American Folklife Center Juan B. Rael Collection

Juan B. Rael Collection

Collection

Identifier: AFC 1940/002

Scope and Content Note

Juan B. Rael Collection comprises multi-format ethnographic field documentation of religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. It contains correspondence, administrative materials, recording logs, song transcriptions and translations, and materials generated in the process of creating the online presentation.

In 1940, Juan Bautista Rael of Stanford University, a native of Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, used disc recording equipment supplied by the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center) to document alabados (hymns), folk drama, wedding songs, and dance tunes in Alamosa, Manassa, and Antonito, Colorado, and in Cerro and Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico. These efforts resulted in approximately 650 pages of print material including correspondence, recording logs, song text transcriptions, excerpts from publications, and 8 hours of audio recordings on 36 12-inch acetate-on-aluminum recording discs. A later effort added one graphic image: Rael interviewing Manuela "Mela" Martínez of Taos, New Mexico, circa 1930, and a corresponding negative. In the process of digitizing the collection for online presentation, materials including six computer diskettes containing digitized LP liner notes, book excerpts, journal articles, as well as digitized framing text, and one CD-ROM with digitized images were generated.

Dates

Creation: 1939-1999
Creation: Majority of material found within 1940

Language of Materials

Collection material in English and Spanish.

Access

Listening and viewing access to the collection is unrestricted. Listening copies of the recordings are available at the Folklife Reading Room, many are also online.

Restrictions

Restrictions may apply concerning the use, duplication, or publication of items in this collection. Consult a reference librarian in the Folklife Reading Room for specific information about this collection.

The Collector

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Linguist and folklorist Juan Bautista Rael, highly regarded for his pioneering work in collecting and documenting the Hispano folk stories, plays, and religious traditions of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, was born on August 14, 1900, in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico. His bachelor's degree, from St. Mary's College in Oakland in 1923, led to a master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1927. After deciding on a university career of teaching and research, Rael relinquished his family inheritance in land, cattle, and sheep to his three brothers and his sister. He had realized that the wealth in northern New Mexico that most interested him was the vast repertory of folk narrative, song, and custom that had scarcely been documented.

While teaching at the University of Oregon, Rael returned to Arroyo Hondo in the summer of 1930 to begin compiling his famous collection of over five hundred New Mexican folk tales. By then his work had attracted the attention of pioneer Hispano folklorist and mentor Aurelio Espinosa, who invited Rael to Stanford in 1933. Rael completed his doctoral studies in 1937 with a dissertation on the phonology and morphology of New Mexico Spanish that amplified the dialectological work of Espinosa with the huge corpus of folk tales, later published as Cuentos Españoles de Colorado y Nuevo Mexico: Spanish Folk Tales of Colorado and New Mexico .

Well-versed in the historic-geographic theory of transmission and diffusion of motifs, tale types, and genres, Rael set out on the formidable, almost quixotic task of gathering all the possible versions and texts of the tales, hymns, and plays he was studying. The vast majority of tales are of European provenance, with only minimal local references. He meticulously traced the shepherds' plays to several root sources in Mexico, and his study The Sources and Diffusion of the Mexican Shepherds' Plays is a standard reference on the subject. His ground-breaking study of the alabado hymn, The New Mexican Alabado , is also a prime resource. Inevitably the text-centered historic-geographic approach led more to collection building than to analysis. It has been left to later generations of scholars to develop performance-centered studies, but the collections of Juan B. Rael continue to be an indispensable landmark in the field.

Note: This biography was excerpted from an essay by Enrique R. Lamadrid. For further information on the collector and the collection, see the framing essays written by Lamadrid to accompany the online presentation Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B. Rael Collection . See Folder 16 below.

Extent

3 boxes : 21 folders of manuscripts, 36 sound recordings, graphic images, published materials, and computer disks.

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Additional Description

Abstract

Sound recordings and manuscripts that document the musical heritage and cultural traditions of the Hispano residents of the portion of the Northern Rio Grande region of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, collected by Juan B. Rael in 1940.

Catalog Record

http://lccn.loc.gov/2004695185

Provenance

Juan B. Rael Collection was given to the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center) by Rael in 1940. During the digital conversion process in 1998 and 1999, additional materials, including reprint journal articles, transcriptions, translations, and contextual essays by Enrique R. Lamadrid, were added to the collection.

Online Content

An online version of this collection, including essays in English and in Spanish and a bibliography and glossary, titled "Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B. Rael Collection" is available as an online resource compiled by the American Folklife Center and the National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress.

See http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/collafc.af000001.

