Hello everyone:

If you attended any of our events around Arhoolie's 50th Anniversary you no doubt noticed my hobbling around with a cane! Well, I just got a brand new right hip here at the Stanford Medical Center, and thanks to Dr. Malone, his team, and his great expertise, it seems to be a rousing success. Although the recovery period is a bit long, I look forward to getting back to work and hearing some fine music very soon!

The three day Benefit for the Arhoolie Foundation was a huge success and resulted in the Foundation making over $55,000.00 plus additional donations coming in from various friends. I wish I could personally thank every one of you who helped in this amazing production, but at this stage I can only say: Thank you all from the bottom of my sometimes cranky but well meaning heart!

I am glad to have received this computer from my local "angel" Rob Robinett, who along with his incredible wife Sandy Miranda, invited me to have this operation down here on the Peninsula, and my man at Arhoolie, Tom Diamant, who put my e-mail file on it as well as other goodies! But it is very tedious for me to type this since I am neither a fast typer nor quite used to this keyboard!

I want to express special thanks to Ry Cooder whose many loyal fans filled the Freight & Salvage to capacity for the Friday show and I believe many more were turned away. But that special THANKS does not diminish my THANKS to all the other fantastic musicians and all the many helpers! I am just now starting to listen to the music from those three incredible days and hope to pick out my favorite performances for a CD package release in the hopefully not too distant future.

I also want to go ahead with the production of several other projects which have been on my mind for some time: The Chicano Experience will be a book with four CDs, including the texts and translations of all the corridos, along with lots of illustrations. Another project is the Legacy of Dr. Harry Oster - again probably a book with some of his writings, transcriptions of texts and translations (for the Cajun/Creole material), and four CDs of his finest recordings covering a wide variety of American regional music.

Since the Arhoolie Foundation is now in better financial health, I also plan to move forward on several AF projects:

1) Of course continuing the digitization of the 45s and rare cassettes in the Frontera Collection.

2) Installing a listening station for the Frontera Collection at the Down Home Music Store so that fans, students, and scholars of the music can come in and listen to the complete recordings free of charge.

3) Contacting (with your help!) all the schools in the Bay Area who have any interest in Chicano Studies to make them aware of the listening station and to invite their involvement in our efforts to preserve, document, share and celebrate this great music!

That's it for now - cheers from Chris