The Department of Music welcomes Jacqueline Avila from the University of Texas at Austin.

This presentation examines the soundscapes and compositional techniques utilized by the EDM group the Mexican Institute of Sound (MIS) and its founder Camilo Lara in the 2021 album DF and in Netflix’s Latinx-focused dramady Gentefied (2020-21). The music created for both the album and the series feature musics of the past either sampled or referenced into a modern musical pastiche that evokes various forms of nostalgia. I argue that Lara’s music demonstrates an intimate connection between music, identity, and memory that has resonated with audiences in Mexico City and the growing Latinx community in the United States. This has positioned Lara as one of the major voices in the changing representations of Latinx and Latin American culture in popular media in the 21st century.