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Not the first 'Border Beat'

Wednesday, 11 February 2009 00:00

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By: Cody Calamaio



My journey to find more information on the original “Border Beat” began the way it usually does. I tried typing several different combinations of the name into Google, but I came up with zilch every time.

Growing up in a generation with the world at my finger tips, I became frustrated I couldn't find exactly what I needed instantly. But the journey to find the magazine that once was the heartbeat of Tucson's cultural community would take me away from my laptop and out into desert sun.

I finally tracked down the magazine in the bowels of the University of Arizona special collections library. Instead of typing my queries into a search engine, I was chatting with archivists. Instead of scrolling through Web sites, I was thumbing through the cardstock-bound magazine and reading real ink-and-paper stories about the border culture of southern Arizona. I learned that my namesake, Buffalo Bill Cody, was a enthusiast of the Santa Catalina Mountains. I read features on the best places for “smokin' and drinkin'” as well as beautiful poems accompanied by stunning photography. There were no hyperlinks or photo slide shows, or audio commentary. It goes to show just how much journalism has changed in 13 years. The Border Beat magazine shares many common elements, and passions, with the current Borderbeat.net, but at the same time, it is a world away.




Not the First 'Border Beat'
By: Tom Miller



Borderbeat.net is not the first Border Beat. From fall 1996 for almost three years, there was a high quality print magazine that covered border culture and arts. Its contributors were among the vanguard of creative writing, and its features lovingly portrayed the underbelly of border culture. Its publisher, founder, and editor was Jim Carvalho, who has since returned to the east coast. And it was published from his home in Tucson.

Among its contributors: authors Jim Harrison and Luis Urrea, singer/songwriters Joe Ely, Dave Alvin, and Tom Russell, photographers José Galvez and David Burckhalter, rockers Los Lobos, chronicler Patricia Preciado Martin, novelist Sandra Cisneros - and on and on.

The themes were rough and tumble - one issue was devoted to smoking, another to "Virgins and "Vatos." Yet another to "Girls and Guns" and one to "Corridas and Corridos." It profiled James McMurtry and Jimmy Santiago Baca. It had columns on music, language, and literature. I contributed a few pieces along the way.

Border Beat was nobody's idea of a get-rich-quick scheme; all authors and
artists - and it had consistently appealing art - donated their work. Carvalho had no institutional affiliation and never sought nor accepted a dime of public arts funding. His publication stayed just below the radar, which allowed it its identity. You've possibly heard of only a few if any of its contributors. Look them up; they are low profile in the razzle-dazzle high tech download world, but have the staying power of vinyl records.

What strikes me most in flipping through the issues that have been resting on my shelf all these years is that Border Beat holds up admirably well. Most of the pieces were thoughtful, some pretentious, but most all could be published today going down as smooth as aged bourbon. There was very little polite or correct about it, and that made for a wider vocabulary describing untamed experiences.

I urge the students who contribute to the current on-line borderbeat.net, next time you're at the UA library and the Special Collections division is open, ask to see some copies of Border Beat. See how your work would fit in.

Tom Miller is the author of On the Border, editor of Writing on the Edge: A Borderlands Reader, and a contributor to numerous magazines and newspapers about life along our southern frontier.



Written by Cody Calamaio You are reading Not the first 'Border Beat' articles

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