HotLandsMusic.org is a new southwestern Mexican music website

At long last, my new Mexican music website has gone live. 

HotLandsMusic.org is a library and showcase for many aspects of southwestern Mexico's Tierra Caliente, its music and musicians.

The site includes YouTube videos with matching Finale transcriptions. You can see and hear violin genius Juan Reynoso and his bands playing tunes, and follow along on the accompanying sheet music. The transcriptions are also downloadable as PDF files. Soon roughly 50 tunes drawn from my four Juan Reynoso CDs will be posted as MP3 files with matching transcriptions. In addition, there’s a section dedicated to transcriptions not currently linked with audio or video recordings. Before too long, I will be posting YouTube videos of close to two dozen other violinists from the Hot Lands, also with matching transcriptions. I have hundreds of violin trio arrangements of this music as well. A few are currently up on the site, with many more to come.  

I put this site together with the thought that many violinists are not strictly note readers nor ear players but some combination of the two. Being able to see and hear the music as well as read the tunes from the sheet music should allow this remarkable repertoire to be learned by the greatest number of folks.  

The site also features hundreds of photos from my years studying in Michoacán and Guerrero, many Spanish-language song lyrics, bios of many of the musicians and background information on the region, the music and the musicians. 

I will be adding many more transcriptions, articles, scanned vintage sheet music photos and more in the very near future. 

While most of the site is at this point, is only in English, my eventual goal is to have the entire site bilingual. As my Spanish-language skills are less than ideal, I will be depending on others for the translations. 

This site will include regular blog posts in which I will discuss the many aspects of my work. I’m currently making AVI files of 1,500 hours of miniDV video and transferring them to external hard drives. As I do this, I index the tunes and make note of historically important conversations to be transcribed and translated. In many cases, I encounter tunes that are not yet among the 700+ transcriptions I've prepared to date. I will generally transcribe these tunes, especially if they are tunes specific to the Tierra Caliente region rather than nationally known tunes. Needless to say, I am finding many real gems.

If you'll visit HotLandsMusic.org I think you'll enjoy exploring the strikingly beautiful, heartfelt music of Mexico's Tierra Caliente.

-Paul Anastasio

Website soon to be improved