Atlachinolli: Keepers of the Fire and Water is an early stage archival project by Laura Yohualtlahuiz birthed as part of the Community Folklife Fellowship documenting the contributions of Queer & Matriarchal knowledge and culture keepers in and around the Mexica Chichimeca danza and ceremonial community of Central Texas. Atlachinolli is an offering that documents the legacy and transmission of teachings and storytelling surrounding a trajectory of kinship and community building of Queer Matriarchal trailblazers that have challenged gender norms, patriarchy, and traditional roles in spaces that have typically only documented the contributions of men.

Shoutouts: "All Praise due to Creator, Ipalnemoani, Moyocoyani, Teocoyani and all my healed and healthy ancestors and guides. Tlazocamati to my creative ecosystem for supporting me through this fellowship, especially my mom, who always supports anything I do, my kids, Huitzi & Ketzal, my duality Itzli Ramirez, and my spiritual family, Kalpulli Ayolopaktzin. Gratitude for the homies Chaka & Ever @ DAWA Studios for their support in documenting my elders and peers. Thank you to Alternate Roots, Palacio de Palomas, Tlanezi Teatro Ritual, Chichimetzli Studios, and Reds Body Art for their support producing our community workshop."

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Episode Credits

Producer - Laura Yohualtlahuiz Rios-Ramirez

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Series Credits

Executive Producer - Jeannelle Ramirez

Technical Producer - Lamont Jack Pearley

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Pitaya fruit (Echinocereus stramineus), or the strawberry hedgehog cactus, is sometimes known by the general public as “dragon fruit.” The fruit grows on a plant generally referred to in Spanish as bisnaga — barrel cactus — and my family has identified at least four different types of bisnagas in the area from which to harvest. This podcast focuses on the tradition of pitaya collection in La Junta, a community and cultural region shaped by the meeting of rivers, desert, and families on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Producer: Dr. Koyana Flotte

Special thanks to: Gustavo Martinez & Miguel Medias

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Series credits: 

Executive Producer: Jeannelle Ramirez

Technical Producer: Lamont Jack Pearley

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

This project documents how South Asian Texans sustain interfaith devotional music traditions through Qawwali, Bhajan, and Shabad Kirtan in Greater Houston. Using oral history interviews and field recordings, the project highlights how music fosters belonging, continuity, and coexistence within migrant communities.

Episode Produced by Sonny Mehta

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Series Credits

Executive Producer - Jeannelle Ramirez

Technical Producer - Lamont Jack Pearley 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Las Limpias is a podcast that visits memory and traditions from South Texas. Through conversations with family and cultural practitioners, it examines the practice of limpias, spiritual cleansings rooted in Mexican American traditions, and the cultural knowledge passed down through generations.
Part folklore, part oral history, and part cultural exploration, Las Limpias invites listeners to reflect on the ways people seek healing, protection, and connection in their everyday lives. From family stories and community rituals to questions of faith, identity, and belonging, the podcast documents living traditions that continue to influence contemporary culture while preserving voices and perspectives often absent from mainstream historical narratives.

Episode Credits
Host, Producer, Editor, Story by: Oddett Garza
Assistant Editor: Amanda Goebel
Special Thanks to the podcast guests including: Octavio Garza, Janie Garza, Mary Jane Garza, Alexis Arredondo, Elena Gonzales who generously shared their knowledge, experiences, and traditions.

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Series Credits

Executive Producer: Jeannelle Ramirez

Technical Production: Lamont Jack Pearley

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

This podcast explores folklore not as something preserved but as something lived and carried forward. Over fifteen years, I worked closely with a Holocaust survivor who escaped into the woods, joined the resistance, and rebuilt her life through fragments of song, food, and story. By the time she died in 2026 at 99, her story had become part of my own life and the performers I worked with to bring the story to life. 

What she left behind was not just narrative but something that had to be performed, and through that performance the lived experience of folklore came to life. In this series, I speak with the musicians and puppeteers who helped bring her world to the stage. Through music, objects, and performance, they stepped inside memory and carried it forward in real time.

Together, we explore what it means to translate, embody, and sustain someone else’s history, and how folklore continues to move, change, and live through those who refuse to let it disappear.

Episode Credits

• Producer – Samantha Goldberg Blackthorn

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The Folklorist Next Door Series Credits

• Technical Producer – Lamont Jack Pearley
• Executive Producer – Jeannelle Ramirez

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

As Spring returns to South Texas, the winds and rains help our iconic wild flowers break through the soil.  Communities are planning gatherings and activities that connect them with the world around them.  In this episode, we look at some of the ways ecological wisdom, spirituality and cultura have shaped the ways we interact with the return of the la primavera.   With reflections from community organizer, traditional healer and land steward, Helga Garza and Chicano Studies Scholar Dr. Tomás Ybarra-Frausto we gain insight on how flores de papel and tejido de palma have remained important crafts in South Texas for generations.

