ARHOOLIE FOUNDATION COLLECTIONS:The Frontera Collection

The Arhoolie Foundation’s Strachwitz Frontera Collection is the largest repository of commercially produced vernacular recordings of Mexican, Mexican American, and other Latin American music in existence. Although originally focused on the border music of the United State and Mexico, it now contains music from all of Latin America. The nearly 170,000 recordings in the collection were made primarily in the United States and Mexico, and were issued on 78 rpm, 45 rpm, and 33⅓ rpm (long-playing, or LP) phonograph records, cassettes and some un-issued reel to reel master tapes. The earliest recording was made around 1905, and the most recent recordings were released in the 1990s. The Frontera Collection is unique because of the depth and breadth of each section, and because many of the recordings are irreplaceable. This archive was collected by Chris Strachwitz over the past 60 years. He has donated the entire collection along with thousands of photographs and other related material to the Arhoolie Foundation.