Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore Page: 1
vii, 143 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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Corridos of the Mexican Border
By BROWNIE McNEIL
In order to be a collector of ballads, one must primarily
have patience. This prerequisite is vital, for without it preci-
ous few ballads will be collected. One must have also a cer-
tain sympathy for the people among whom he works if he
is to interpret what he collects in terms of social forces.
The foregoing statement is intended only to emphasize the
fact that in order to recover a form of expression that is fast
giving way to more modern styles, one must be willing to
spend a great deal of time in fruitless search talking to many
people who are reluctant to talk and slow to remember, and
who fail to comprehend the value of having their ballads set
down on paper.
Many singers and guitarreros can be inspired to new in-
sight right quickly with the added incentive of a bit of
dinero. They may be well up on the aesthetic value of ballads
and at the same time possess that certain paradoxical con-
cept which seems to say "i Qub bonito el corrido mexicano !"
and in the next breath: "Look, amiguito, I'm a mexicano and
you're a gringo, and to me that means only one thing: you're
loaded with money and I'd like to see a little of it before
I start singing." To them ballads are only another means of
Brownie McNeil, while a student in the University of Texas
was in 1941 awarded the E. D. Farmer International Scholar-
ship for study in Mexico, where he devoted most of his time
to the collecting of popular ballads, a task for which he was
well fitted, since he had grown up speaking both English and
Spanish, and loved folk music. At the expiration of his scholar-
ship, he took a job with the Immigration Service in order to
stay on the border and gather more ballads. With equipment
loaned by the University of Texas he made some thirty record-
ings. These ballads furnished the subject of his master's thesis
accepted by the University of Texas in 1944.
At present he teaches in the University of Houston and is
President of the Texas Folk-Lore Society.
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Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore (Book)
Collection of popular folklore from Mexico and Texas, including ballads, personal anecdotes, folktales of the Alabama-Coushatta Indians and other miscellaneous legends. The index begins on page 141.
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Boatright, Mody C. Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore, book, 1946; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67652/m1/9/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.