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I am Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio. I produce the annual Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio, the first, longest-running, and most important conjunto festival, lead grant work and development efforts, and work other multidisciplinary and innovative projects in Latino and Native American cultural arts.

Trained originally as a historian, I have long done consulting and grant writing for music festivals, archives, and non-profits focused on arts and culture, history, traditional music, and cultural sustainability. I believe very strongly that interdisciplinary and immersive cultural experiences are the basis for social and intellectual success, true cross-cultural understanding, and impactful future leadership. 

I produce traditional music recordings and music festivals and write on a wide variety of interdisciplinary topics related to the global history, musics, and cultures of the United States. I also publish regularly in ethnomusicology and folklore, particularly related to Texas-Mexican conjunto music, Mexican migrant music cultures, and vernacular musics of the United States.

In 2020, I launched a comprehensive survey of the varied musical responses to the COVID-19 pandemic within Latin American and Latino-American communities. Check out my extensive playlist of música del coronavirus  and see this link for my most recent articles on the subject. I just completed (with my co-author and friend J.A. Strub ) a book titled ¡Maldito Coronavirus! Mapping Latin American Musical Responses to the Pandemic Moment, which is forthcoming from Equinox Publishing Ltd.

I’m also involved in a number of applied ethnomusicological and public folklore projects such as the Festival of Texas Fiddling, which I founded in 2014 and for which I continue to serve as President and Artistic Director. The Festival of Texas Fiddling is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in San Antonio. I also started the multicultural Festival of Virginia Fiddling, which is currently getting ready for its 3rd event in August, 2023.

My ongoing historical research focuses on legal spatiality related to offshore mineral extraction in the submerged lands of the continental shelf. Check out my research and recent publications page.

I retired as Professor and Chair of the History Department at Virginia Wesleyan University in Virginia Beach after 22 years.  I offered courses on U.S. history and culture, foreign relations, sound and noise, and selected topics in Asian history. I also taught a class on beekeeping for twenty years!

Check out the links above and feel free to contact me at musicadelcoronavirus@gmail.com

Follow me on Twitter@MargoliesDan

Here are some Random Koans

This will bring you to the Festival of Texas Fiddling webpage, or check it out on Facebook

This is my most recent book, published in March 2019.