TOP PICKS FOR THE WEEK
This sounds like the kind of lecture that could start a fight. Professor John Nieto-Phillips of Indiana University gives a free talk at The New Mexico History Museum, 113 Lincoln Ave., at 6:30 p.m. Thursday titled Hispano Homeland or Fantasy Heritage? SpanishAmerican Identity and Ideology, 1890s-1940s.
Nieto-Phillips, with deep family roots in New Mexico and a long list of impressive scholarly credentials, takes up an academic controversy over whether there is a discrete Hispano cultural region spanning northern New Mexico and southern Colorado or, as some critics maintain, a Spanish-American identity here that is rooted in self-deception and oppression of Native Americans.
“The controversy lays bare important ideological currents and scholarly ideas about race, language, and land,” says an announcement from the School of Advanced Research, which is hosting the lecture.
Seating in the museum auditorium is first come, first served.
BALKAN SOUNDS Rumelia Collective has been bringing the music of the Balkans and points east to Santa Fe for several years now, and they’re back for a show 4-7 p.m. Sunday at Duel Brewing, 1228 Parkway Dr.
The group’s current lineup includes Nicolle Jensen, vocals, doumbek, accordion, frame drum and spoons; Sitara Schauer on violin, backup vocals, guitar, saz and mandolin; and Alysha Shaw, vocals, cajon, doumbek, frame drum and riq. A doumbek is a goblet-shaped drum; a saz is a stringed instrument popular in countries such as Turkey and Azerbaijan; a cajon is a boxshaped percussion instrument; and a riq is a kind of tambourine used in Arabic music. Get educated on all this at the Duel. There’s no cover charge.
SYMPHONY Or there’s the classics. The Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra performs at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St. The program includes Emmanuel Chabrier’s “Suite Pastorale”; Haydn’s “Horn Concerto No. 1,” featuring the soloing efforts of orchestra principal horn Nathan Ukens, and Schumann’s “Symphony No. 2.”
The guest conductor is Robert Tweten, head of music staff at the Santa Fe Opera. Tickets are $22-$80 at santafesymphony.org, ticketssantafe.org or 988-1234. There’s a free preview lecture an hour before the concert.