Rhythms of a Nation, part 2: Syrian Music in the U.S. Southwest

In this engaging series, Dr. Andrea Shaheen Espinosa will provide an overview of music in the Arab world, with a particular focus on Syrian performance practices. Drawing on her experiences as a Syrian-American musician and researcher, she will share insights from her current work, which examines how migration, nostalgia, grief, and trauma shape traditions and performance practices among Syrian diasporic communities in the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico. Each session will feature live performance demonstrations and interactive learning experiences—so come ready to listen, learn, and dance!

While there is considerable scholarship on Arab immigration to the United States, little of it addresses the diasporic communities of Arab immigrants who settled along the U.S.-Mexico border. Communities began to form in the late nineteenth century when peoples of what was then the province of Greater Syria left their homeland in search of greater economic and educational opportunities. The migrant experience and precarious border atmosphere of the U.S. Southwest impacted individual and communal identities within Syrian diasporic communities in the southwest region. As this presentation will demonstrate, music and dance often played an instrumental role in the ways that members of this community engage with traces of their family migration story and their Syrian heritage. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, this presentation explores the relationship between migration and identity through an examination of musical taste and expression among members of Syrian communities in El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona. Throughout the presentation, Dr. Shaheen Espinosa will take questions, demonstrate musical instruments and dancing, and engage audience members is Syrian song and dance practices.