Music by Quetzal @quetzalmusic, @quetzaleastla
Artwork by Jose Ramirez @joseramirezart
Recorded and Mixed by Alberto Lopez @belumusic at TropicoUnion Studios @tropicounion
Video by Sara Aguilar @cipotapower and Quetzal Flores

Martha Gonzalez-vocals @marthafromquetzal
Sandino Gonzalez Flores-backing vocals
Tylana Enomoto-violins @trenku
Quincy McCrary-keyboards and vocals @qemistrymusik
Quetzal Flores-guitars @quetzalmusic
Juan Perez-bass
Alberto Lopez-percussion @belumusic
Evan Greer-Drums @evancristo

Letra En Español
Abrázame. Conforme estalle la bomba
Abrázame. Mientras las flores mueren
Bésame cuando el río se seque
Creo que tus labios son todo lo que necesito
No tendré sed, no me esconderé

Mientras el mundo termina a nuestro alrededor
Mientras otros pelean y mueren
Sabemos que hemos hecho todo lo posible
Abrázame ahora, no lloraré
Porque incluso al final
Me siento fuerte a tu lado
Porque hemos amado con intensidad
¡Somos victoriosos!
¡La justicia nunca muere!

El polvo se ha asentado
Abre tus ojos todavía estamos vivos
Algunos se evaporaron, se agotaron
Se rindió, o simplemente se quedó ciego.
Pero podemos ver, y mira!
Todo lo que hemos construido está intacto.
La forma en que amamos y celebramos
La forma en que nos reímos.

Mientras reconstruimos el mundo que nos rodea
Como otros aún luchan y mueren
Seguimos haciendo todo lo que podemos
No solo sobrevivimos
¡Queremos prosperar!
Porque en este nuevo comienzo
Me siento fuerte a tu lado
Porque mientras hayamos amado
¡Somos victoriosos!
¡Y la justicia nunca muere!
¡Nuestros amores nunca mueren!
¡Nuestras visiones nunca mueren!
¡Nuestras esperanzas nunca mueren!

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‘Imaginaries’ begins with the dark but lively “2+0+1+2=Five,” about a barren landscape ruined by environmental abuse; set in 5/4 time, the composition is punctuated by lush strings, organs and eerie vocals. It sets the tone for a fiery, innovative, percussive and bilingual album that fuses many touchstones of the East LA plurality―including the title track, a taut mix of rock and R&B, and the Veracruz-informed “Tragafuegos.”

Listen to “Imaginaries”: http://snd.sc/vITVjX

Listen to “Tragafuegos” (Fire Breathers): http://snd.sc/sMDeUs

“Imaginaries” is the 35th release in the Smithsonian Folkways Tradiciones/Traditions series since 2002. The series, a co-production with the Smithsonian Latino Center, showcases the diverse musical heritage of the 50 million Latinos living in the USA.

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Set List:
“Palomo Vagabundo”
“Tragafuegor”
“Todo Lo Que Tengo”

Credits:
Producers: Felix Contreras, Denise DeBelius; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Denise DeBelius, Colin Marshall; Production Assistant: Sarah Tilotta; photo by Sarah Tilotta/NPR

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Quetzanimales is situated at the intersection of space, human life, and animal existence, thereby channeling the spirit of a world Gloria Anzáldua once theorized as “un mundo surdo” (a left-handed world) which she intentionally spelled with an “s” to symbolize the radical power held in thinking and imagining wrongly, in other words, refusing to accept our world as it is. Quetzanimales creates un mundo surdo, a world cultivated through souls thriving and surviving that offer teachings that may allow us to recover our own souls. Quetzanimales offers us what feminist theorists would call a “posthuman” praxis for appreciating the offerings of the rooster’s awakenings and the coyote’s hunger. Such offerings assembled in this album call us to imagine life relationally across different beings rather than across the same beings. As Martha Gonzalez explains, the project configures “an animal world that can give us insight into our own humanity.”

