Guest UTEP Professor Delivers Lecture on Mexican Art and Culture
“In an age where the arts are increasingly marginalized. We need to become more adept at telling our stories,” Candelaria said. “We need to be able to tell why our art classes matter–why our history classes matter–why our political science classes matter. We need to be artistic ambassadors.”
Candelaria’s lecture examined the key roles art and music played in 1930’s Mexico, a post-revolutionary period known as the “Aztec Renaissance” when pre-Colombian culture was foregrounded to project a distinctive Mexican identity. The presentation concluded with a primer on the iconic 1935 film “Redes,” which will be screened with live music by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra Jan. 13-14 at the Washington Pavillion in Sioux Falls.
Prior to arriving at the University of Texas at El Paso in 2013, Candelaria served on the musicology faculty of the University of Texas at Austin for twelve years and was a visiting faculty member in ethnomusicology at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. He received his doctorate from Yale University.
His book, “The Rosary Cantoral,” received the American Musicological Society’s Robert M. Stevenson Award for its outstanding contribution to music scholarship and his research has been supported by prestigious awards including grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
