Cauces Sónicos (Sonic Channels): Creative Music Making Across the Borderlands

Led by faculty from UC Irvine and UC San Diego, Cauces Sónicos explores collaborative artmaking and education across the U.S.–México border.

Image Credit: Esther Gámez

Funded with a Latino Studies Research Project award from the University of California Alianza MX initiative, Cauces Sónicos: Creative Music Making Across the Borderlands is a two-year project co-directed by UC San Diego Professor Wilfrido Terrazas and UC Irvine Department of Music Chair Michael Dessen of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. The project will leverage collaborative musical experimentation to explore a kaleidoscopic, expansive notion of the US-México borderlands, engaging communities and deepening institutional partnerships both directly on the border and as far south and north as Ensenada, Baja California and Orange County.

"Music is at the core of everything I do in one way or another, and my work at UC Irvine is centered in the Department of Music in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. I also love working at UC Irvine because of the many interdisciplinary connections I can pursue here, and I'm grateful to be affiliated with the Connected Learning Lab, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the newly emerging Alec Glasser Center for the Power of Music and Social Change, all of which point to different aspects of a project like Cauces Sónicos." - Michael Dessen

For Dessen, this project brings artistic and pedagogical experimentation into dialogue, building on previous projects as Telematic Bridges, a series of workshops he co-led with artistic collaborators in Colombia that connected high school music students from Santa Ana High School with peers in the South American country to experiment with cutting-edge music technologies. As he describes it, Cauces will be grounded in music making, including creating new, collaborative works with guest artists and doctoral students, while also exploring new forms of learning and community engagement through a novel undergraduate course and community-based workshops.

(Photo credit Teerath Majumder) Prof. Michael Dessen (left) works with students at Santa Ana High School and in Manizales, Colombia, as part of a previous project, Telematic Bridges, in 2021

Beginning in 2025, Cauces Sónicos brings together diverse professional and institutional partners and is designed around several layers of interrelated artistic, educational and community engagement projects. The first phase in summer 2025 will focus on creative workshops with members of the San Ysidro community, developed in collaboration with UC San Diego Professor Teddy Cruz and the UC San Diego Community Stations that Cruz has helped develop as imaginative urban interventions around the border.

"Connecting people on both sides of the border and foster transnational collaboration is simply what I do and have done for a long time. I have witnessed first hand, many times, how these collaborative processes help us grow together, understand each other, see each other as equal. This project builds and expands upon previous work in an unprecedented level, incorporating a formal educational aspect which I believe is potentially groundbreaking and has never even remotely been tried before at this scale anywhere across the borderlands. Thanks to the support of the Alianza Mx Program we will build a multi-generational, multicultural, multidisciplinary, and innovative creative corridor across our region, in which students, artists, institutions, and community members can come together in art and music making, while at the same time reflecting about the uniqueness of these lands and their social and ecological challenges." - Wilfrido Terrazas

In parallel, Terrazas and Dessen will also lead a collaborative group of faculty, doctoral students and professional artists, including Esther Gámez and Iván Trujillo (co-directors of the Semana Internacional de Improvisación), to develop new musical works that will be premiered in fall 2025 at the Neofonía Festival in Ensenada, which is directed by Prof. Álvaro Díaz (Universidad Autónoma de Baja California).

Extending the project into the undergraduate classroom, Professors Terrazas, Díaz and Dessen will teach a fall 2025 undergraduate course spanning their three campuses (UABC, UC San Diego and UC Irvine). Working together both via telepresence and through supported opportunities to travel across the border for an in-person, weekend intensive, students will create new, collaborative works inspired by life in the borderlands, including reflections of diverse communities as well as the ecological interdependence that defines the region. As a final phase of the project in winter 2026, Terrazas, Dessen and collaborators on the project's creative team including Fabricio Cavero, a UCI PhD student in Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology (ICIT) in the Department of Music, will participate in collaborative, artistic workshops with migrant workers staying at UC San Diegos's Alacrán Community Station, an emergency housing site in Tijuana, aiming to establish a transformative, empowering dialogue for all participants.

Wilfrido Terrazas performing at the Fronteras Recicladas event at the UCSD-CASA Community Station in June, 2024. The event gathered artists from both sides of the border, UCSD faculty and students, and local San Ysidro community members in a series of workshops and a final performance, and was co-organized by the UCSD Center on Global Justice and the local non-profit Casa Familiar. Wilfrido Terrazas, who is the center focus of the image, plays the flute. A young woman to his left plays the clarinet. Other students surround them, holding their hands up as if dancing.

(Photo credit Jonathan Maier for Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman) Wilfrido Terrazas performing at the Fronteras Recicladas event at the UCSD-CASA Community Station in June, 2024. The event gathered artists from both sides of the border, UCSD faculty and students, and local San Ysidro community members in a series of workshops and a final performance, and was co-organized by the UCSD Center on Global Justice and the local non-profit Casa Familiar.

These activities will continue into a second-year cycle, building on what was learned during the first year and strengthening foundations for future work and partnerships. Cauces Sónicos builds on past work that key team members have been facilitating successfully in the borderland regions, and that emphasizes validating local and community knowledge while using music and intercultural collaboration to serve diverse populations of youth, seniors, migrants and local neighborhoods. These projects include the Semana Internacional de Improvisación (SIDIMPRO) in Ensenada (Terrazas, Trujillo, Gámez), the yearly Fronteras event held at the UCSD-Casa Community Station in San Ysidro (Terrazas, Cruz), the Neofonía festival in Ensenada (Díaz), the Instituto Contemporáneo de Música de Baja California (ICMBC) in Ensenada (Trujillo) and Puentes Telemáticos (Dessen).

Are you an undergraduate student interested in applying for this special project-based Fall 2025 course (Cauces Sónicos (Sonic Channels): Creative Music Making Across the Borderlands)? Learn more and fill out this student interest form.