Episode Credits:

Producer – Beto DeLeon

Interviews

Dr. Tomas Ybarra Frausto
Helga Garza
Dora Alicia Gomez
Lupita Dominguez
Manuel Davila

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Series Credits

Technical Producer – Lamont Jack Pearley

Executive Producer – Jeannelle Ramirez

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

This podcast explores how dance, though ephemeral, generates tangible artifacts and living histories worth preserving in San Antonio. Opening with Mona Lisa Montgomery’s poem “Bertita’s Legacy” honoring Berta Almaguer, Montgomery shares her efforts to research Almaguer through interviews, limited archival traces, and rare community-held recordings.

These artifacts like shoes, costumes, instruments, studios, and recordings function as mementos of what communities value. Southside dance studio owner, Sarita Zúñiga emphasizes storytelling, cultural pride, and innovative work that blends genres, while costumes become cherished, reused links to memory and craft. 

Contemporary artist Catherine “Cat” Cisneros discusses scarce documentation, sacred dance spaces, and preserving artifacts such as Vladimir Marek’s salvaged wooden floor. Closing with Gio Bazaldua’s activism-centered “PanzaFusion” and dragtivism, the podcast concludes with two goals: the importance of interviewing elders in the dance community and documenting artifacts to counter cultural reduction and ensure dance legacies endure.

Episode Credits

Producer - Amber Ortega 

"I would like to dedicate this podcast to Dora Ruffner"

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Series Credits

Technical Producer - Lamont Jack Pearley

Executive Producer - Jeannelle Ramirez

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Through the stories of community members from Houston’s East End, this episode explores how culture bearers have sustained relationships with the land through transnational plant-ways, affirming their identities, in the face of colonization, migration, and neighborhood changes over time. Throughout, Alba Donajhi bears witness and synthesizes her own plant life in her accidental homeland.

Episode Credits:

Alba Donajhi Sereno – Executive Producer, Writer, Sound Designer 
Mincho Jacob  – Field Producer

Wisdom Keepers: 
Olivia Moreno 
Laura Veles Drey
Armando Álvarez

Music: 
Fragile by Spoq - Tribe of Noise bronze license

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The Folklorist Next Door Series Credits:

Technical Producer - Lamont Jack Pearley 

Executive Producer - Jeannelle Ramirez

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Born in the working-class neighborhoods of Ponce, Puerto Rico, over a century ago, plena is a genre of music that continues to travel wherever Puerto Ricans gather and build community. Communal in nature, it is played at social gatherings of all sorts – celebrations, funerals, protests, and open jam sessions called “plenazos.” In this episode, we will identify the characteristics of plena as defined by practitioners in the Houston, DFW, San Antonio, and Austin areas, and explore how it has been connecting Puerto Rican communities across Texas.

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Episode Producer: Adam Rosario

Narrator/Interviewer: Adam Rosario

Interviewees: Héctor Matos Miranda, Danny Rodríguez, Enqrique Quiñones Arocho, Joaquín Hernández, Leonard Vázquez

Music:
Opening sequence and instrument demo
percussion and cuatro puertorriqueño: Adam Rosario

Closing sequence (Tamborfest ATX 2026 live recording)
“Bailala” by Rafael Concepción Collazo

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Credits for The Folklorist Next Door Series

Technical Producer: Lamont Jack Pearley 

Executive Producer: Jeannelle Ramirez

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Shrimpers in Port Isabel discuss the historical and cultural influence of the shrimping industry in the Rio Grande Valley. 
Produced by Jeannelle Ramirez with reporting by Kevin Parme. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Food scholar Erica Cavanagh discusses the importance of understanding where our food comes from. 

Produced by Imgard Khosravi. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Stewed & Chopped is a limited series produced by Texas Folklife, exploring foodways in Texas. 

In this episode, food scholar Meredith Abarca (UTEP professor and producer of El Paso Food Voices) and taco expert Mando Rayo (Tacos of Texas podcast) discuss the foodways of the Texas-Mexico border, the influence of matriarchs, and shifting cultural values. 

Produced by J.A. Strub. 

This episode is supported in part by Humanities Texas.

