Latino Migrant Music and Identity in the Borderlands of the New South

Life in Mount Airy, North Carolina, moves at a stately pace, and at times the experience of life there, like the image projected by the city, can be almost achingly quaint. If the boosters in Mount Airy had their way, people would consider it to be the quintessential Southern town, an oasis of timelessness in the modern world. Andy Griffith was from there, after all, and Mount Airy was the model for Mayberry on his famous and beloved show. The town's webpage, tellingly named "VisitMayberry.com," invites visitors to "step back to a simpler time when you visit Mount Airy." A visitor might initially be inclined to agree that the rhythms of life seem not to have changed quite as thoroughly as they have elsewhere in the country. But striking and historic change has come to Mount Airy as it has to the rest of the American South, and neither life nor culture in Mayberry will ever be the same. Suddenly, tradition-embracing Mount Airy has become a vital new borderland of globalization. The diverse and growing Latino immigrant population newly arrived in the region is transforming historically insular and biracial Southern culture and introducing new cultures and new identities into communities such as this that are already rich with distinctive cultural traditions. This change can be seen in signature events in the town which celebrate regional culture. Every year, on the first weekend of June, thousands of people are drawn by the Mount Airy Fiddlers Convention, an institution in the region since 1971 and a destination for musicians from around the world. Mount Airy stands at the heart of Surry County, the region in North Carolina richest in, and most famous for, the driving traditional music known to fans and musicologists as "old time music." Whereas bluegrass is dominant in most areas in the southeast and around the country, in Surry County traditional old-time fiddlebanjo music is still revered and played on a scale and intensity not seen in other areas in the region. As might be expected, the participants at the Fiddlers Convention are almost exclusively white, although a tiny handful of African Americans do participate. The population of Surry County is 94.8% white, and Mt. Airy itself is slightly over eighty-five percent white and 7.9% African American. In 2000, the federal census counted only 498 Hispanics or Latinos of any race residing in Mount Airy (American FactFinder). But the town, like North Carolina more broadly, has changed with extraordinary speed, and the 2000 Census numbers have been eclipsed by a remarkable explosion in the size of the Mexican population. Mexican Consul to North Carolina Armand Ortiz-Rocha notes that "the Mexican migrant population in North Carolina has grown at unexpected rates, surpassing all estimates" (qtd. in Karsada and Johnson, Jr. unnumbered frontspiece).1 By September 15, 2007, these ongoing transformations were made clear when Mount Airy hosted the new "Festival Latino 2007" in celebration of Mexican Independence Day. The Mount Airy News noted that this festival was "the first ever Hispanic celebration in the city," and the articles covering the build-up to the event offered the sense that this festival marked a real turning point in the life of this town. Held in the same Veterans Memorial Park as the Fiddlers Convention, Festival Latino 2007 featured twelve hours of Mexican music played by fifteen bands, food, dancing, bull riding, and visits from Mexican Consul Ortiz-Rocha and the Mount Airy town mayor, Jack Loftis. As organizer Juan Rivas told the Mount Airy News, "the heart of the Mayberry community is friendliness ___ And that's what we want" (qtd. in Perkins, "Festival to Showcase Latino Culture" n.pag.). Mount Airy officials did not know what to expect before the festival but continuously increased their estimates of anticipated attendance. The Mount Airy News eventually reported in a brief note on September 16, the day after the event, that festival goers numbered in the many "thousands. …