Rhapsody on the Rio Grande: A Confluence of Culture

"Rhapsody on the Rio Grande," is a documentary that explores the Rio Grande River's immutable ability to bring together diverse peoples through music… revealing collaborative theme streams that seem to converge in Laredo, Texas, and include culture, history and identity.

The central music element that flows throughout the production is "Rapsodia," a composition by Texas A&M International University faculty member and University organist Dr. Colin Campbell. Through music and interviews, the film is infused with what it means to be a citizen of the border, and not divided by legal definitions and boundaries. Filmmakers meet with residents and find that their shared palette speaks more to a border that unites and does not divide. It offers a telling commentary against the backdrop of today's strained global dynamic.

Throughout the production, viewers are treated to expositions on the musical theme of diversity, performed in concert alternately by members of the Laredo Philharmonic Orchestra and Mexico's Mariachi Nuevo Tecalitlán de Guadalajara. Interview insights are frequent and as moving in words as the soundtrack is in music.

Through haunting images, sights and sounds, the film's creators remind us all that there is powerful strength in cultural diversity, and that borders are not a state of mind, but a place of the heart.