Jessica Perez-Gutierrez is an Ethnomusicology PhD candidate at Columbia, studying the intersection between class, labor, gender, and religion in Mexican popular music, with a special focus on tecnobanda. She holds a B.A. in Music and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2020), and an M.A. (2022) and MPhil (2023) in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University.
Jessica’s work particularly analyzes how tecnobandas perform working class macho poetics, and the societal factors that shape the music scene tecnobanda forms a part of. Her ethnographic work centers her family’s hometown, Villa Corona, Jalisco, Mexico, where two of the first tecnobandas, Banda Machos and Banda Maguey, were born. Her M.A. Thesis titled “Villa Corona: The Land of Bandas and Waterparks,” (2022) first touched upon these subjects, and she is currently on her dissertation research year seeking to elaborate on her M.A. Thesis.