Strategies for endurance and persistence are the knowledges passed to us by the ballad “Hormiguitas Divinas,” (Divine Little Ants) who perform a steadfast stride of meticulous labor in light of a courage understood merely in vain. “Sin embargo amanece con las fuerzas en mano / Y aunque alguien vea su esfuerzo en vano / Como hormiga sigue el valor para / Su futuro hermano.” If the hormiguitas divinas provide models of self-preservation within a world built through exploitation, the upbeat Smiths inspired “Perro Caliente” (Dog In Heat) reminds us that radical imaginaries of being must never lose sight of the power of play and eroticism within bodily flesh. The “panting, begging eyes” and “gyrating thighs” of the horny dog in heat calls to mind the vast dimensions of anticipation that strengthen our spirits to desire beyond what is now. The visceral is powerful knowledge. The bossa nova influenced “Ardilla” (Squirrel) sings of the squirrel’s happiness as the moment of gratification. While the ardilla does indeed want to accumulate— “store, store, store…I want more, more, more”— hers is an abundance measured by need rather than greed. The squirrel’s ideal of happiness is based on being “content with my content”; It opts to fill its home with “health and happiness” thereby disrupting the relationship between possession and power. In “Spider’s Lament,” Gonzalez sings, “La araña rodeaba a su preso, un peso y lamento / En el corazón / Tela- tela telaraña / Que la lluvia baja y baña.” Lyrics such as these exemplify the relational affiliation Gonzalez maintains with the animals throughout this album, having personified them during much of her writing process. The song and writing process, in fact, arches back to Anzáldua’s 2002 poem “Like a spider in her web,” where she describes her writing process through the interpretation of a spider. “To keep out the world / I burrow under blankets / And like a spider in her web / Spin images and words / Fashioning another kingdom.”

In a similar spirit, this album fashions a splendid world for us to listen to, encouraging us to pursue an equilibrium that honors all living matter. Quetzanimales sounds a possibility of un mundo surdo through alternative practices and models of gratification, endurance, and perseverance gifted to our souls by all living beings.

Written by Deborah R. Vargas, Associate Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies at The University of California, Riverside. She is the author of Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music: The Limits of La Onda (University of Minnesota Press, 2012).

Track Listing

1. Intro (Eastside Sunrise)
2. Rooster
3. Hormiguitas Divinas
4. Hollenbeck Ganso
5. Ardilla
6. Coyote Hustle
7. Palomo Vagabundo
8. Spider’s Lament
9. City Bridge Cocoon
10. Tecolote
11. Perr@ Caliente

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Earning a PhD is accomplishment enough for most graduate students, but three recent Arts and Sciences grads received the A&S Graduate Medal along with their doctorates this spring. Here’s a look at their accomplishments in the fields of comparative literature, physics, and gender, women and sexuality studies.

Martha Gonzalez
Graduate Medalist in the Social Sciences

Martha Gonzalez. Photo by Isaiah Brookshire.

2013 was a big year for Martha Gonzalez. In addition to earning a PhD in gender, women and sexuality studies, she was honored with an A&S Graduate Medal and a Grammy Award.  The Graduate Medal and Grammy have more in common than one might assume, since Gonzalez’s music—her band, Quetzal, won the Grammy for Best Latin Pop, Rock or Urban Alternative Album—is inspired and informed by her scholarly work.

Gonzalez’s PhD dissertation,  “Chican@ Artivistas: East Los Angeles Trenches Transborder Tactics,” concerns the development of Chicana music in East Los Angeles from the 1990s to the present. “In addition to music theory and Chicana feminist theory, I was surprised and blown away by Martha’s use of feminist development theory [in her dissertation],” comments Priti Ramamurthy, chair of the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. “Martha’s scholarship is rich, highly original, and provocative. 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 came to the UW as a Fulbright scholar and later received a Ford Dissertation Fellowship.

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Source: grad.washington.edu

Academic fellowships are prestigious; and for graduate students who earn them, fellowships can help set the stage for illustrious careers. They are competitive. They come with money. They have titles like Fulbright and Ford.

But what really impresses people in and out of the academy is a Grammy Award—something that UW graduate student and Grammy winner Martha Gonzalez discovered at a job interview shortly after she took home the gold.

“Usually, when I talk about my music, people are like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s nice.’ But upon mentioning the Grammy her band won, eyebrows shot up.

“This time, they were all, ‘What? Really?'” she said. “They know Fulbright. They know Ford Foundation. But the Grammy seemed to get more of a reaction.”

