From legendary dance halls to underground punk venues, San Antonio’s music scene has long shaped the city’s cultural identity. A new digital project, Sounds of San Anto, from UT San Antonio Libraries and Museums, ensures that those memories and the places that created them will be preserved for future generations.
This project by the Libraries and Museums’ Community-Engaged Digital Scholarship Hub (CEDISH) uses data, storytelling and community voices to highlight San Antonio’s musical history. It offers three experiences: one exploring concerts, another sharing personal stories, and a third delving into the lyrics of a well-known Texas-Mexican folksong with deep ties to the city.
“At its core, Sounds of San Anto goes beyond traditional data-driven research to focus on lived experiences and community memories,” said Carolyn Ellis, CEDISH co-director and senior associate vice provost for the Libraries and Museums. “By blending technology with human stories and working directly with the San Antonio community, we’re making digital scholarship more engaging, accessible and deeply personal.”
Mapping the music
The first component of Sounds of San Anto is an interactive map that visualizes decades of live music across the city.
Built from a large dataset of concert information spanning from roughly 1970 to 2010, the map lets users peruse music genres to see when and where their favorite bands came to town, discover venues across neighborhoods, and track how the local music scene changed over time. While not comprehensive, users can browse by genre or location, revealing both iconic stages and lesser-known spots that contributed to the city’s sound.
UT San Antonio student interns helped organize memory map data and identify missing venue locations, assisting with geolocation data that enables the interactive map to work. Their efforts ensured greater accuracy and broadened the scope of San Antonio’s documented musical history.
Although the technical work behind the map involves complex data processing and geolocation coding, its goal is simple: to make San Antonio’s music history easy to access.
“Our project team had this dataset of concerts and venues, and when we mapped it, we started to see gaps,” said Veronica Garcia Rodriguez, head of digital humanities and user engagement at UT San Antonio Libraries and project lead. “There were moments in history we couldn’t fully capture through data alone. So, we thought — what if we talked to people? What if memory could complement the data?”
Memories of music places
To fill those gaps, Sounds of San Anto gives a voice to the people who lived the music.
“Memories of Music Places” is the project’s collection of over 30 oral histories featuring musicians, fans and community members reflecting on the venues that defined their experiences. From beloved underground spots like Taco Land to nightclubs like El Camaroncito, from instrument shops to record stores, these stories capture the emotional and cultural impact of places that no longer exist — or have changed over time.
Participants describe everything from the energy of live performances to the ways music brought people together before the rise of social media.
“This was a way for people to reminisce and connect with the past,” said Diane Lopez, UT San Antonio Libraries information specialist and project team member. “Some of these places are gone now, but the memories are still very alive.”
The oral histories also show how different generations experienced music in different ways — from word-of-mouth show promotions to today’s digital platforms — offering a layered view of San Antonio’s evolving music culture.
Together, these voices transform the project from a dataset into a living archive that reflects the city’s musical heritage’s diversity and depth. Community members will have the opportunity to listen to some of the oral history interviews at the Sounds of San Anto: Celebration event on Thursday, April 9 at The Cove. RSVP here to attend.
“This was a way for people to reminisce and connect with the past. Some of these places are gone now, but the memories are still very alive.” — Diane Lopez, UT San Antonio Libraries information specialist
A song as history: The story of Gregorio Cortez
The third component of Sounds of San Anto takes a deeper historical turn, examining the story of outlaw and folk legend Gregorio Cortez through a traditional corrido — a Mexican folk ballad that has kept his story alive for generations.
Cortez, born in 1875 in Tamaulipas, Mexico, became a legendary figure in South Texas after a 1901 confrontation with law enforcement in Karnes County left his brother dead and a sheriff killed. What followed was a massive manhunt that captured public attention across the region. Cortez was eventually jailed in Bexar County as his case moved through the courts, where debates over self-defense and justice drew widespread attention. Though he was later convicted in a separate case, he was pardoned in 1913.
Cortez died just a few years later, but his story endured through corridos that recast him as a symbol of resistance and justice in Mexican American communities.
This digital history project analyzes the lyrics of the corrido alongside historical records, mapping the events described in the song, and comparing them to newspaper coverage from the era. The result is a layered look at how history is told — and who gets to tell it.
“At a time when American newspapers largely framed Gregorio Cortez as a criminal, the corrido gave voice to a very different interpretation — one grounded in the experiences of Mexican American communities,” said Rachel Yvonne Cruz, Mexican American Studies assistant professor and music specialist, whose expertise in Mexican music history helped highlight the importance of corridos within border communities.
“Initiatives like Sounds of San Anto play a critical role in preserving and contextualizing these narratives, ensuring they remain part of the historical record,” Cruz added.
The project team provided two versions of “El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez” for visitors to listen to on the project website.
Side A features Panfilo’s Güera performing a traditional rendition that emphasizes the fiddle in classic Texas-Mexican style. Side B offers a modern take on the ballad by the San Antonio-based Tex-Mex punk band Piñata Protest, whose raw sound demonstrates the ongoing evolution of the corrido across generations.
Digital scholarship rooted in community
Sounds of San Anto reflects the university’s broader commitment to community-engaged scholarship — an approach that prioritizes collaboration, accessibility and real-world impact.
As the project grows, the team plans to expand its educational impact by developing curriculum materials for K–12 and college classrooms, allowing students to engage with history through music, storytelling and digital tools.
“Music is something everyone can respond to,” Rodriguez said. “The joy of this project has been meshing SA’s musical past with our team’s mission to provide inclusive digital scholarship.”
By combining interactive technology with personal storytelling, Sounds of San Anto not only preserves San Antonio’s musical past but also strengthens connections between the university and the community it serves.
