Page - 24 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 2/2016

24 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Alejandro Miranda | Journeying with a musical practice Tijuana, we played at six or seven places in total, then we went to LA, Santa Ana, and from there we went all the way up to Berkeley’. As the next section illustrates, this tour marked the beginning of what would later become a constant journeying between Mexico and the US, albeit not as originally planned. Touring the US as a workshop facilitator By the beginning of the 2000s, Pedro and his group had already spent two decades immersed in networks of practitioners that extended across Mexico and, increasingly, the US. They also became recognised and promoted as traditional musicians in the ‘world music’ scene. But the outcomes of this involvement quickly faded as the group was dissolved after a number of years of performing at international festivals. Pedro formed another group soon afterwards, but: “[…] there were few gigs for musicians in Mexico at that time. I got by because I was mak- ing instruments and, from that time on, I have had a lot of work [as an instrument maker]. But that only covers basic things, the everyday expenses, if you want to save a bit or fix something in your house, that’s not enough.” A few years later, the coincidence of two events triggered his journeying as a workshop facilita- tor in the US. His daughter was about to turn fifteen years old, which in Mexico is typically celebrated with a costly party. Pedro could not afford such a celebration, but the situation changed when he received an unexpected invitation to teach at workshops in the US. A group of practitioners that had been running workshops for some years invited Pedro to give a series of workshops in various cities of the San Francisco Bay Area. This teaching tour represented a good opportunity to earn money given the precarious conditions of the musical market in Mexico and the advantageous exchange rate from US dollars to Mexican pesos. A seemingly typical case of Mexican migration to the US, his journey was primarily motivated by econo- mics: his objective was to earn enough to cover the expenses of his daughter’s 15th birthday party. The original plan scheduled three weeks of teaching, but practitioners in other locations organised additional workshops as soon as they heard that Pedro was teaching in California. As I confirmed while conducting fieldwork among communities of practitioners in the US, the capacity rapidly to organise workshops has been to a large extent enabled by the use of vir- tual social networks and the pervasiveness of the Internet that was well established by the first decade of the 21st century. Three weeks became three months as more workshops and some gigs with local musicians were added to his diary. This demand for son jarocho workshops and performances was produced by the increasing popularity of this musical tradition in the US and the capacity of groups of practitioners to self organise. More generally, the development of these geographically dispersed communities is to be understood in the context of consolidation of the migratory system, gradual economic integration and political asymmetries between Mexico and the US (see Delgado Wise and Favela 2004; Castles and Delgado Wise 2008). While there has been a gradual development of son jarocho in California since the second half of the twentieth century (Loza 1992), it was not until the past three decades that a larger number of people assiduously practiced it in many other locations in the US. The growth of transnational/translocal communities of practitioners