I started this blog in 2009, the content and name inspired by my love of learning about history, culture, and music as well as my journey through the diverse landscape of America via music (living in various states and going to a lot of live music shows). Additionally, as a huge fan, this blog began also as an homage to the long running New Orleans (now syndicated) radio show, American Routes. At the time, I was grieving the loss of my beloved father while working as the American Roots and World music genre manager for the Grammy Awards. After a second bout with cancer in 2011 (the first at 4 years old) and a whole lot of healing, I left the Grammys in 2015 to try new ventures . I had no idea that my previous challenges were preparing me for the hardest challenges yet, a life-altering hemorrhagic stroke in 2018, which meant I had to dive even deeper into my mind/ body/spirit healing path. As part of that journey, I discovered my love of creating collage art. I am still on the road of recovery physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Since I started this new chapter, I’ve just kept putting one foot in front of the other and that led me having the honor of doing the cover and inner booklet collages for the physical CD and vinyl record version of Dom Flemons’ Traveling Wildfire.

Life has a way of coming full circle in so many ways. I started my journey in the music industry at Smithsonian Folkways in 2005 working on the PR and marketing of two folkloric music projects “Los Pleneros de La 21: Para Todo Ustedes” and “Rolas de Aztlán: Songs of the Chicano Movement”. Eighteen years later, I created the cover collage for Dom Flemons album released by none other than Smithsonian Folkways. In the 15 years since I started the blog, life has transformed for me (and I would venture to say the world ) so drastically as to render it unrecognizable. Yet at the core we can choose to stay rooted in what is real; what is fundamental to being human. What has sustained and helped humans survive unspeakable trauma, oppression and hardships continue to be those things that also give sweetness to life – love, art, music, creativity, and community.

~Sylvia Marina Martinez, 2023, Monterey Park, California, USA.

root (ro̵̅o̅t, ro̵ot)

noun

1. the part of a plant, usually below the ground, that lacks nodes, shoots, and leaves, holds the plant in position, draws water and nourishment from the soil, and stores food
2. the source, origin, or cause of an action, quality, condition, etc.
3. a person or family that has many descendants; ancestor
4. the close ties one has with some place or people as through birth, upbringing, long and sympathetic association, etc.
5. an essential or basic part; core the root of the matter
6. a number that, when substituted for the unknown quantity in an equation, will satisfy the equation
7. the basic tone of a chord, on which the chord is constructed; often, the fundamental
8. the fundamental element of a word or form, exclusive of all affixes and inflectional phonetic changes

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