Interesting To Know

What is Mariachi Music?

(1) noun A specific type of Mexican musical group or ensemble. (2) noun An individual musician member of a mariachi group (synonym: mariachero). (3) adjective A genre or style related to the mariachi, e.g., mariachi music, mariachi trumpet. Since the 1930s, the mariachi has been widely considered the quintessential Mexican folk-derived musical ensemble and has become an institution symbolic of Mexican music and culture. Mariachi groups are currently found in many countries around the world.

Mariachi Origins

Professional musicians accompanied Hernán Cortés when he arrived in what is now Mexico in 1519. Among their instruments were the harp and the vihuela, prototypes of those later used by the mariachi. Natives, who had their own highly developed musical traditions, quickly mastered European musical practices. With the importation of large numbers of black slaves, African music was also brought to Mexico during the early colonial period. Many regional traditions of mestizo folk music, including that of the mariachi, resulted from the ensuing cultural and musical blending of indigenous and foreign elements.

The mariachi is native to a region of western Mexico that includes what are today the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Michoacán, and Colima; extending as far north as Sinaloa and Durango and as far south as Guerrero. Despite frequent attempts to attribute it to a specific state or town, the exact birthplace of the mariachi remains unknown.

Mariachi Music in the United States

Mariachi music has become deeply rooted in the United States, where it has taken on unique characteristics and even influenced its Mexican counterpart. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, a number of organized mariachi groups immigrated to Los Angeles, an urban area that has in many ways become to the United States what Mexico City is to Mexico as an urban Mecca of mariachi music. In 1961, Nati Cano organized Los Camperos, which became the best-known U.S. mariachi and the country’s pioneer group in popularizing this music among non-Hispanics. In 1969, Los Camperos opened La Fonda restaurant in Los Angeles, the world’s first venue designed to showcase a mariachi. Other U.S. groups followed suit, and eventually this concept was adopted in Mexico.

Mariachi Uclatlán, founded in 1961 at the University of California at Los Angeles Institute of Ethnomusicology, pioneered the academic mariachi tradition, and today educational institutions throughout the United States, particularly in the Southwest, offer classes in mariachi music. Mariachi Cobre, founded in Tucson, Arizona in 1971, was the first prominent Mexican-American mariachi group.

In 1979, a U.S. mariachi movement was born at the First International Mariachi Conference held in San Antonio, Texas. Since then, mariachi festivals and conferences have proliferated in the United States; Mexico celebrated its first international mariachi festival in 1994. Linda Ronstadt’s 1987 album, Canciones de mi padre, heralded the creation of a new audience for mariachi music among non-Hispanics. While Ronstadt is a traditionalist, mariachis such as Sol de México in Los Angeles embrace innovation.

– Courtesy of West Music: Play now. Play for life