Juan Bautista Rael, a pioneering Spanish linguist and folklorist, was born in Arroyo Hondo, north of Taos, in 1900. He was schooled at St. Michael’s College in Santa Fe and the Christian Brothers’ College in St. Louis. He received his bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s College, Oakland, CA and a master’s from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1927. Long absences from home gave him an appreciation of the Hispanic village life, music and folklore he had known in New Mexico. In the summer of 1930, with a recorder borrowed from the Library of Congress, he began collecting Hispanic folk songs, plays and stories from northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. He completed his doctoral studies in Spanish at Stanford University in 1937. Working as a Stanford professor, he completed this folk music collection in 1940. His early work has influenced the studies of folklorists to this day. Rael became a distinguished professor of Spanish composition, literature and culture, authored a number of cultural and musical studies, and also was founder and director of the University of Guadalajara School, an international student program. He was elected to the Academia Real de la Lengua Española in 1983. He and his wife Quirina raised four children, all Stanford graduates. He died in Menlo Park, CA in 1993.
Enrique R. Lamadrid is a literary folklorist and cultural historian in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and director of the Hispano, Mexican and Chicano Studies Program, both at the University of New Mexico. A native New Mexican, Lamadrid received his B.A. from the University of New Mexico and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. Lamadrid followed in the footsteps of his own father, who was a Spanish linguist and professor at UNM. Lamadrid teaches the Spanish language as well as literature, culture and folk music. He has done extensive work studying, collecting and publishing about Hispanic music. In 2005, Lamadrid was awarded the Americo Paredes Prize by the American Folklore Society in recognition of his work as a cultural activist. As a student, Lamadrid attended Professor Rael’s folk music class and undoubtedly was inspired by the experience.
In 1998, the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress invited Lamadrid to reformat the original Rael recordings, prepare transcriptions and English translations of the songs, analyze them and write essays on the culture and folk music of New Mexico to accompany the collection.
From the guide to the Enrique Lamadrid collection on Juan B. Rael, 1930-1998, (University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research)
