Piece Description

A fifteen part series of 30-minute documentary radio programs set in the southwestern United States and Mexico. It was recorded, written, narrated, directed and produced by Jack Loeffler. The first seven programs focus on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro: The Royal Road to the Interior thought to be the oldest continuously used road of European provenance in North America. Loeffler has interviewed scholars, loremasters, and descendants of Spanish colonists who first forged this road from Mexico City to the San Juan Pueblo north of Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1598. He has recorded sounds of habitat and folk music and woven the components into a sound collage that reveals the story of this ancient road that has had immeasurable influence on the American West. The second half of the series focuses in part on the relationship of indigenous cultures of the Southwest to their respective habitats. Loeffler has recorded and spoken with members of Hopi, R?o Grande Puebloan, Navajo, Tohono O'odham and Hispano cultures who have shared their sense of the sacred quality of homeland from their geo-mythic and bio-mythic perspectives. They tell stories and sing and otherwise convey their intuitive understanding of human relationship to the rest of the biotic community. The series also addresses the arrival of Anglo culture with its preoccupation with economics and commerce. Two programs address the Great Depression in the Southwest and the effect of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal on the region. The final program poses issues including the growing aridity of the region that will greatly affect the concurrently growing urban populations.