Antonia Apodaca was an American musician and songwriter known for her performances of traditional New Mexico music.
11 Facts About Antonia Apodaca
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Antonia Apodaca came to wider prominence through her performances in the La Musica de los Viejitos festival in Santa Fe, the festival's nationally circulated radio broadcasts, and her appearances at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
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Antonia Apodaca's mother played the accordion and guitar and her father the guitar, accordion, and violin.
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Antonia Apodaca taught herself to play the accordion as a child, initially on a broken one she had rescued from the trash.
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Antonia Apodaca's mother and uncle continued teaching her, and by the time she was a young teenager, she won an accordion contest in Santa Fe where she had competed against adults.
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Antonia Apodaca was taught to play the guitar by her father.
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Max played with a band of German musicians in Wyoming for several years, and he and Antonia Apodaca continued to perform together for both the Hispanic and Anglo communities at dances and local events.
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Antonia Apodaca later recalled how she and her husband had learned how to adapt the traditional Hispanic polkas and waltzes to a Western rhythm when they played for the Anglos.
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In 1979 the couple returned to Rociada to live in the house where Antonia Apodaca was born and had grown up.
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Antonia Apodaca was awarded the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1992, the same year she had appeared at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC.
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Antonia Apodaca was the subject of the television documentary, El Ranchito De Las Flores, broadcast in 1998 in the KNME-TV series Colores.