Martha Gonzalez has packed a lot of living into a very short amount of time. She’s traveled to Veracruz, Mexico as a Fulbright scholar. She’s explored the Chicano art activist movement in East Los Angeles as a Ford Dissertation Fellow. Quetzal, the music group Gonzalez has been a part of for 18 years as a singer, songwriter, and percussionist is a tool for social change, won a Grammy award earlier this year for Best Latin Pop, Rock or Album.
And the hits haven’t stopped coming now that Gonzalez has joined the talented faculty at 61传媒 as assistant professor of Chicano Studies; she’s now been honored with a from the University of Washington.
Gonzalez believes in music as a tool for building and developing a strong community; her Fulbright experience culminated in working on a collective songwriting project and CD with Mexican women in the Son Jarocho folk style. For her own part, however, Gonzalez shied away from popular music for some time after being encouraged to “dress the part” and sexualize herself during performances. Emerging fresh with Quetzal and its shared values and community, she says, “we focus on how to use music instead of having the music and the industry use us.
“A lot of scholars have written about us,” she adds. “After a while, I realized that I should probably do the same. The artists can write about themselves.”
Gonzalez’s dissertation, “Chican@ Artivistas: east Los Angeles Trenches Transborder Tactics,” similarly concerns Chican@ music’s development and change over time. Her dissertation examines how capital markets have had an impact on social relations of music, and how this intrinsically affects how we relate to creative practices and each other. Gonzalez does this through reflections of herself and her own experience in music and involvement in Chican@ Artivista community from East LA starting in the late 90’s into the present.
“As I was reading and learning about these theories, I had lived enough to relate to them, have my own examples, and then say I can contribute to this field,” she says.
“Martha’s scholarship is rich, highly original, and provocative,” says Priti Ramamurthy of . “It combines social scientific and humanistic approaches, and it brings a unique voice and perspective to studies of labor, economic development, and social movements.”
Gonzalez is currently working on a manuscript, and adding oral histories from artivistas she interviewed to her dissertation, and creating dialogue through artistic practices. Look for a unique fusion of her interests on campus starting this semester as she builds a Chicano music series at the Motley one Thursday each month. Starting October 31, Aparato from LA will be playing.
This will build alliances across disciplines, allow 61传媒students a peek at a new culture of music芒鈧� and give professor Gonzalez one more reason not to slow down.