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Join Community Folklife Fellow Blanca Jenkins as she takes you on a journey from Mexico to East Texas while exploring the historic and religious background, purpose, and use of crosses as focal points for roadside memorials.  Mrs. Jenkins’ journey will also explore the changes over time to this tradition that is visible all around Texas and the role of faith to overcome grief and make sense of the loss of a loved one.

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Good Dirt is the collection of stories, histories and experiences of Black and Indigenous Farmers in Texas. We discuss the connections of community, spirituality,  ancestral stewardship and foodways, in honor of the land and stories yet untold. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Prepare your taste buds for an unforgettable journey through the history of pan de campo in this captivating podcast. Our host, Elizabeth Barger, sits down with four intriguing individuals, all with personal ties to this culinary masterpiece. Get ready to savor the anecdotes that have made pan de campo a treasure of culture and tradition for generations.

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Somali Bantu communities have been living in the United States for over 20 years. Yet, most people don’t know of their existence. Famo Musa catches up with three generations of women, giving us a glimpse of their journey of preserving their traditions and history while navigating life in Houston Texas, and raising the next generations. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Today, flamenco is taught and performed in Houston. But understanding how flamenco got to Houston requires a journey back to Spain and through South Texas, alongside the Tejanos who brought this dance form to Houston.

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

This episode delves into the culinary journey of Kenyan immigrants and their deep ties to traditional recipes, showcasing how food serves as a link to their homeland.

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

In this episode, Laura Villareal talks to folks from Central Texas Seed Savers, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the Native Plant Society of Texas. 
Learn more about Texas native plants, the folk practice of seed saving, and how your gardening efforts can help protect the future in the face of climate crisis. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

“Chalupa y Buenas” is a podcast recorded along the United States and Mexico border.  We'll explore inter-generational family traditions along the Rio Grande Valley, especially the family game of chance, Mexican Lotería. Listen as we learn how lotería has touched individuals' lives through the years. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Have you ever wanted to be something you never thought you’d really be? 

Sitting in my high school Spanish class, I decided I wanted to be a Mariachi. Unfortunately, I was raised in a small rural Midwestern town where there were no Mariachis. In fact, here was only one Mexican American family and a teacher. That was the closest I thought I would ever get to Mexico. I fell in love with Mexican culture and the language. 

I kept my Mariachi dream to myself until now. This podcast is about living on the borderland of Mexico and the people I met who connected me to the music. These are people who also happen to be… You guessed it! Mariachis. Meet Juan David Martinez, Genesis Staple, and Valerie Torres. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

"El dia que se apareció el diablo" takes us back to a time when "the devil" appeared on the poor side of the tracks. The terrifying experience leads a Chicana to embark on a quest for answers. 

Produced by Geronima Garza, with technical production by J.A. Strub. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Food is an expression of who we are. Table host and folklorist next door, Yvette Blair-Lavallais, catches up with two generations of two North Texas families as they share recipes, memories, and family history over hand-patted cultural foods like tamales, salmon croquettes and made-from-scratch biscuits. There are some surprises and memorable moments along the way.

Pull up a seat and join us for “Food, Family and the Stories We Share…we’re just getting started!

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

African American women have created beautiful works of art with quilting.  Are you holding on to a piece of family history?  Laura Casmore talks to owners of vintage quilts as they share the stories of their makers.

Produced by Laura Casmore, with technical production by J.A. Strub. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

The Folklorist Next Door will be back on January 13th! 
Happy Holidays! 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Join Gianna Elvia as she enters the kitchens of three women in San Antonio, Texas. Each woman discusses memories of their grandparents through food. You are invited to break Pan Dulce, caldo and migas with us and share in the type of storytelling that make kitchens special. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

The smelly food with a loyal following. Explore the origins of sauerkraut in the Texas Hill Country, its present makers, and sauerkraut’s  ability to stir up feelings of nostalgia. Hosted and produced by Hill Country-based fellow, Julie Gossell. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

"Ukrainian songs, whether they are sung or instrumental, tell about the history of our people and about their landscape." Dallas-based fellow Kelsey Lee explores Ukrainian folk music performance in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Veselka Dallas is a folk singing group that performs all over North Texas.  Kelsey interviews two singers from the group, as well as a Dallas-based bandura musician. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Host mónica teresa ortiz examines the experiences and cultural shifts of communities impacted by climate and disaster in the Texas Panhandle. 

Produced by monica teresa ortiz with technical production by JA Strub.

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

A sneak peek of the Folklorist Next-Door, a nine episode series hosted by Texas Community Folklife Fellows in various regions of the Lone Star State. The series features local traditions ranging from sauerkraut-making to African American quilting to climate change's effects on farming culture. 

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts