Promotional material designed by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
“Join us for the opening lecture of Special Collections newest exhibition “40 Years of Tucson Meet Yourself” on Sept. 12 from 6 p.m.-8:30 p.m. The evening includes a discussion about the early days of Tucson Meet Yourself featuring Dr. Jim Griffith, retired UA professor, former director of the Southwest Center and founder and former director of Tucson Meet Yourself.
A panel of notable festival volunteers and friends, including Dan Madden, Loma Griffith, Debbie Friesen, Fred Klein, Richard Morales and Gary Tenen, will also share stories and reminiscences of Tucson Meet Yourself from its earliest days and how it evolved into the largest folk life festival in the Southwest.
This lecture will be at Special Collections. It is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Bob Diaz at diazj@u.library.arizona.edu.”
Listen to the program audio here:
A panel discussion with Tucson Meet Yourself volunteers, including Jim and Loma Griffith
Promotional material by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
The second program associated with this exhibition featured Dr. Maribel Alvarez, professor of Anthropology and executive director of the Southwest Folklife Alliance.
Here is the news release for the event:
“40 Years of Tucson Meet Yourself: Folklife and Culture”
Join us for the final lecture accompanying Special Collections’ current exhibition, “40 Years of Tucson Meet Yourself.” Maribel Alvarez, research professor for the UA Southwest Center and Tucson Meet Yourself program director, will share stories of Tucson’s folklife and culture and how they manifest themselves in every day life.
The following biographical snapshot of Dr. Alvarez is borrowed from the University of Arizona Southwest Center’s webpage:
“Maribel Alvarez, Ph.D., is an anthropologist, folklorist, curator, and community arts expert who has documented the practice of more than a dozen of the country’s leading emerging and alternative artistic organizations. She is Associate Dean for Community Engagement for the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, is the Jim Griffith Chair in Public Folklore and Associate Research Social Scientist in the Southwest Center, and Associate Research Professor in the School of Anthropology. She founded, and until recently served as executive director of the Southwest Folklife Alliance, an independent nonprofit affiliated with the University of Arizona.
She teaches courses on methods of cultural analysis, with particular emphasis on objects, oral narratives, foodways, and visual cultures of the US-Mexico border. In the last few years, Maribel has written and published essays about poetry and food, intangible heritage, nonprofits and cultural policy, the theory of arts participation, artisans and patrimony in Mexico, and popular culture and stereotypes. In 2009 she was a Fulbright Fellow conducting research in rural Mexico. Maribel was the co-founder and executive director for seven years of MACLA–Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, a contemporary, alternative urban arts center in San Jose, once described as a “lab for intelligent cultural interventions.” Maribel is a trustee of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress; in addition, she has served as faculty for ten years at the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture’s summer Leadership Institute in San Antonio, TX. Currently, she is completing two book manuscripts for the University of Arizona Press, one on the verbal arts and lore of workers in the Mexican Curios cottage industry at the US-Mexico border, and another on the cultural history of wheat and flour mills in the state of Sonora in northern Mexico. Maribel was born in Cuba and came to the United States at the age of seven; she lived in Puerto Rico for eleven years before moving to California in 1980, where she became active in the Chicano arts community and multicultural arts movement of that decade.”
A few years back, I was a member of the Board of Directors of Tucson Meet Yourself and for the 2012 Festival, I was invited to create a small exhibition on lowriders for display at the festival. The results can be seen below. I had a great time working on this, from painting the display boards to writing a bibliography on lowriding (see below) to meeting with members of the local car club, The Dukes, to borrow materials for the display. These include the little cars and the Dukes clock, as well as the hubcaps that are shown. I used material from my own record collections to create the display on oldies but goodies music. The photos below include a couple of my good friend Mel “Melo” Dominguez, a wonderful local artist with whom I shared a booth at the festival. Friends of mine stopped by and their photos are also included. Finally, I had to include some photos of the many beautiful cars that were on display that day. Again, this was another fun project!
Local artist extraordinaire, Mel “Melo” Dominguez, showing off the t-shirt he designed for the festival.
These t-shirts sold like hotcakes at the festival. I still have mine. It’s held up pretty well!
My friend Mel.
My friend RIcardo Andrade and his friends stopped by to say hello.
