The Andrew Norman Guest Lecturer Series

An endowment from the Andrew Norman Foundation in 1988 established an annual guest lectureship which brings distinguished men and women in the forefront of regional politics, environmental issues, education, culture and arts to enhance the understanding of the communities of Colorado College and Colorado Springs about the Southwest.

2013 Norman Lecture and Concert

Lecture by Enrique Lamadrid  

Poetry, Violence, and Memory: Corrido Ballads of New Mexico and Colorado

The Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies presents the annual Norman guest lecture with cultural historian and musicologist Enrique Lamadrid, Distinguished Professor of Spanish from the University of New Mexico, celebrating the narrative ballad tradition of New Mexico and southern Colorado. This millennial tradition is as old as the Spanish language itself, yet continues to express the historical imagination of the people. Corrido stories range in topic from historical topics of wars, terrorism, social struggle, and natural disasters, to themes of love, betrayal, and even women's rights. These ballads have survived centuries and will continue to be passed down to successive generations.

Professor Lamadrid will be accompanied by a traveling exhibit that will be showcased in the Packard Hall lobby. The exhibit is the Rocky Mountain component of a larger Smithsonian and International Hispanic Cultural Center exhibition titled, Corridos sin fronteras/ Ballads Without Borders, which recently toured the nation and is still accessible at the corridos.org website. The exhibition re-creates the historical development of the corrido in greater New Mexico over the past 400 years through vintage and modern recordings, broadsides, photographs, posters, musical instruments, and other treasured memorabilia.

Thursday, January 31, 2013 at 7:15pm, Packard Hall, FREE and open to the public

Concert by Brenda Romero 

Brenda Romero is an Associate Professor on the Musicology faculty of the College of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is coeditor of Dancing across Borders: Danzas y bailes mexicanos (University of Illinois Press, 2009) and is currently working on a book, Transcultural Matachines, Creativity and Renewal in the Americas (forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press), focused on Matachines enactments in New Mexico, Mexico and Colombia. In addition to her performances as Matachina violinist for the Pueblo of Jemez between 1989-98, she is known for her renditions of the early folksongs of New Mexico, some of which are on her 2008 compact disc, Canciones de mis patrias, Songs of My Homelands; Early New Mexican Folksongs.

Her performance will include a brief sampling of romances (early Spanish ballads), but will focus largely on inditas (literally "Indian maidens"), including songs of captivity and a variety of other songs that Enrique Lamadrid, Donald Robb, and Romero have categorized as inditas. She will discuss the genre and what it reveals about intercultural dynamics and the complexity of New Mexican identities.

Accompanying Brenda will be Rebecca Oertli. Lauded for her   "intimidating mastery" by the New York Press and as the violinist for "the best chamber concert of the year" by Austin Critic's Table, Rebecca Oertli has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the USA, Canada, Japan, and Europe. She recently appeared as a soloist with the Kiev Symphony, the Texas Festival Orchestra and the Cluj Romania Orchestra among others. Enjoying a diverse violin performance career, she has also toured and performed with Josh Groban, the Irish Tenors, and the multi-platinum Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Concert Friday, February 1, 2013 at 7:30pm, Packard Hall, FREE and open to the public

Previous Lectures