Relato, relajo, and recording

This article analyzes the dialogic play of temporalities and voices in a series of solo autobiographical cassettes recorded by Rodolfo Garcia, a former tent show comedian from San Antonio, Texas, on his home stereo between 1990 and 2000. Made while I was interviewing Mr. Garcia about his World War II-era career in show business, these recordings represent a rare intervention by a research ‘consultant’ in the ethnographic process. On the tapes, Mr. Garcia alternates between telling stories from his life and career, performing material from his repertoire as a comedian, and singing karaoke-like over a recording of the music of the Mexican singer and composer Agustin Lara. During instrumental breaks, he performs a conversation among three characters distinguished by different vocal timbres whose creative deixis reframes the mechanically reproduced music as a ‘live’ performance in a fictitious nightclub. In the relajo, Mr. Garcia moves almost entirely away from a denotationally explicit mode of representing the past and nearly abandons the idea of producing a self-contained, fully intelligible statement in favor of a somewhat opaque reenactment. Ostensibly a demonstration of his comic act, the relajo also incorporates material from his more recent past, bringing personal traumas and disappointments that he could not narrate explicitly into the autobiographical statement.