Lauryn Salazar

Lauryn Salazar is an Associate Professor of Musicology at Texas Tech University. She holds a BA from Carleton College (Magna Cum Laude) in Music, and her Master's and Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles.  Prior to teaching at Texas Tech University, she taught at UCLA, UC Santa Cruz and the California Institute of the Arts.

Through archival and field-based research, her work focuses on mariachi music in Mexico and the United States and its institutionalization vis-à-vis American academic programs at the primary, secondary, and collegiate levels. Utilizing the frameworks of postcolonial and practice theories, her research explores the ramifications of mariachi's formalization in terms of pedagogy, performance practice, and meaning.

She has presented papers at the national meetings of the Society for American Music, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the National Association for Chicana and Chicano studies, and at international meetings of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities in Mexico and the International Council for Traditional Music in Kazakstan and Ireland.

Musical performance is central to her research and teaching: As a performer of the Mexican harp, she has played with ensembles in both Mexico and the United States. And as a specialist in traditional Mexican musics in Mexico and the American Southwest, she has studied the arpa jalisciense (mariachi harp), arpa jarocha (son jarocho harp), and violin (mariachi style), as well as several other regional Mexican instruments. Piano (twenty years) and voice (ten years) comprise the focus of her Western classical performance training, with additional study in organ, harpsichord, and harp at the college level. She has also participated in various ensembles including the musics of Mexico (mariachi and son jarocho), Indonesia (Balinese gamelan), the Arab world (violin playing in the Near East Ensemble).

She is currently the director of the mariachi program at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, where she directs the ensemble, Mariachi Los Matadores. When not teaching, she performs regularly as the harpist for the Grammy-Awarding winning Mariachi Divas de Cindy Shea. With over fifteen years' experience as a mariachi musician and educator, from 2006-2013, she led UCLA's award winning Mariachi de Uclatlán. Under her direction, they won first place at the Anaheim Mariachi Competition, and second place at the Mission San Juan Capistrano, the Albuquerque Mariachi Festival and the Rosarito (Mexico) Mariachi Festival competitions. Additionally, she regularly serves as an adjudicator for mariachi competitions throughout California and Texas.