Collection Concordance by Format

Quantity	Physical Description/Version	Location/I.D. Numbers
Manuscript Materials
21	folders
Sound Recordings
36	12-inch acetate-on-aluminum discs	AFS 3905-3940 (original field recordings)
5	10-inch DT reels	LWO 4872: reels 255-259 (preservation copies)
4	DAT Tapes	Made in the digital conversion process
Graphic Images
1	black-and-white photoprint	AFC 1940/002:P1
1	copy negative	AFC 1940/002:P1-p1
Electronic Media
6	3.5-inch computer diskettes	Documents generated during collection processing as well as documents/files used to build the online presentation plus backup copies
1	CD-ROM	Scanned images of manuscript items used in the online presentation

Appendix A: Glossary of Spanish Genre Terms, including Dances, from the Juan B. Rael Collection

Excerpted from the online “Glossary of Spanish Terms from the Juan B. Rael Collection ,” compiled by Enrique R. Lamadrid at University of New Mexico for: Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B. Rael Collection .

"Adán y Eva" - "Adam and Eve," one of the cycle of Nuevo Mexicano religious folk plays portraying the first family in the Garden of Eden, the temptation of Eve, and their expulsion into the world.

Alabados - from the Spanish alabar, literally hymns of praise, from a repertory practiced by the Penitente Brotherhood, used genealabarrically to refer to all hymns, but specifically to the hymns on the topic of the Passion of Jesus Christ and the suffering of his Mother.

Alabanzas - also from the Spanish alabar, but referring to hymns of praise to the saints and the celebration of the Virgin Mary.

"Apariciones de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe" - "The Apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe," one of the cycle of Nuevo Mexicano folk plays relating the experience of the Indian, Juan Diego, and his encounter with the Virgin.

Autos Sacramentales - allegorical plays dating to Medieval times whose function it was to teach basic doctrines of the Church.

Bailes - social dances, a major institution in Nuevo Mexicano village life. Whole families would attend and socialize. After World War II, dances are more age-segregated.

Canciones - literally "songs," this term is used generically for almost any composition that is sung, and specifically for the lyric song tradition whose themes are love and death.

Chotiz - Schottische, the internationally popular music and dance associated with, but not necessarily of Scotland.

Coloquio - colloquy or conversation, as in "Segundo Coloquio de los Pastores."

"Los Comanches" - the "Comanches," a regional Indo-Hispanic tradition of dances, music, and folk plays celebrated by Hispanos and Pueblo Indians who dress in the style of the Comanches, a plains tribe who raided the Rio Grande valley in the eighteenth century.

Coplas - couplets, the most common unit of verse sung in the Spanish folk tradition, an octosyllabic four-line quatrain with assonance or vowel rhyming in the second and fourth line in the ABCB scheme. Spanish coplas can be improvised on the spot, but hundreds of them are centuries old and can be found all over Spain and Latin America.

Corridos - contemporary narrative ballads, from the verb correr (to run), because they are sung straight through with no choruses or refrains. Short for romance corrido, literally "running ballad." Themes of natural and human disasters predominate.

Cuadrilla - the quadrille, a kind of square dance with its own distinctive music that originated in the courts of Europe.

Cuna - the cradle, a folk dance found only in Nuevo Mexico in which sets of two couples face each other and join hands, forming a "cradle." Danced to waltz tunes.

Décimas - the most complex form of popular poetry with strophes of ten lines with assonant or vowel rhyming in a variety of schemes.

Despedimiento - literally taking leave, the solemn hymns sung at funerals, specifically at the grave side. The despedimiento in the Rael Collection is called "La Encomendación," in which the departed soul is commended to the Lord.

"El Encuentro" - the Fourth Station of the Cross in which Mary encounters Jesus, who has already been tried, condemned, scourged, and is on his way to Calvary with the Cross on his shoulder. "El Encuentro" is dramatized by the Hermanos Penitentes and their families in Nuevo Mexicano villages.

"Entrega de Novios" - "The Delivery of the Newlyweds," a Nuevo Mexicano folk wedding celebration in which the bride and groom and their families are "delivered" to each other in song. Dates to the times when there was a shortage of priests to perform marriages.

"Estaciones de la Cruz" – “Stations of the Cross,” a fourteen-part prayer service and meditation on the Passion of Jesus, introduced by Saint Francis of Assisi. In Nuevo Mexicano villages, the Estaciones are also recited outside the church on the way to the local Calvario hill.

Inditas - literally little Indian girls or a type of song, a broadly defined genre of Nuevo Mexicano folk music and song which includes everything from narrative ballads and hymns to saints to a ballroom dance. Thematically, inditas have to do with the relations between Hispanos and Indians, including warfare and love. Often sung to the syncopated rhythm of the Afro-Caribbean habanera, many inditas have choruses sung in vocables, the syllable singing typical of North American Indian music.

