Cruzando Caminos: Singing Spanish Poetry in the South

Cruzando Caminos takes its name seriously: on the evening of September 11, the paths of five artists — and centuries of Spanish-language verse — converge in Nacogdoches, Texas, for an evening of music, storytelling, and poetry sung aloud. At the center of it all is the décima, a ten-line poetic form that has traveled with remarkable persistence — carried by ship, by road, by generations of memory — from Spain into nearly every corner of the Spanish-speaking Americas. In Nacogdoches, that history runs deep: décimas were already being sung here by 1797, along El Camino Real, the royal road that first linked this stretch of East Texas to Louisiana, Mexico, and the wider hemisphere. The form never left. It simply kept adapting, kept crossing new paths, kept finding new voices to carry it forward. This September, some of those voices share a stage. Local artists Juan Carlos and Jeana Ureña open the evening alongside Will Buckingham and Shane Lief of the Louisiana Décima Project, San Antonio-based son jarocho singer Keli Rosa, and Chilean artist Isabel Mekis — four distinct traditions and one shared poetic root, spanning Texas, Louisiana, Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America. The evening opens at 5:00 p.m. with a reception, followed by an artist talk from Dr. Hannah Snavely, an ethnomusicologist and professor at Stephen F. Austin State University, who will set the stage with the décima’s long migration before the music begins. The concert itself starts at 7:00 p.m.: each artist or group performs in turn, introducing the audience to their own corner of the tradition, before all five come together for a collaborative finale — the paths crossing at last, in the same room. Community Partners: Stephen F. Austin State University Music Department Texas Folklife Zion Hill Baptist Church City of Nacogdoches Historic Sites