¡Americano! Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers Rock the Borderlands of Transnational America[Note 1. In my use of “America,” I am referring to ...]

Cataloged from PDF version of article.In the mid 1990s, Roger Clyne was frontman for The Refreshments,\udwell-known in the Tempe, AZ college scene and briefly famous for their\udradio pop single, “Banditos.” Since The Refreshments’ first indie release\udalbum in 1994, Roger Clyne and his new band, Roger Clyne & the\udPeacemakers,2 have become a staple on the independent music scene in\udArizona and the US Southwest. While Clyne’s music lapses into happy\udstereotypes and romanticized depictions of the US-Mexico borderlands,\udhis musical utopia represents an alternative cultural politics that explores\ud(albeit clumsily) border crossings, difference, and transnationalism. Using\uda personal interviews with Clyne and a critical reading of his lyrics,\udthis article explores how Clyne invokes the US-Mexico borderlands as\uda region with specific landscapes, musical traditions, and mythologies,\udand also as a metaphor for social change (by breaking down barriers).\udHe revises traditional US-Mexico borderlands musical traditions, such\udas the border ballad (corrido), and asserts a transnational borderlands\udidentity—the ¡Americano!—that exists comfortably uncomfortable between\udthe seams (and sounds) of cultures. Clyne’s music is significant for the\udway it asks listeners and critics to reimagine the musical-cultural spaces\udof nation and identity, while advocating for compassionate alternatives to\udviolence from a region characterized by power imbalances, inequality, and\udviolence.\udCritic Josh Kun tells us that popular music gives us space to encounter\udourselves—we hear ourselves in our favorite songs and come to know and\udbuild our identities through our relationships with music. The convergence\udof sound, space, and identity creates “audiotopias,” Kun argues, where\udlisteners confront “the spaces that the music itself contains, the spaces\udthat music fills up, the spaces that music helps us to imagine” (21).3 An\udanalysis of Roger Clyne’s music and lyrics is enriched by Kun’s theory of\udaudiotopias. As audiotopias, Clyne’s musical borderlands are a chronotope\uddefined by border crossings that offer new ways of charting contemporar