The End Is The Beginning

I can not believe that I am about to graduate college. I never thought it would get to this point.

In just 3 short weeks I will be a "real" person and contributing member of society. Whether I am actually contributing something good is yet to be seen.

I would like to thank Jay for teaching BorderBeat and letting us have the freedom to do whatever we wanted in the class and trusted that we would try to do the best that we could.

BorderBeat was by far the best class I took at UofA. I learned the most in BorderBeat than I did in any other class I took during college career. I will be able to take a lot of things I learned and bring them out into the real world.

So with that said, I'm glad that the UA basketball coaching situation settled. It's just too bad my college experience was tainted by whatever the last 3 years have been.

I am truly going to miss Tucson and know that I will be back to visit a lot to check out UA football and basketball games. I can't imagine a better place to spend 4 years in college and my only regret is that I won't be able to get to spend more time here.

For the final time, Namaste.

Rupert Pacheco

While I was doing a story for BorderBeat on Tejano 1600 AM here in Tucson, I had the pleasure to talk to Rupert Pacheco.

Mr. Pacheco is the programming director of Tejano 1600 and the morning show host on the station, working a long stretch from 6am-12pm.

He got an interesting start in the radio business. He always wanted to be a DJ and as a high schooler created a fake show on tape that included songs.

This continued through his tour of duty with the Army. He would play the tapes for people and they would ask him what radio station they were listening to. He would laugh and tell them it was a tape of him.

In 1999, Pacheco got his big break in radio. While working for UPS, he heard an opening for a part time DJ was available at Tejano 1600. He sent in one of his old tapes.

He got the job and started doing what every DJ does when they start in the business; overnights, weekends and filling in.

Eventually Pacheco worked his way up to the position that he is in today.

Here is what Tejano music sounds like


Until next time, Namaste.

A New Voice In The White House

Some shocking news came my way this past week while watching one of my favorite show this past week House.

The actor Kal Penn, who has appeared in such classic movies as Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and its sequel, has put his acting career on hiatus so that he can work with Barack Obama in the White House.

Penn will work as the assistant director of the White House Office of Public Liaison.

Penn worked with the Obama campaign during the his run toward the presidency. He grew so interested and close to the Obama camp that he asked if there was anything more he could do for the new president. Penn went to the President with the idea of reaching out to artists (mainly in the acting community) and Asian-Americans.

This is not the first time that an actor has jumped into a political office (Ronald Reagan and (Clint Eastwood) but in recent years it is the first time we have seen a celebrity do more than just voice their opinion about politics.

Al Franken and the radio show hosts for La Sabrosita in Nashville are some radio personalities who have made the jump to Washington to fight for what they believe.

Artisits like Penn are a rare few, people who are willing to go and help out something they believe strongly enough about that they quit their job in order to pursue it. Sure, Penn has likely made a nice chump of change from his acting and can afford to pursue this while others might not be able to.

It is nice to see someone willing to do more than just talk about what they think but to act on it and pursue it further.

Until next week, Namaste.

Corridos

For a story I am doing for Borderbeat I wrote about Celestino Fernandez and corridos.

A corrido is the Mexican musical genre that is a mix of a poem and a song. Corridos typically have musical accompaniment, usually a guitar.

Corridos are based on true events and can range from political topics to baseball players. The point of a corrido is that you try to and get a message across.

Something that was not included was about corridos on the radio.

Fernandez and I discussed how corridos had been shortened since when they first came around.

"No one wants to listen to a 10 to 15 minute song on the radio," Fernandez said. "So a lot of them have been shortened."

Typically a corrido that is heard on the radio last 3-5 minutes. In today's musical age, a corrido ca range from having mariachis or to the traditional single guitar.

Fernandez said that an untrained ear will not be able to tell the difference between a Hispanic song and a corrido.

He said the way to tell the difference is that a corrido will begin with an introduction that says that it is a corrido or it is a true story.

Fernandez told me that when corridos where first recorded they were recorded on 45 rpm records. The length of corridos then did not allow for the entire song to be recorded on one side of the record. So halfway through the corrido the listener would have to flip over the record to hear the end.

There are many different kinds of corridos. Narcocorridos are corridos about drug smuggling and migracorridos are about immigration.

Fernandez told me that the Border Patrol went so far as to hire a corrido writer to write five migracorridos to try and scare illegal immigrants from illegally crossing the border.

Here is a corrido from Valentin Elizade.


This video is goes a little bit more in depth about corridos with Tucson local Jesus Garcia and some more corridos.