Read Part One On the page opposite the photo, a text began in Spanish, entitled “El Gringo Jarocho.” The text recounted how Joseph Ralph (Raúl José) Pinkham Hellmer had been born in Philadelphia in 1913 and, attracted in youth to Eastern philosophies, had had an early premonition of his life’s calling; to create brotherhood through music. Coming across a stack of old son jarocho recordings in a bin, he experienced an epiphany, a total identification of some sort. In 1946 he arrived in Mexico to begin what was to be his life’s work: researching and collecting Mexican folklore. He became, the notes said, “one of the most prolific investigators of Mexican music, marked by the search for a human horizon at the margins of the bellicosity that characterized the first half of the twentieth century, a search that had touched him in his very flesh.”
Judging by popular music, all is lost. But judging by the immense range of music listened to by some, supported by unlimited access to digital music files, the work of the Gringo Jarocho lives on.
Judging by popular music, all is lost. But judging by the immense range of music listened to by some, supported by unlimited access to digital music files, the work of the Gringo Jarocho lives on.
Another gem. I’ve had the privilege of visiting Tlacotalpan on a sleepier day but it is a magnificent byway. You evoke it as full of life.