Lowrider
Bibliography
These resources can be obtained from
either the University
of Arizona Library or the Pima
County Public Library.
How to build a lowrider. / by Frank
Hamilton. North Branch MN. Cartech, 1996. University of Arizona Library, Special Collections. TL 255.2 .H36 1996
Lowrider: history, pride, culture. / by Paige R. Penland. St. Paul MN: Motorbooks,
International, 2003. University of Arizona Library. Special Collections. TL
255.2 .P46 2003
Lowrider Magazine. San Jose, Calif.: A.T.M. Communications. Pima County Public Library. Various
branches.
Lowrider space: aesthetics and politics of Mexican
American custom cars./ by Ben
Chappel. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2012. University of Arizona Library. E184.M5 C3837
2012
Lowriders. /
by Lisa Bullard. Minneapolis, Minn: Lerner Publishing, 2007 (children’s book)
Pima County Public Library. 629.2872 B8729L 2007 CHILD
Lowriders /
by Matt Doeden. Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press, 2005. (children’s book) Pima
County Public Library. 629.2872 D67L 2005 CHILD
Lowriders. /
by Robert Genat. St. Paul, Minn: MBI, Publishing, 2001. Pima County Public
Library. 629.222 G2852L 2001 Espanol
TEEN
Lowriders handbook, The: engines, tires and wheels,
hydraulics, custom interiors, custom bodywork, chassis and suspension, air ride. / from the editors of Lowrider Magazine. New York:
HP Books, 2002. University of Arizoan Library. Special Collections. TL 255.2
.L68 2002
Lowriders in Chicano culture: from low to slow to show. / by Charles M. Tatum. Santa Barbara, Calif:
Greenwood, 2011. University of Arizona Library. E-book.
Lowriding in Aztlan: the truth about lowriding! / a film produced by Katrina Jasso-Osorio, Daniel Osorio;
written and directed by Daniel Osorio. New York: Universal Music and Video Distribution,
2006. Pima County Public Library. 629.222 L9552 2006 DVD TEEN
Low ‘n slow: lowriding in New Mexico. / photographs by Jack Parson; text by Carmella Padilla;
poetry by Juan Estevan Arellano. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1999. Pima
County Public Library. 917.89004 P254L 1999
Low y cool.
/ a film by Marianne Dissard. Tucson, Az. M. Dissard, 1997. Pima County Public
Library. 362.7089 L95 1996 DVD, available at various branches.
Old barrio guide to low rider music, The. / by Ruben Molina. La Puente, Ca: Mictlan Pub.,
2005. University of Arizona Library. Fine Arts Library and Special Collections.
ML 3558 .M65 2005
Prepared by Bob Diaz for Tucson Meet Yourself. October, 2012.
Promotional material by Marty Taylor, University of Arizona Libraries
In the mid-2000s I was a board member of Tucson Meet Yourself. Knowing that the 40th anniversary of the event was coming up, I decided to curate an exhibit on the event. Special Collections is home to the archives of the Southwest Folkore Center, which sponsored Tucson Meet Yourself. There was a wealth of materials to choose from, and it was great fun putting this exhibition together.
From the UA News Service: In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Tucson Meet Yourself, the UA Special Collections is hosting “40 Years of Tucson Meet Yourself” through Jan. 10. The special exhibition, curated by Bob Diaz, offers a retrospective review of the origins, traditions and celebrations that define Tucson Meet Yourself.
A view of the exhibition gallery
A display of Tucson Meet Yourself t-shirts
On display at Special Collections, 1510 E. University Blvd., the exhibition includes decades of posters, newspaper articles, programs, photographs and original documents, such as meeting notes. Also included is a music kiosk and a history of the festival’s annual corrido contest as well as a special profile of Griffith, the festival’s founder who is now retired from the UA.
Curated from the Tucson Meet Yourself Archive in Special Collections, which documents the festival from its first year through 1995, the exhibit also includes select items borrowed from the festival headquarters that were recently relocated to the UA Downtown campus in the Roy Place building.
A display of recordings by Lydia Mendoza and Lalo Guerrero, two regional musicians who performed at Tucson Meet Yourself
For more information about the 40th anniversary of Tucson Meet Yourself and the exhibition, see the Zocalo article, “Ephemera and Eccentricities”, by Monica Surfaro Spigelman.
