Florida Memory is administered by the Florida Department of State, Division of Library and Information Services, Bureau of Archives and Records Management. The digitized records on Florida Memory come from the collections of the State Archives of Florida and the special collections of the State Library of Florida.
One DAT tape. Recordings of various serenatas (Mother's Day serenades) in the Mexican American community in Homestead. Dating back to Mexico, serenatas were usually performed below the window of a mother. Tomas Granado re-established the practice in the Homestead area. At the time, Granado performed as many as 40 each Mother's Day. The Mexican American Music Survey was created to document the musical traditions of Florida's various Mexican-American communities: Apopka, South Dade County, Immokalee, the St. Johns River Basin, and Central Florida. Funded by a grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Community Folklife Program, the survey was conducted between 1994 and 1996 by folklorist Robert Stone. Among the musical traditions were serenatas, conjunto, quinceanara ritual music, ranchera Michoacana, mariachi, norteno, Tejano, and pop music. At the end of the project, a sampler music tape was created by the Florida Folklife Program for distribution to various libraries.