Adams State University will host a lecture by Dr. Brenda Romero, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, "The Indita Gendered Ballad of Early New Mexican Folk Music," Thursday, March 12 from 6-7:30 p.m. in McDaniel Hall, Room 101. The event free and open to the public. Parking is located east of McDaniel Hall and does not require a permit after 5 p.m.
Romero’s lecture is a component of the ASU course, Lifeways of the San Luis Valley, and a fitting component of the Women’s Week at ASU. Romero’s presentation will be an ethnomusicological lecture-performance around the image of the indita, young native woman, as a New Mexican symbol of tierra sagrada, a feminized sacred landscape. She said, "As a teacher, scholar, composer, and performer, I have tried to be grounded in social consciousness and responsibility in a world that is deeply troubled. I have worked toward a better, more equitable world by helping to create a greater awareness of world cultures through music."
Romero received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music theory and composition from the University of New Mexico and holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of California in Los Angeles. Her work includes exploration of New Mexican folk music with both Spanish and Native American origins. She has worked extensively on the pantomimed Matachines music and dance and has expanded her research and fieldwork of such as a Fulbright García Robles Mexico Fellowship in 2000, and as a Fulbright Colombia Scholar in 2011. Romero is a founder and facilitator for the College Music Society Summer Institute on the Pedagogies of World Music Theories hosted in 2005, 2007, and 2010 in Boulder (with possibilities for more). She spoke at a UNESCO/Northeastern University Symposium on "Music and Intercultural Dialogue" in Paris in November 2007.
Romero has had formal training in both voice and guitar, and accompanies herself in solo performances, and has performed violin with the Pueblo of Jemez Matachina. She has appeared in regional television productions, both as a performer and narrator, including a 2008 PBS Special on John Donald Robb. She also produced an hour documentary on the Ute Mountain Ute Bear Dance for the Ute Mountain Utes in Towaoc, Colorado in 2010.
Her awards include a 2000 award of the Fullbright Research Scholarship, a 2005 Society for American Music’s "Sight and Sound" award, which allowed funding for the production of her 2008 CD, Canciones de mis patrias: Songs of My Homelands, Early New Mexican Folk Songs. She received a 2007 University of Colorado President’s Award for Diversity and a 2014 Faculty Excellence Award in Diversity.
