Emma Álvarez de La Rosa started playing the cello when she was 6 years old. An international student and a double-major in music and anthropology at New Mexico State University, she will be spending the summer in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian Folklife and Cultural Heritage Center.
“I was able to go to an ethnomusicology conference last semester in New Orleans, and there was a booth for the Smithsonian,” Álvarez de La Rosa said. “I knew they had internships, so I thought, ‘I'm going to see if they have anything for music and anthropology,’ and they told me about their Folklife Festival internships.”
There are a number of internships available, but Álvarez de La Rosa will begin her Advanced-Level Folklife Festival Internship on June 5. This paid internship provides $800 per week for six weeks over the summer to cover her living expenses. Students will also work the 10 days of the Folklife Festival (last week of June and first week of July), which includes work on event production, technical crew, the Festival Marketplace, social media, web production, graphic design, curatorial team, the festival blog, public relations, participant and volunteer coordination, video production and administration.
Lois Stanford wrote a recommendation letter explaining Álvarez de La Rosa’s suitability for this particular internship. “Emma’s heart lies in the interdisciplinary boundary between cultural anthropology and music, in particular, ethnomusicology and folklore,” said Stanford, NMSU cultural anthropology professor. “Drawing on both her training in musical studies and cultural anthropology, Emma is working under my direction to complete an undergraduate Honors Thesis Project on traditional lullabies of the U.S.-Mexico border region.”
Álvarez de La Rosa did her field work in a small community south of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Her research includes musical recordings of the songs, transcriptions of lyrics and music, oral histories and participant observation. She also documents the challenges that women face as they are drawn into working in border factories and no longer have time to sing to their children at night, and the grandmothers who continue the tradition.
“I recorded women singing lullabies,” she said. “I’m transcribing all the lullabies to get the music and lyrics. Five of them are going to be at the end of my thesis, so people can play them on their piano. My focus is on the importance of music in bonding mothers and children.”
“Emma approaches her academic and professional development with careful thought and a passion to pursue the cross currents between anthropology and music in multiple dimensions,” said Rani Alexander, anthropology professor and department head. “Emma’s honors capstone research breaks new ground in the study of lullabies from the U.S.-Mexico border region. She has also conducted research with Dr. Stanford about food sovereignty in the borderlands and has worked to digitize historic photographs for the Museo Regional del Valle de Juárez.”
And if all that isn’t enough, Álvarez de La Rosa’s musical endeavors include playing in the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra and serving as principal cello in the NMSU philharmonic.
As Álvarez de La Rosa prepares for her experience with the Smithsonian Folklife and Cultural Heritage Center, she also needs to cover round-trip airfare to Washington, D.C. She needs two tickets, one for herself and one for her cello.
“At the Folklife Festival, she's going to be working with Ozarks traditional music but also many cultural traditions or musical traditions from around the world,” Alexander said. “And she has to bring her cello, so our next step is to find funding for her airfare and her cello's airfare.”
Phame Camarena, dean of the NMSU Honors College, and Fred Bugbee, professor and head of the Department of Music, are assisting in supporting the cost of airfare. Donations can be sent to Friends of Anthropology at https://nmsufoundation.org/givenow/friends-of-anthropology, the NMSU Foundation’s secure giving page. Please indicate the donation is intended to support Emma Álvarez de la Rosa’s travel expenses.
You might wonder why a cello needs its own seat on a plane?
“They kind of have like their own personality,” Álvarez de La Rosa said. “Like sometimes they're in a bad mood and you’re not going to get a good sound. If the weather has a little too much humidity, it’s going to sound weird or if there’s too little humidity, it's also going to sound weird. So, I just really have to always take a lot of care of it. Cellos are very fragile. They're made of wood, but it's very thin wood. Just one little crack starts expanding and it's like $1,000 to fix.”
Álvarez de La Rosa plans to graduate from NMSU in May 2024. After that, she and her cello will find their way into a Ph.D. program.
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