Next Generation Radio @ SXSW

Hannah Miller's coverage of Chicano music at the 2007 South by Southwest music festival is anything but one-sided. She interviews several Mexican-American band leaders, two of whose groups sound as different as mariachi music is from a kind of mellowed-out Latino Muzak. If funk, hip-hop, and salsa rhythms permeate the festival, Miller is more interested in discussing certain politically charged "messages" emerging from music than in the music itself.

Miller talks with Marco Werman, host of the BBC's program "The World," who attributes the recent resurgence of Chicano music to widespread discontent with racism, poverty, and the Iraq War. As much of a letdown as it is to hear Werman's voice fade too soon in a segue to another musical interlude, it's clear that Americans' current anti-Mexican bias in the Southwest is responsible for an outpouring of song. Rather than protest marches, music has taken the political center stage in the mid-2000s.

I've carped enough in PRX about gringo xenophobia. Suffice it to say that I agree with Miller's approach. My main reservations here have to do with her oral style, her speech mannerisms, which sound a bit too stiff, as if she's reading from a script -- which of course she is! I also have trouble with her pronunciation of the word "Iraq" as "Eye Rack"; this all-too-common mispronunciation sounds as tacky as if Iraqis were to pronounce the "United States" as the "Un-eye-ed Steets"!

One or two quibbles do not a fight club make! Hannah Miller's thoughtful drop-in counters certain disturbing stereotypes about Chicanos who continue to influence our Wonder Bread culture wondrously.