Connectivity: Chulas Fronteras

In partnership with the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music, the Carsey-Wolf Center is pleased to have presented a special fiftieth anniversary screening of Chulas Fronteras (1976) , newly restored in 4K and paired with the 1979 short Del Mero Corazón. Directed by Les Blank and Chris Strachwitz, Chulas Fronteras celebrates the famed Mexican-American musicians of the borderlands, the migrant farming communities from which they come, the strong family bonds of Tejanos, and the social protest ethos inscribed in their music. From joyous, lively dance tunes to soulful, political work songs, musica norteña fuses traditional Mexican harmonies with central European dancehall rhythms. The film brims with tender affection for its subjects, the vitality of their marvelous music, and the generosity of spirit that they show in the face of hardship. Del Mero Corazón (Straight from the Heart) , directed by Les Blank and Maureen Gosling, is a lyrical journey through the heart of Chicano culture as reflected in the love songs of the conjunto tejano and musica norteña traditions. The film was constructed from outtakes from Chulas Fronteras and additional footage shot in California. A performance by corrido singer-songwriter Gallo Armado (Fernando Ríos) preceded the screenings of Chulas Fronteras and Del Mero Corazón. Following the screening, filmmaker Maureen Gosling (assistant editor of Chulas Fronteras and director of Del Mero Corazón) and library science doctoral student Juan Antonio Cuéllar (longtime archivist of Arhoolie Records’ Frontera Collection) joined moderator David Novak (Director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music, UCSB) for a discussion of the two films. Juan Antonio Cuéllar was born in Los Caños, Aguascalientes, Mexico, raised in Santa Cruz, California, and later moved to San Francisco. After working in the city’s hospitality industry, he pursued music, touring and playing valve trombone with the San Francisco-based bilingual punk band La Plebe. During this time, Cuéllar worked at the Arhoolie Foundation as head digitizing engineer for the Strachwitz Frontera Collection, the largest repository of commercially- and independently-recorded Spanish-language music. Over two decades, Cuéllar digitized more than 160,000 recordings and later helped curate the collection, processing and cataloging hundreds of photographs, videos, and printed materials to expand public access. His work centers on Mexican and Mexican American vernacular music and the role of archives as spaces for community memory. He has contributed to oral history projects and digital exhibitions, including Historias de la Alondra and Rumbo a California. Cuéllar is pursuing a master’s degree in library and information science at San José State University and is the Archivist and Digital Asset Manager at The Los Cenzontles Music and Art Academy in San Pablo, California. Maureen Gosling has directed, produced, edited, recorded sound, and distributed documentaries since 1972. A graduate of the University of Michigan (BA, Social Anthropology) , she began as a sound recordist with Les Blank, beginning a twenty-year collaboration in which they made over twenty films. Their films include Burden of Dreams (co-filmmaker, editor, sound) , winner of the British Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1982, and I Went to the Dance: The Cajun and Zydeco Music of Louisiana (co-filmmaker, editor) . Gosling’s feature documentary Blossoms of Fire (2000) , which celebrates the Isthmus Zapotecs of southern Oaxaca, Mexico, was broadcast on HBO Latino. Her more recent films as director/producer/editor include the feature-length docs The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane (2023) , about jazz/blues/folk singer/activist Barbara Dane, and This Ain’t No Mouse Music! (2013, with Chris Simon) on roots music record producer Chris Strachwitz, which premiered at SXSW. She is director/editor of Del Mero Corazón and assistant editor/translator of Chulas Fronteras. Gallo Armado is the musical project of Fernando Ríos, a corrido artist and songwriter from Monterrey, Nuevo León. In 2025, Ríos made history as the first corridoartist to win Nuevo Talento Nuevo León, the region’s prestigious talent competition, with his composition “El Corrido del Aire,” a song advocating for environmental protection for the air and rivers in Monterrey. The success of this song demonstrates that the new wave of corridos could serve as storytelling vehicles for contemporary socially-conscious themes. His songwriting centers the experiences of working-class communities, from orange vendors in Montemorelos, to mothers searching for disappeared loved ones, to environmental and territorial activism. He is currently working on his debut album La Ciudad es Nuestra (“The City Is Ours”) , crowdfunded by family, friends, and supporters, as well as an upcoming 7” single release with Trucha Soul and Sabotaje Media. Gallo Armado represents a new generation of musician that is redefining regional Mexican music, offering strong counter-narratives of emerging corrido music with stories of dignity, resistance, and everyday survival. David Novak is Associate Professor in Music and Director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music at UCSB. His award-winning book Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (Duke UP, 2013) has been translated into five languages, and his research has been supported by Fulbright, SSRC, NEH, NSF, AIFIS, and the Japan Foundation. His current book project, entitled Diggers: An Archival Counterhistory of Popular Music, explores the globalization of music through networks of record and cassette collectors, informal sound archives, reissue labels, and sound recording digitization projects in the Global South. This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center and the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music. Presented in conjunction with the symposium Beautiful Borders: Texas-Mexico Crossings in Film and Music. The Carsey-Wolf Center’s 2025-26 feature series Connectivity examines the evolving meaning of connection in our contemporary moment. While the term “connectivity” often invokes our ever-increasing entanglement with digital infrastructure and social media networks, this series reimagines the term not only as a technical feature of media, but as a humanistic value and a condition of social and public life. This series embraces connectivity as a framework for thinking critically about the ways in which people use media to connect with ideas and with one another, from the shared experience of moviegoing to the collective bonds forged through storytelling and public dialogue. Media are global by nature; they express culture just as much as they transcend borders. The CWC Global series is dedicated to showcasing media from around the world. This series features screenings and events that place UCSB in conversation with international media makers and global contexts across our deeply connected world. The Carsey-Wolf Center is committed to screening documentaries from across the world that engage with contemporary and historical issues, especially regarding social justice and environmental concerns. Documentaries allow filmmakers to address pressing issues and frame the critical debates of our time.