A graduate student in the UW’s Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies program, Gonzalez and her band, Quetzal, won the Grammy for best Latin rock, urban or alternative album. The song that gave their album its name, “Imaginaries,” takes its title from “The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History,” by Emma Perez. Gonzalez’s thesis advisor, Michelle Habell-Pallan, assigned this book in the first course Gonzalez took as a graduate student.

The book “completely inspired me,” Gonzalez said. “It made me think how, in artivistas circles, we’ve always done this same sort of imaginary work.”

The term artivista refers to artist-activists. Gonzalez’s dissertation, “Chican@ Artivistas: East Los Angeles Trenches Transborder Tactics,” focuses on the community of musicians in East Los Angeles who use their music as a social justice tool. As a member of this vibrant, intimate community, she was initially skeptical of attending the UW.

“The scariest thing about leaving a tight-knit community is going into an empty space,” she said.

And the UW was initially a very empty space for her.

“People are very nice, but they won’t take you in past ‘hello, nice to meet you.'”

Though she was enthusiastic about the department and felt like she had clicked with Habell-Pallan, Gonzalez had reservations.

“When you’re first walking through, the campus doesn’t look diverse. Some might argue that it just isn’t diverse. But there are pockets.”

GO-MAP (Graduate Opportunities & Minority Achievement Program) is one such pocket. Juan Guerra, a professor of English and then-director of GO-MAP, persuaded Gonzalez that the UW was the right school for her, after all.

“Meeting Dr. Guerra, I felt he understood me completely, where I was coming from. I felt safe, and I thought, ‘Well, if worst comes to worst, I can always come to GO-MAP and know that someone understands.'”

Through GO-MAP, she made more “connections like that, one by one.” And Gonzalez ended up creating some safe spaces of her own. She and her husband, Quetzal Flores, fellow band member and co-founder of Quetzal, established the Seattle Fandango Project, an organization that promotes community through music. She is also a founding member of Women Who Rock, a collaboration of local musicians and scholars and community activists, and a participant in the Women of Color Collective, an organization that promotes and supports diversity through grassroots organizing.

For Gonzalez, community-based connections are the key to success, academically, musically and personally. About the graduate school experience, she says, “Classes can be great. But if you don’t have a community, you won’t retain students.”

Gonzalez seamlessly integrates her own communities of academia and music performance.

“I’m lucky. I enjoy academia, I enjoy making music,” she said. “I navigate different worlds. If life is interdisciplinary, we need to be able to express that in our work as students and professionals in our field.”

Her experiences at the UW have reinforced that approach.

“Although theoretical discourse often tries to separate itself from practice, my professors have encouraged me to keep relating them to each other,” she said.

With her dissertation defense set for May—the last step in earning her doctorate—Gonzalez was able to leverage her music in her search for a faculty position. “Departments are seeing the value in academics who are also practitioners,” she said. And she proved this by recently landing a tenure-track assistant professor position at Scripps College.

And while the glitz of the Grammys seems like the antithesis to the formality of academia, Gonzalez has realized that embracing an integrated approach to academia also means embracing her identity as a Grammy winner—especially since it is an attention-grabber.

Going forward, Gonzalez expects to continue to be equally devoted to her music and academic study.

“I see the community of artist-musicians as an extension of my classroom and the way I’m going to teach,” she said. “I write and produce during the summer. The school year is like any other regular school year. I have a seven-year-old son who needs his schedule. I live that life; I love that life.”

Want to learn more about Martha’s music and academic research?

Martha’s recommended playlist:
Imaginaries – El Quetzal
Don’t Mess with the Dragon – Ozomatli
Que Pasa – Blues Experiment
Aztlan Underground – Aztlan Underground
Marisela – Monte Carlo 76
Maya Jupiter – Maya Jupiter
Barrio Roots – Quinto Sol
El Hielo – La Santa Cecilia

Martha’s recommend reading list:
The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (Theories of Representation and Difference) – Emma Perez
Methodology of the Oppressed – Chela Sandoval
Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples – Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Research Is Ceremony – Indigenous Research Methods – Shawn Wilson
Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies: Chicana Literature and the Urgency of Space – Mary Pat Brady
The Gloria Anzaldua Reader – Gloria Anzaldua, ed. AnaLouise Keating
The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde – Audre Lorde
The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas – Diana Taylor

Photo by David Jewelz

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