♪Spent my life
♪ On these mountains
♪ (Singing fast lyrics) there
♪ Fed my family
♪ Now I lay down
this weary body ♪
♪ I'm home at last
♪ Wanna set me free
>>I grew up in
the Valley sort of
feeling a bit like I was
running across this bridge
between my English
language culture
and my Spanish language culture.
As I've gotten older,
I'm not on the bridge.
I am the bridge.
(man singing in
foreign language)
>>Today we're going to
visit a musical team
whose mission is to
share and celebrate
the sounds and traditions
of several cultures
by combining musical styles
from different centuries
and different continents.
Join us as we talk with Estela
Knott And Dave Berzonsky
of Lua Project. Come on.
(upbeat traditional
music playing)
>>So Lua Project has
been described as
a cultural pollinator.
Talk about the different
styles of music and culture
that you're combining.
>>You know, I mean, I
grew up as this suburban
kid playing indie rock
on drums, but when I came
to college here, I
met wonderful mentors,
wonderful musicians,
but I also learned a lot
about the sort of belief
that it really doesn't matter
who you are, like
culturally or racially.
It's like are you
gonna learn the music?
Are you gonna put in the time?
Are you gonna figure
out how to do stuff?
>>Are you passionate about it?
>>And yeah, like and
so, I grew up in music
believing if you worked
hard at stuff and you
really got inside
what was going on,
you could add value, and
we had for a long time
been very interested in a
lot of different kinds of
global folk music, particularly
music from Latin America
and different parts
of the American South,
and so what we had been
exploring in our music
is learning more and
more about traditional
Appalachian music, but also
different regional musics
from Mexico, Peru,
Columbia, Brasil,
and when we've traveled,
we've spent a lot of time
sort of embedded in
these different cultures
and really kind of learning
how they all fit together,
so at a certain point,
we decided that we needed
to sort of stop traveling
and bring that stuff
back to the hive, but
crafted in such a way
that it is accessible
to the population
that we live in amongst.
And so at that
point, we came home.
We built this yert. We
started a little preschool.
We really got into learning
about the traditions
of Appalachian music, the
traditions of all our cultures
and trying to weave that
together into something we felt
was uniquely ours.
>>But it's not just
about the travel.
Talk about why this is so
important to you Estela,
because this is your childhood.
>>Well, my mother is from
Juarez Chihuahua, Mexico,
and my father grew up
in Luray, Virginia,
and so they met when he
was in the military in
El Paso, Texas. So, growing
up, I grew up biracial
bi cultural and bilingual,
and always felt very much
like I could never be
one fully or the other,
and as we went
traveling, we ran across
the style of music
called Sonjarocho,
and when I saw this,
I was like this is
what happens in the
mountains of Virginia.
>>Give us just a little example,
so with the clogging
and Dave playing
of what that would sound
like bringing those
two cultures together.
>>All right
>>Just a little sample
>>Sure. Okay.
So we're gonna do this
one called "Guacamaya"
which in Sonjarocho
world is in three,
but we blended it
with some Appalachian
clogging styles in
two, so let's see
how that goes.
(clog shoes tapping)
(guitar playing
joins shoes tapping)
(band playing music)
(Man singing foreign language)
Umm. ¿Qué es mexilacha?
Pues esa es la música de México
con la música de las montañas,
de las Apalachas.
Mucha gente abierta del corazón
para escuchar,
para escuchar
las culturas del mundo.
>>Let's talk about how you
have extended this into
a piece that is supported
by the Virginia Humanities.
Where you're bringing in
guest artists and residents
and you are capturing stories.
>>When we came back
to Charlottesville,
I met a group of Latino women,
and we started singing
together with our kids,
and it turned into just
this whole idea of like
how much we miss, like, certain
aspects of Mexican culture
living here in Virginia,
and from that came
the Cville Sobroso Festival.
>>And you've been
recording these interviews.
>>Yeah, so the way the
project manifested itself
is that we went into
the Shenandoah valley
and also around
Charlotesville and interviewed
a lot of families and
largely Latino immigrants
mostly from Mexico, and we
were collecting their stories.
We use those as themes and
then we picked a couple
traditional Sonjarocho
pieces, particularly
in this project. We
started with a song called
"Los Poblanas" and "Guacamaya".
We not only wrote new
Spanish language verses,
we also analyzed the
English ballad tradition
and found a lot of
commonalities in the poetic
and metrical structure,
and so we wrote
English language verses
in the Sonjarocho,
you know, style, but we
also wrote Spanish verses
in the English ballad style.
>>And it's been so important
to you Estela to work
in our community to bring
these cultures together,
because there are so many
rich traditions that people,
you know, are celebrating
separately on their own
here and on their own there,
and you've been quite a force
in bringing it all to
the community as a whole.
