During the months of June and July, public television station KNME Channel 5 is presenting "The Musical Adventures of John Donald Robb." Part biographical sketch of an adventurous musician, and part modern-day exploration with ethnomusicologists and folklorists who look to our musical past for greater cultural understanding, this 30 minute documentary revives and celebrates New Mexico’s disappearing folk music traditions.
The late John Donald Robb loved and composed all kinds of music, but his passion for the songs of everyday folk is what he is remembered for most. Roaming the countryside of the Southwest during the ‘40s and ‘50s, Robb recorded and transcribed over 3,000 Hispano folk songs, the largest collection of its time.
This KNME production on Robb airs in June and July on the following dates:
Monday, June 16, 9:30 p.m.
Wednesday, June 18, 8 p.m.
Thursday, June 19, 10:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 21, 7 p.m. (simulcast in HD on Ch. 35)
Sunday, June 22, 3:30 p.m.
Tuesday, June 24, 10:30 p.m.
Sunday, July 6, 6 p.m.
You can also watch the documentary of John Donald Robb online now at Musical Adventures of John Donald Robb.
"John Donald Robb was an adventurer who had traveled the world - Asia, Europe, South America - but found a niche playground for himself here in New Mexico,” explains Kelly Kowalski, KNME producer / director. “A stern, wealthy and well-educated lawyer in New York City, he accepted mid-career a position at the University of New Mexico as Dean of Fine Arts in the late ‘40s.
"Music was always his passion and he found himself composing everything from sonatas to operas, as well as delving into cutting edge electronic music during the second half of his life. But his greatest legacy is a vast and unique archive of Hispano folk music that he recorded mostly in the ‘50s -‘70s, a transitory time in New Mexico when the old culture began to clash with the new."
The Musical Adventures of John Donald Robb features:
Jack Loeffler - Writer, Radio Producer and Aural Historian
Enrique Lamadrid - Director of Chicano Hispano Mexicano Studies, UNM
Charles Briggs - Anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley
Brenda Romero - Ethnomusicologist, University of Colorado, Boulder
Juan Romero - Ethnomusicology Student, UNM
Folk Musicians - Cipriano Vigil, Frank McCulloch, Aaron Eichwald, and Jose Abeyta
This program is made possible with major funding from Sanford N. McDonnell Foundation, New Mexico Arts, a division of the Office of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Produced and directed by Kelly Kowalski, KNME; edited by David Leach, with videography by Robert McDermott and Paige Thomas.