Jaraner@: Chicana/o acculturation strategy

Includes bibliographical references (pages 89-94)Jaranera and Jaranero, literally defined as an individual whom plays the jarana, has become a term of identification for many Chicanas and Chicanos around the Los Angeles-area since at least 2006. Among Chicanas and Chicanos, the term is more than an individual???s role in a Son Jarocho ensemble. For many Chicanas and Chicanos, to be a jaranera or jaranero expresses a commitment to social justice, the ongoing Chicana and Chicano Rights movement, and a critical worldview. Over the course of multiple focus groups, a pattern emerges among the participants, who, from different parts of Los Angeles, describe similar, painful personal and group experiences of discrimination due to phenotype, spoken Spanish, and culture. Utilizing Bakhtin???s theory of speech genres and Cresswell???s theory of intentional states to explore how some Chicanas and Chicanos understand the term jaranera and jaranero, jaranera and jaranero identity must be understood within the context of the ongoing Chicana and Chicano narrative of identity as it relates to social dominance and structural power in the American Southwest. By examining this experience through Critical Acculturation Psychology and specifically as a response to the demands and imposition of dominant culture, jaranera and jaranero identity should be considered a strategy of acculturation psychology. This research is not a musical ethnography, but rather documents the emerging social use of Son Jarocho and a new conceptual understanding of a the term jaranera and jaranero among some Chicanas and Chicanos in the Los Angeles-region