Jack Loeffler

In 1984, Jack Loeffler produced a radio series entitled "Southwest Sound Collage." His primary listener was his great friend author Edward Abbey who said, "Loeffler, this radio series should be a book." Thus, "Headed Upstream" first appeared in 1989 shortly after Abbey's death. The challenging interviews that appear herein (Edward Abbey, Andrew Weil, John Nichols, Stewart Udall, and Gary Snyder, to name a few) reflect many points of view from anarchist to Marxist, from environmental to philosophical, from Beat to historical. Each is highly individual and all reflect deep consideration for the myriad factors that have shaped our milieu. In 2009, Loeffler's close friend Gary Snyder said, "This book should be re-published. It's important." Indeed, it is an important presentation of human consciousness at its best. Jack Loeffler and his wife Katherine live near Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a writer, aural historian, radio producer, sound collage artist, and lecturer. He has worked extensively with indigenous and traditional cultures throughout the American West, Mexico and beyond. His books include "La Musica de los Viejitos: The Hispano Folk Music of the R o Grande del Norte"; "Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey"; "Survival Along the Continental Divide: An Anthology of Interviews"; and "Healing the West: Voices of Culture and Habitat." He has produced over three hundred documentary programs for public radio, co-produced or otherwise collaborated on documentary films, written scores of articles, and produced sound collages for many institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Camino Real International Heritage Center, and the New Mexico History Museum at the Palace of the Governors. He is a project director for The Lore of the Land, Inc., a 501c3 organization founded by his late friend Lee (Mrs. Stewart) Udall. He was awarded a 2008 New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Edgar Lee Hewett Award for Outstanding Service to the Public by the New Mexico Historical Society, and in 2009 was honored as a Santa Fe Living Treasure.

With the temperament of Santa Claus and the tenacity of a badger, Jack Loeffler reveals his compassion and concern for Southwestern traditional cultures and their respective habitats in the wake of Manifest Destiny. Working both as an individual and with comrades--including Edward Abbey and Gary Snyder--he was part of an early coterie of counterculturalists and environmentalists who fought to thwart the plunder of natural resources in the Southwest. Loeffler, a former jazz musician, fire lookout, museum curator, bioregionalist, and self-taught aural historian, shares his humor and imagination, his adventures, observations, reflections, and meditations along the trail in his retelling of a life well lived. In this honest memoir, he advises each and every one of us to go skinny-dipping joyfully in the flow of Nature to better understand where we're headed.

Book & CD. This is an insightful and timely compilation that will appeal to readers interested in environmental issues in the American West. The book developed out of interviews of key figures (historians, environmentalists, lawyers, Native Americans, etc.) in the land usage rights movement.

No writer has had a greater influence on the American West than Edward Abbey (1927-1989), author of twenty-one books of fiction and non-fiction. This long-awaited biographical memoir by one of Abbey's closest friends is a tribute to the anarchist who popularised environmental activism in his novel 'The Monkey Wrench Gang' and articulated the spirit of the arid West in Desert Solitaire and scores of other essays and articles. His 1956 novel 'The Brave Cowboy' launched his literary career, and by the 1970s he was recognised as an important, uniquely American voice. Abbey used his talents to protest against the mining and development of the American West. By the time of his death he had become an idol to environmentalists, writers, and free spirits all over the West.

A Pagan Polemic curates the evolving perspective of Jack Loeffler--itinerant wanderer, environmental warrior, storyteller, and story collector--whose true education began when he was marched into the Nevada desert one day at dawn to play "The Stars and Stripes Forever" during an atomic bomb test a scant few miles away. Since that day in 1957, Jack's mission in life has been to record peoples of the borderlands and to bring "indigenous mindedness" to the forefront of the conversation about our precarious environments and our decaying planet. A Pagan Polemic is a sweeping manifesto of Jack's core beliefs and long experience as a fierce (and funny) advocate for Nature and Nature-mindedness and against poisonous politics and policies.

In 1933, newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt summoned ideas that might allay the financial calamity that characterized the Great Depression of the 1930s. Among the myriad programs Roosevelt initiated was the WPA, the Works Progress Administration (later re-named the Work Projects Administration) that was created to provide meaningful work to the unemployed millions throughout America. Thanks to New Mexico Governor Clyde Tingley, a masterful politician who wended his way into Roosevelt's good graces, New Mexico became the recipient of a significant proportion of federal WPA funding that supported thousands of otherwise unemployed men and women. One of the great programs to emerge was in support of the arts, and many painters, writers and musicians were employed to pursue their respective art forms. Helen Chandler Ryan was appointed director of the Federal Music Project (FMP) in New Mexico that lasted from 1936 to 1943. In 1939, it was re-named the New Mexico Music Project, and by 1942, the name was changed yet again to War Services Program--Music Phase. The focus of this project was "music education, performance, and preserving of local musical heritage, especially Hispanic Hispano] folk music." Under Ryan's direction and that of her co-administrators, musicians and folklorists collected songs and other material that otherwise might have been lost. The transcribed folk songs were mimeographed and distributed to teachers who taught both singers and instrumentalists who then presented the music in public performances. This music project not only funded fieldworkers, it also brought music to the people of the villages of New Mexico in a time when little else was available to lift the hearts of la gente. In this book, materials collected between 1936 and 1941 are assembled in five separate units. Units 1, 2, and 3 are comprised of a series of Hispano folk songs with transcribed melodies and English translations of lyrics. Unit 4 is a collection of thirty Hispano dance songs, some of which remain popular even now. Unit 5 is entitled "Guitar Arrangements of Spanish American Folk Songs." We are fortunate to have this taste of Hispano music of New Mexico from the early twentieth century now available to all. It is integral and vital to the repertoire of musical lore that greatly enhances New Mexico's heritage.

