Richard Jernigan -> RE: Requinto rushes. (Dec. 19 2014 18:20:30)
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ORIGINAL: BarkellWH I will make a full confession here. As much as my family has been tied to Mexico, and as much as I have traveled in Mexico, like things Mexican (especially the food!), and like much of the music of Mexico, I am repelled by Mariachi music. I find Mariachi music loud, noisy, busy, and boring. For me, it is the antithesis of listening enjoyment. I'm not opening this up for debate or argument. Just stating how it affects me. Cheers, Bill Mariachi presumably originated during the French incursion under Maximilian von Hapsburg, while the USA was occupied by the Civil War. "Mariachi" is widely interpreted as a Mexicanization of the French "marriage" describing ensembles that played for festive occasions of the elite. During my lifetime mariachi has gone through four phases. I was too young to be aware of the first, when it was string band music. There would be a few violins, a guitar or two, the Mexican vihuela or the small guitarra de golpe for rhythm, the big Mexican bass guitar guitarron, maybe a harp. There would be a lead singer or two, and the others would join in as chorus. In the late 1920s and early 1930s the Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan was still based in Jalisco, and made recordings of such folk favorites as "El Gavilan" and that Revolutionary classic "El Riflero". Toward the mid-1930s los Vargas added a trumpet. He played quietly, with a soft staccato. The playing was lively, flexible but not wayward in rhythm, and so danceable that you had better not put on a recording from that era after I have had a couple of shots of tequila. I can't find any examples on Youtube. When I was 22 my first really serious love and I spent a month at the beach in Zihuatenejo. In those days only a very bad road connected Acapulco to Zihuatenejo, which was just a sleepy fishing village. We paid a dollar a day for a thatched palapa on the beach with cold running water, and ate fresh seafood at the little beach cafes. One of the two little bands in town had four 78s of the old Mariachi Vargas, which they treasured. They played them for us, since my girlfriend was so pretty and sweet. When Lazaro Cardenas was elected President in the 1930s, he brought forward the populist strain of the Revolution. For his inauguration he brought the Mariachi Vargas to the Capital. Within a few years mariachi was popular among the elite and the small middle class. Rich people hired mariachis for their kid's birthday parties, and for fiestas in general. Many mariachis employed literate musicians, including trumpeters from military bands and other traditions. The music became slicker, more urbanized, the rhythm more cuadrado. The trumpeting became sustained and louder, with trumpet duets in vogue. Still, the music retained a lilt and swagger. This tradition persisted well into my youth. When I was seven or eight years old I used to sit on my grandmother's back porch in the tiny south Texas town of Raymondville, and listen to the teenager across the alley play trumpet. He had a beautiful sweet tone, and played all the old favorites with warmth and expression. They came around in school when I was ten years old and asked if we would like to play an instrument. I signed up for trumpet. When I started traveling to Mexico on my own at age 17, you could go to the Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City and hire Mariachis on the spot for an impromptu fiesta. They still had some schmaltz. But the big time pros were entering another phase. The Vargas had become more or less the official mariachi of the PRI, the party that ruled Mexico for 73 years. The big time groups had conservatory trained musicians, fancy arrangements, stage directors, publicity men, agents and record contracts. The music became heavily rehearsed, ironed out in rhythm and expression, and louder. It leaves me cold. The parallel development among the working class groups was louder, more trumpet, more noise in general. Knocking back shots of mescal in some Plaza Garibaldi dive, it was almost tolerable. There was one exceptional group, though. The bar at the upscale Sheraton Maria Isabel had a band that was refined, melodious and expressive. We used to go there just to hear them. The big time bands have continued to get bigger, brassier, more stagey and less interesting. The latest phase is that public high schools and colleges in the USA have begun to have mariachis. Among the high schools the results are as variable as one would expect. I haven't heard a university mariachi that I remember, but there is bound to be somewhere in the USA where you can get a degree in mariachi. When I get back from Costa Rica I will dig out my CDs of the pre-PRI Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan, taken from 78s of the 1920s and 1930s, pour a shot of Patron Reposado and reminisce. RNJ "I am a rifleman, my love, Arrived here by chance, mending my sandals so I can keep walking." El Riflero
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