"La Marcha" - the wedding march, a particular march which was used by wedding parties in procession to the bride's house after a wedding ceremony. Now, la marcha is a triumphal wedding march danced by couples who separate into lines and circle around to recombine in a kind of tunnel made by grasping and raising hands for the newlyweds to pass through.

"Los Matachines" - the Matachine dance, a regional Indo-Hispano tradition of dance drama representing the spiritual conquest of the Americas. Danced in several parts to violin and guitar music: two lines of dancers twirl, kneel, exchange places, and form a cross as their monarch, Monarca, and a little girl, Malinche, preside. On the fringes Torito, a little bull, encounters the Abuelos, ancestral spirits who vanquish and castrate him.

"Moros y Cristianos" - an equestrian folk play that portrays the struggle of Christians and Moors before the final reconquest of Spain in 1492.

"El Niño Perdido" - "The Lost Child," one of the cycle of Nuevo Mexicano religious folk plays that treats the biblical episode of Jesus as a lost child who is later found debating with rabbis in the temple.

"Los Pastores" - abbreviation of "Segundo Coloquio de los Pastores," the "Second Colloquy of the Shepherds," the most famous of the Nuevo Mexicano Nativity plays. A group of shepherds hears the angels announcing the birth of Jesus and tries to make it to Bethlehem despite the interference of Lucifer. Main characters include Bartolo, the lazy shepherd; Gila the beautiful shepherd girl; Ermitaño, the hermit; Lucifer, the devil; the Archangel Saint Michael; and the Holy Family.

Plainsong - a type of religious music with roots in the Medieval church, like the alabados it uses modes and lacks time signatures.

Polcas - Spanish for polkas, the music and dance craze which started in Poland and swept Europe and the world in the nineteenth century.

"Las Posadas" - "The Inns," a processional musical folk play that represents the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem and the problems they had in finding lodging. Performed on the nine nights leading up to Christmas. In the last verses of the song, the people finally recognize Joseph and Mary and invite them joyfully into their house, where all the participants enjoy refreshments.

Redondo - circle dance in the repertory of nineteenth century Nuevo Mexicano folk dances.

"Los Reyes Magos" - "The Wise Kings," the Nuevo Mexicano folk play that ends the Nativity cycle on Epiphany, January 6, or Epiphany eve the night before, when the Three Kings arrive in Bethlehem and bring the Holy Child their gifts.

Rogativas - hymns that express entreaties for divine intercession and mercy, for the souls in purgatory, and to urge the faithful to confession.

Romancero Nuevomejicano - the collection of old romance ballads which Aurelio Espinosa collected in New Mexico and published in 1915.

Romances - old Spanish ballads dating back to medieval times and the fragmentation of epic poetry. Spanish Historical ballads disappeared in New Mexico, leaving the Novelesque ballads with their themes of love and death, and the Burlesque ballads which were used as political satire and children's songs.

"Los Texanos" - "The Texans," is a secular folk play celebrating the defeat of the 1841 expedition from the Republic of Texas to explore and take command of their western borderlands or New Mexico.

"Tinieblas" - Spanish for the Tenebrae service that represents the darkness and chaos following the Crucifixion of Christ. In the morada, a candelabra with thirteen candles is gradually extinguished, and prayers for the dead are recited, followed by three periods of deafening noise.

Trovos - dueling songs of the troubadours that describe encounters of famous poets trying to outdo each other with their verbal virtuosity, a moribund form in New Mexico.

Valses - the waltz with its sweeping triple-meter music and scandalous dance, which swept Europe and the world in the nineteenth century. Before the waltz, couples danced apart.

Vaquero - cowboy, or more specifically, the nineteenth-century Nuevo Mexicano folk dance that only occurred in New Mexico, along with the indita dance, and the cuna or cradle dance.

Varsoviana - "Girl from Warsaw," the music and dance that celebrated the first Polish revolution, known in English as "Put your little foot" and mispronounced in Spanish as "Varceliana."

Versos - verses, the term used to refer to couplets, or octosyllabic quatrains with alternating assonance or vowel rhyme. See also coplas.

Processing History

Robin Fanslow arranged and processed this collection. She curated the online presentation and prepared the collection guide for all original and additional materials in June 1999. Nora Yeh encoded this finding aid under the guidance of Mary Lacy.

Location

Although American Folklife Center is the custodial division of this collection, the original 36 12-inch acetate-on-aluminum discs (AFS 3905-3940) and the 5 10-inch preservation reel-to-reel tape copes (LWO 4872: reels 255-259) are stored in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress. Reference copies of audio materials and all other collection materials are housed in the AFC.