This book pays homage to the counterculture movement through the words and photographs of a select gathering of people who lived it. At its height in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the counterculture movement permeated every region of America as thousands of activists took on the establishment. Although counterculture has often been trivialised as dirty hippies and sex, drugs, and rock n roll, committed activists formed powerful strands of resistance to the political/military/industrial complex. American Indians, Hispanos, Blacks, and Anglos joined in marches and protests -- often at their peril. Veterans of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, communards in northern New Mexico, practitioners of drug-induced mysticism, disciplined seekers of spiritual awakening, back-to-the-landers, defenders of wilderness -- counterculturalists all -- questioned, reframed, and redefined American and global perspectives that remain to this day. The American Southwest became a haven for individuals from both coasts seeking refuge in this vast landscape. Many found an affinity with the native cultures and local inhabitants who were already here. Others joined forces to combat the Vietnam War, racial discrimination, and pillaging of the environment. Still others founded communes based on diverse cultures of practice. Movement leaders organised community events, protests, and spoke for their generation; many used their talents as writers, musicians, artists, and photographers to express their angst and promote change. Jack Loeffler draws from his extensive archive of recorded interviews and transcribed conversations with contemporaries -- among them writers, artists, elders, activists, and scholars -- including Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Edward Abbey, Shonto Begay, Camillus Lopez, Tara Evonne Trudell, Roberta Blackgoat, Richard Grow, Alvin Josephy, David Brower, Dave Foreman, Elinor Ostrom, Fritjof Capra, and Melissa Savage. The book includes personal essays by Yvonne Bond, Peter Coyote, Lisa Law, Peter Rowan, Siddiq Hans von Briesen, Art Kopecky, Bill Steen, Sylvia Rodriguez, Enrique R. Lamadrid, Levi Romero, the late Rina Swentzell, Gary Paul Nabhan, Meredith Davidson, and Jack Loeffler. It includes photographs by Lisa Law, Seth Roffman, Terrence Moore, and others.

First published in 1980 and now available only from the University of New Mexico Press, this classic compilation of New Mexico folk music is based on thirty-five years of field research by a giant of modern music. Composer John Donald Robb, a passionate aficionado of the traditions of his adopted state, travelled New Mexico recording and transcribing music from the time he arrived in the Southwest in 1941.

For over forty years aural historian, Jack Loeffler has wandered the West engaging people in conversations and recording those conversations for posterity. When asked by the New Mexico Humanities Council to produce an anthology of interviews that would combine elements of two projects sponsored by the Council, the Between Fences traveling exhibition and a project focused on the Great Depression and New Deal, Loeffler turned to the landscape of the Continental Divide and the diverse cultures that inhabit both sides of its arid terrain. Hopi, Navajo, Rio Grande Puebloan, Hispano, and Anglo cultures are represented in three sections of interviews that respectively address shifting cultural boundaries, explore the effects in New Mexico of the New Deal's attempts to reinvigorate the economy and mainstream American culture, and suggest ways of delving into the difficult situations that face the West today. Together, these diverse perspectives reveal the rich cultural mosaic that has evolved in this extraordinary landscape.

A companion set of audio compact discs to the text collecting examples of the musical forms used over the centuries in this often isolated and harsh but beautiful region of the Rio Rande. A blend of religious and secular music from sixteenth-century Spain, Mexican-influenced folk tunes, and melodies indigenous to the life of the region, the music covered here includes romances, trovos, cuandos and decimas, inditas, corridos, canciones, ceremonial and religious music, and dance music.

This long-awaited book vividly documents the folk music of El Río Grande del Norte, an area extending from the Mexican border on the south to Southern Colorado on the north and from the Great Plains on the east to the Continental Divide on the West. Loeffler has collected examples of the musical forms used over the centuries in this often isolated and harsh but beautiful region. A blend of religious and secular music from sixteenth-century Spain, Mexican-influenced folk tunes, and melodies indigenous to the life of the region, the music covered here includes romances, trovos, cuandos and decimas, inditas, corridos, canciónes, ceremonial and religious music, and dance music. Each song appears both in Spanish and English. For many, transcriptions of the musical notations are provided as well as graphic illustrations of dance technique. A companion set of compact discs is also available. Photographs and biographies of active folk musicians help complete the record of this rich and enduring musical tradition.