasting through DECA), Tatiana, and Natalí listen to my podcast and give me feedback. It was a good way for them to learn from me and me to learn from them.
I’ve enjoyed researching and collecting interviews, ambient sound, and music. Editing requires ALL my patience and more time than I think necessary; however, it’s a process I’m familiar with as I try to publish essays on Tejano life and culture.
Podcasts provide a quicker feedback loop and the opportunity to engage younger people in Tejano folklife. As a Tejano folklorist, I find those two points very appealing. I am considering continuing to archive Tejano folklife through podcasts. Let’s see if serendipity stays the course with me. Keep your ear open for La Tejanista on La Casa Tejana.
All music featured in my podcast was drawn from the Free Music Archive:
