La Peña del SurCo
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El SurCo (right to left): Maxi Larrea, Dr. Jennie Gubner, Diana Peralta, Esteban Hernandez Parra and Andres Pantoja.
Chris Zatarain
To learn more about this organization: El SurCo Tucson
La Peña del SurCo is an applied ethnomusicology project led by PhD ethnomusicologist and intercultural arts and health scholar Dr. Jennie Gubner and her Argentine/Chilean folk music group El SurCo (featured above). Gubner’s research explores how Latin American models of cultural organizing and participatory music making can be leveraged to promote forms of intergenerational wellbeing and diasporic belonging.
A peña is an informal Latin American folk music gathering where people come together to enjoy music, dancing, good food, and community. Peñas, especially those organized by musicians, are often more participatory than a normal concert and feature more than one group, participatory singing, and invited performances by community members. By design peñas are intended to be inclusive community events open to music lovers of all ages. While peñas can be found throughout Latin America, they are most common in Argentina and Chile. Peñas played a particularly important role during the socially conscious song movements of the 1960s and ‘70s as places of cultural exchange during times of violent political repression.
Dr. Jennie Gubner is an Associate Professor of Music and Ethnomusicology as well as the Program Chair of the Applied Intercultural Arts Research GIDP at the University of Arizona, College of Fine Arts.
Imagining America
To learn more about this organization: Imagining America
The University of Arizona and the Applied Intercultural Arts Research program is proud to be affiliated with the Imagining America organization. The Imagining America consortium (IA) brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. Working across institutional, disciplinary, and community divides, IA strengthens and promotes public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and civic action on pressing public issues. By dreaming and building together in public, IA creates the conditions to shift culture and transform inequitable institutional and societal structures.
The Awe Collective
To learn more about The Awe Collective: The Awe Collective
This website is part of a larger project created by Dr. Jennie Gubner and one of her doctoral mentees and graduate, Dr. Sydney Streightiff, from the University of Arizona Applied Intercultural Arts Research (AIAR) Graduate Interdisciplinary Program.
As applied and socially engaged arts researchers, they are interested in finding ways to use arts and creativity to promote accessible healthy aging practices and to build intergenerational, age-friendly communities. Having met and been inspired by Dr. Virginia Sturm's work while an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute, Dr. Gubner invited Sydney to work with her to explore how creative and artistic prompts might offer new ways to encourage people of all ages to learn about and engage in awe walking practices. This website is one of the many projects emerging from their collaboration.