The Foundation for Iberian Music provides research support for scholars studying music of the Spanish-speaking world.

Please click here to view previous resident scholars and their research interests.

2023

Andrea Puentes-Blanco was a Visiting Scholar at the Foundation for Iberian Music (The Brook Center, The City University of New York) from April to July 2023. Puentes-Blanco is Tenured Researcher at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas [CSIC, Spanish National Research Council], Institución Milá y Fontanals de Investigación en Humanidades (Barcelona, Spain). During her stay at the Brook Center, Puentes-Blanco worked on her research project entitled ‘Exploring Spanish Traditional Music Holdings in US Libraries’ whose aim is to research Spanish traditional music holdings in US libraries and archives that were collected in Spain, mostly by American ethnomusicologists or anthropologists, and Spanish-speaking folk music in the United States collected from Spanish immigrants or from people of Spanish origin. A case in point is Puentes’ research on the legacy of our late colleague and mentor Henrietta Yurchenco (1916-2007). This research is part of a broader current research project entitled “Digital development of the Fondo de Música Tradicional IMF-CSIC” [Desarrollo digital del Fondo de Música Tradicional IMF-CSIC] funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation from 2022 to 2024. Puentes is currently planning an international conference to be held in Barcelona (CSIC, 2024) and NY (Foundation for Iberian Music at the Brook Center, 2025.)

 

K. Meira Goldberg (2014-18)

K. Meira Goldberg “La Meira” is a flamenco dancer, choreographer, teacher and scholar. She began her training in her native Los Angeles with Luisa Triana, Roberto Amaral and Carmen Mora, and in the 80s studied by day and performed by night in several of Madrid’s best tablaos (flamenco clubs): Luisillo’s Los Cabales, Manolo Caracol’s Los Canasteros, and as the solo attraction at the Arco de Cuchilleros. She has performed with many of the giants of Flamenco, including Antonio Canales, Tony “El Pelao” y “La Uchi,” Dolores Amaya “La Pescadilla,” Manolo Soler, Diego Carrasco, Juanito Habichuela “El Camborio,” Jose Soto, Enrique Soto, Ramon El Portugues, El Guadiana, El Indio Gitano, El Chato de la Isla, Pepe Montoya “Montoyita,” Ramón Jiménez, Arturo Pavon, Dolores de Cordoba, Tito and Diego Losada, Chuni Amaya, La Repompa de Malaga and Raquel Heredia, Alfredo Lago, and Antonio “de la Malena.” ​

La Meira has been first dancer in Carlota Santana Flamenco Vivo, Fred Darsow Dance, and Elba Hevia y Vaca’s Pasión y Arte, performing throughout North America in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Joyce Theater, the Kennedy Center, and Jacob’s Pillow. Meira has been featured in several documentaries, including Jocelyn Ajami’s Queen of the Gypsies. She has been awarded choreography grants from Pew Charitable Trusts, American Dance Festival, and the New York State Council on the Arts.  She choreographed “Carmen” under the baton of Seiji Ozawa, and the first staging of the 1915 version of Manuel de Falla’s “Amor Brujo” since Pastora Imperio performed it in that year, along with the rarely staged opera “La Vida Breve” for the Manhattan School of Music.  The New York Times called the production “one of the more audacious, intriguing operatic undertakings to hit a New York stage this season.”

As a scholar, K. Meira Goldberg holds an M.F.A. in choreography as well as an Ed.D in dance history from Temple University under Brenda Dixon Gottschild. She is currently working on a book entitled “Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco.” Her article “Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco” is in Dance Chronicle 37:1. She is co-curator of the 2013 exhibit “100 Years of Flamenco in New York” at the New York Public Library for the Performing Art at the Lincoln Center, and co-author of the catalog.  She is currently co-editing an anthology of new Flamenco scholarship for McFarland, and is translating six chapters from Spanish. She is a member of the Wertheim Study at NYPL.  Meira’s doctoral dissertation on Carmen Amaya is a widely used resource within the English-speaking Flamenco community:  it references over twenty-five interviews with figures such as Sabicas’s brother Diego Castellón, and Carmen Amaya’s sisters Leo and Antonia.  Meira teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and at the Fashion Institute of Technology; she has taught at and guest lectured at NYU, Flamenco Festival International in Albuquerque, Ballet Hispanico, Bryn Mawr, Princeton, Duke, and Smith College.

Francisco “Kiko” Mora (2017–2018)

Kiko received his PhD in Hispanic Studies from Ohio State University in 2008. He is currently working as a professor at the Universidad de Alicante. Kiko has over 20 years experience as a professor. He teaches semiotics of advertising and culture industry at the Universidad de Alicante. He also does research on Spanish culture in the U.S. during the 19th century and the turn of the century. He has also written articles in the past seven years and continues to write articles on the Spanish culture in the early music industry, early cinema, theater music, and Spanish dances in the U.S. His articles have been published in the U.S. and in Spain. Kiko has edited and written four books, winning an award for his book “Frankenstein Cirujano Plastico Plastic Surgeon”, co-authored with Raul Rodriguez. He has given lectures in the US and will present more seminars during his residency at the Foundation. According to Kiko, being patient, curiosity and hard work have been the key to his success. 

During his tenure at the Foundation, he will be working on his project “Spanish Popular Music in the North American Phonograph Industry (1896-1914).”

View his work on Academia.edu or visit his blog, Cadáver Paraíso.