How do you sing a song of the open road when the road was never open to begin with?
El Camino Real, otherwise known as Highway 101, the Mission Road, the Silicon Valley freeway, the King’s Road, the road with the bells — yes, that road — was not always a royal road of Spanish kings, connecting continents and churches in the name of faith. And its passage was never truly open because it was forged through the extraction of human souls and natural resources.
Before the arrival of “conquistadors” to North America, indigenous people created trade routes for commerce between communities. According to the National Park Service, which maintains sections of the United States portion of El Camino in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, these footpaths were forged around 1000 AD. The routes branched throughout the southwest region of the United States and spanned north from Mexico City through the Sonora desert, the entire length of California, into New Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. When Spanish colonizers entered these regions, Native Americans often guided them through unfamiliar and daunting landscapes.
A unique creative collaboration between San Jose State University, TomKat MeDiA and Camino Arts commissioned two projects to elucidate through music the evocative history of El Camino. Called Camino Chronicles, the two-day series arrives in San Jose just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15), and offers two world premieres of new music by Mexican and Mexican-American composers.
The first piece is a work for orchestra and solo flute by Gabriela Ortiz, and the second is a new album of Americana folk music by the Ronstadt Brothers. Both projects are musical reflections on migration and diaspora within the context of empire, colonialism and the heritage of the road connecting North to South America — El Camino Real. Don’t let the musicology language scare you off — the music is powerful and resonant.
Camino Chronicles aligns with work that SJSU faculty in the College of Humanities and Arts undertook to decolonize curricula in light of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. We organized programming around the theme of “Borderlands” from 2018-2020, exploring migration and immigration in the 21st century, with a focus on “Blurring Boundaries, Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges.” The installation of pink teeter-totters at the U.S.-Mexican border by SJSU chair of Design, Virginia SanFratello, and her partner Ronald Rael, showed what it means to break down the barriers between our two countries: It went viral and earned Design of the Year. This year, SJSU’s “Inclusion Initiative” looks to do the same by examining social justice and racial equity through the arts and humanities.
In 2020, SJSU faculty reviewed the curriculum to make it more inclusive and to engage our own students’ diversity and the perspectives that they bring to the University. These Camino Chronicle events are working hand in hand with these initiatives to illuminate different perspectives onto the history of the El Camino, and in so doing reimagine what — for example — 4th grade California history can look like if you trade out building a mission out of sugar cubes for an in-depth exploration of an ancient road transporting people across these western areas for centuries.
Like the stories and songs borne from the El Camino Real, Camino Chronicles brings to life new and diverse perspectives. This year, as we celebrate Hispanic Heritage month, let’s uplift historically marginalized storytellers. The world we live in is far richer than myths like the Wild West. Our understanding should be equally complex to transform society for the common good.
Shannon Miller is dean of the College of Humanities and Arts at San Jose State University. Marcela Davison Avilés is managing partner of TomKat MeDiA and founder of Chapultepec Group. Kat Taylor is Co-Founder of TomKat MeDiA and Founding Director of TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation.
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