Jacqueline Avila, Haunting and Soundscapes in Pedro Páramo (Florence Bayz Music Series)

UC Riverside Department of Music presents:

Jacqueline Avila (Associate Professor of Musicology/Ethnomusicology, UT Austin)

Haunting and Soundscapes in Pedro Páramo (2024)

This presentation explores how sound and music have been translated and interpreted from Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro to Páramo to Rodrigo Prieto’s 2024 film adaptation. I argue that sound—both diegetic and non-diegetic—functions as a significant character within both the novel and the film, used strategically to emphasize the notion of haunting. In his novel, Rulfo portrays a curated tapestry of sounds that promote a sense of stasis within the story, essentially detailing an intricate and provocative sound design that accentuates the backdrop, the characters, and the haunting taking place in the narrative. The film adopts Rulfo’s description and augments this soundscape with sound markers and musical references from Mexican cinema’s revolutionary melodrama, creating an audio-visual work that ties a variety of media together. Building off of these relationships, Prieto’s Pedro Páramo uses these sonic and musical moments to shape the ghosts of the narrative, the haunting of the Mexican revolution, and aural memories of Mexico’s past.

Bio:

Jacqueline Avila is an Associate Professor in Musicology/Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines film music and the intersections of identity, tradition, and modernity in the Hollywood and Mexican film industries. Her book is entitled Cinesonidos: Film Music and National Identity during Mexico’s época de oro, published with Oxford University Press, Music/Media Series. Dr. Avila was the recipient of the UC MEXUS Dissertation Research Grant, the American Musicological Society’s Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship, the UC MEXUS Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Robert E. Greenleaf Visiting Library Scholar Award. Her publications can be found in the Journal of Film Music, Latin American Music Review, American Music, Opera Quarterly, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, and the edited volume Cinema Between Latin American and Los Angeles: Origins to 1960. Dr. Avila’s current projects focus on transnationalism, nostalgia, and cultural identity in Latinx film and streaming media and the musical cultures on the US-Mexico border.

Part of the 2026-2027 Florence Bayz Music Series

The Florence Bayz Music Series offers online concerts, lectures, and presentations of academic research by Department of Music faculty, postdoctoral researchers, students, and international guest artists and scholars.

Dr. Amy Skjerseth (she/her), Assistant Professor of Popular Music, Coordinator

Events are free and open to the public.

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