Why is that so important to you?
>>I love both sides of
my culture, and I love
Mexican culture, you
know, cause we live here
in Virginia so Virginia
culture is here.
But Latino immigrants when
they come to Virginia,
there's so much that they
bring with them culturally.
(class singing in
foreign language)
(clapping)
Pero tiene otra implicación,
que puede ser un poco política,
la implicación
de hacer sentir
que nosotros los mejicanos
llegamos a este país
trayendo con nosotros
el trabajo,
la fuerza diaria, el sudor,
pero traemos la cultura,
traemos la música.
Pero no para ser menos ni más,
sino para hermanar
el sentimiento del ser humano,
desde que somos seres humanos
de este planeta.
>>I wrote "Immigration Song" and
Zenan wrote a beautiful song
called the "Desierto en Flor"
and we put them together.
(man sings in foreign language)
>>Even though we are
very focused on coming up
with sort of a unique
set of musical ideas,
(man sings in foreign language)
we also see ourselves as people
trying to make sense of the
multiplicity of cultures
that reside in all of us,
and try to create some
beautiful music about
that, and try to connect
through that music.
>>And you do that in many ways.
One of the other focuses
that you all have is
Blue Ridge Music Together
where you work with
families and children.
Talk just a little
bit about that.
>>Well, I mean, that
all started with
this idea that we were,
you know, wow, you know
here we are. We're
playing this music,
but it doesn't seem like
people are paying attention,
and we met this
(laughing)
>>Wonderful woman
>>I'm sure you have no
idea what that feels like.
(laughing)
>>No idea
>>You know we met
this wonderful woman,
and we started talking to her
about how we really missed
certain aspects of Latin
culture because everybody's
singing and moving and
dancing, and, you know,
and she was like,
"You know what?
We can complain about it,
or we can do something
about it, and I want you
to come and check out
these classes that I teach."
And it was Music
Together classes,
and so we went and
we checked it out and
it's like this circle
of like adults who are
modeling musical behavior
for their children,
and we looked across
the circle at each other
and we're like this is
the answer to helping
cure this issue with our
culture, and we've got
to do this, and so
that's what we do.
We sing with the adults and
we create musical environments
for the children, like
every week we do that
and we love it. It's wonderful.
>>This is the life
that you all live,
entrenched in this
culture and these ideas
and these beliefs.
Talk about why that
was so important to you
and continues to be, because
it's not always easy.
>>As Estela and I moved
closer and closer in
our relationship
and our marriage,
we decided that we
really wanted to
start to look inside our
own culture traditions
and try to bring
those to the fore.
So we're now working
with our children, right
to invent sort of
Mexilachian dishes.
You know, so we're
saying like, "Okay,
what are the elements
that bring together
Appalachia and Mexico
in cuisine." Right?
And so it's like corn,
beans, pork, right?
There's a barbecue
tradition in Mexico
that's different, and so
we're developing dishes
where we blend those
things together
like we could do a carnitas,
but like a smoked carnitas,
you know but using a
blend of the spices
that you use in the
American South and in Mexico
Things like that. It's
like when you first start
a stew or a soup, like
there's not much flavor
to it yet and you kinda
gotta sit with it.
And it's gotta simmer for
a long period of time.
You know we've been working
on this set of cultural
ideas for 15, 20 years.
The idea of this Mexilachian
thing is quite new,
only last couple years, right?
But moving forward,
you know, our children
participate in this idea,
so they're cooking with us.
You know, they're
coming on stage with us
and playing percussion
or starting to sing
the songs around
the house, and so-
>>Yeah and this-
>>You know, my whole
thing was that when I get
old, when I pass on, I
want to leave my children
two things, a cookbook and
a songbook for them to have.
>>Aw.
>>Yeah and this has really
become, like, very real for us
most recently over the
past year and a half
because we hear our
children singing the songs
that we are writing.
We hear them humming the
melodies, and for me, like
I've never really cared about,
like, becoming famous, like
for me what's the most
important thing is that
what we're doing becomes
a part of history,
Virginia's history and
that my children can
pass it down to their children.
>>That's fantastic.
Thanks you guys.
This is great work.
sino fue como un sueño.
Fue es una, una imaginación
de poder hacer este proyecto,
de acercar estas músicas
que tienen baile,
que tienen música,
que tienen canto,
que tienen vida comunitaria,
vida en la tierra.
Es
o es importante.
(music playing)
♪oh yeah
♪ She served it up
with black-eyed peas ♪
♪ With Daddy's
gravy on the side ♪
♪ Over a biscuit
(singing in foreign language)