Musica Mexicana

Our first, measurable outcome was to "create a stronger cohesive Mexican regional music sector." After six gatherings involving nine participants who comprise three different Musica regional Mexicana bands, this outcome has been achieved. The participants reported that they had never gotten together as a sector before, they felt valued through these convenings, and they shared lessons learned along the way of their musical journeys. They have been so motivated by these gatherings that they have proposed continuing the work and recruiting other Mexican musicians from rural Minnesota and the suburbs.

Our second, measurable goal was to "capture data that demonstrates the barriers that young Latinxs face when desiring to preserve, practice, and inform Mexican musical practices." This data has been gathered and we will continue to gather this data until the end of the program (June 25th). The sessions have been structured to allow each participant to share their personal journey in finding and learning the music; they each had time to write down the top three obstacles in their quest to learn and perform this traditional music. As a large group, they shared these obstacles and deepened their understanding and experience with them. As a large group they also took on an exercise to categorize these challenges into themes and rated them from the most significant challenge to the least. We will be ready to present this data in our final/annual report.

Our third and final measurable outcome was to "propose the foundations of a Mexican musical education program that can engage a larger number of young Latinx students." The group is very motivated to launch into a longer, more well supported, and comprehensive effort to establish a musical education program that serves Latino youth. They have already mapped out the key themes that would comprise the foundations of such an effort, they are ready to fundraise and begin to build the partnerships and social capital needed for such a long-term effort.

We are well on our way to successfully reach the proposed measurable goals of this grant; the group is highly motivated to deepen this work and are very grateful for the opportunity to gather as a sector and begin to leverage their existing talent and assets.

The only challenge we have faced is having the lack of appropriate facilities to host our learning groups and planning sessions. We have also faced challenges in not having resources to provide dinner for the group as many of them would come to the sessions right after work or school.; The outcomes of this grant include: 1) engaging and serving an underrepresented community of Spanish speaking, first generation musicians in the Twin Cities; 2) establishing a network of support for these underrepresented and multilingual communities who have no formal or systemic way to obtain resources, funding, technical assistance, mentorship, training, or performance exposure; 3) consistent convenings and trainings were provided to this group to empower them with knowledge, resources, and information that support them in continuing to stabilize and grow as local, traditional musicians.

The goals of this program were met with full success. We achieved our efforts by consistently convening with the musicians at a probono provided location that was accessible to all. We facilitated the sessions in Spanish and provided handouts, information, videos, and facilitation in Spanish. We measured our outcomes by surveying all of the participants, doing reflective verbal evaluations as a group and as individual facilitators.

The group wanted to keep convening and growing the group's membership, but we did not have any resources to continue to do that.