Cal State San Bernardino’s music department will welcome Jacqueline Avila, associate professor in musicology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, on Thursday, May 26, to present a lecture and research masterclass that explores the soundscapes and compositional techniques used by the EDM group MIS (the Mexican Institute of Sound) in their 2021 album “DF” and in Netflix’s Latinx-focused dramady “Gentefied.”

The event “Musical Pastiche, Nostalgia, and Identity in MIS’s DF and Netflix’s Gentefied,” which will take place in the CSUSB Performing Arts Recital Hall, is free and open to the public. The lecture begins at noon and the research masterclass begins at 2 p.m. No registration required.

The presentation examines the soundscapes and compositional techniques utilized by MIS and its founder, Camilo Lara, in the 2021 album “DF” and in Netflix’s Latinx-focused dramady “Gentefied” (2020-21). The music created for both the album and the series feature music of the past, either sampled or referenced into a modern musical pastiche that evokes various forms of nostalgia.

“I argue that Lara’s music demonstrates an intimate connection between music, identity, and memory that has resonated with audiences in Mexico City and the growing Latinx community in the United States,” Avila says in her abstract. “This has positioned Lara as one of the major voices in the changing representations of Latinx and Latin American culture in popular media in the 21st century.”

Avila is an established scholar in the fields of musicology, film music, sound studies, and the music of Mexico, Latin America, and the Latinx community across the United States. Her recently published book, “Cinesonidos: Film Music and National Identity in Mexico’s Época de Oro,” addresses the roles of film music in the Mexican national film industry and the Mexican national identity. She has received numerous awards for her work and has presented her research at major conferences around the globe. She has also been invited to present visiting lectures at universities such as UCLA; UC Riverside; the University of Texas, Austin; the University of Colorado; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM); the University of Alabama; and the University of Georgia. 

For more information about the CSUSB music department, visit the Department of Music website.