August 16, 2022 • 53 mins
Mariachi bands have a bad rap as nothing more than "restaurant music." But there is a rich and long cultural tradition many people are missing and the music deserves our respect. Listen in today!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Ah yeah, yeah yeah, And welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Jerry's hanging out here wearing
a giant sombrero, and that makes this stuff you should know.
I was actually gonna sing that that's funny that you
(00:23):
thought of the same dang thing. That's that's the one.
That's the one that I've you know, I grew up on. Yeah.
I think I told the story once before about when
it's funny how these things you remember from your childhood.
When I was in kindergarten, they taught us the Mexican
hat dance, and we danced around uh not hats, but
(00:47):
spray can lids, like like like spray pant lids. Why
because you know, we didn't have little sombreros, Okay, And
it's one of those things we're looking back like bless him.
They were teaching us about another culture, which is great
for a five year old, but like looking back all
these you know, white suburban at Landing kids dancing around
(01:10):
spray pant spray paint candle its is a little little cringe.
It's an it's a weird, like at a detail, but
I'll bet it was still adorable to see. You know,
it's an odd substitute, like we didn't decorate them. I
would get that they were just the lids, right, no
brims or anything like that. So it's more of like
(01:30):
a fees dance. Yeah. Sure, it was like a fest
Hits minus the tassel. So Chuck, I just want to say, um,
if this pick is from your recent trip to the Yucatan,
that is a vacation that just keeps giving. Now it's
not at all. We heard no mariachi down there. Uh.
I don't know why I thought of this. I'm not
(01:52):
sure other than the fact that it's a music that
I like and it's a fun like when people are
over and it's a Friday night where happy hour and
up some cocktails. Putting on a mariachi mix is always
a good move. Uh. And you know, when I lived
in l A, I lived in a Mexican neighborhood in
(02:13):
a largely Mexican neighborhood and a Mexican or Mexican American
apartment complex. I was the only gringo there and so
the music was just blaring out at all times, and
I really got tired of it for a while, but
it was in getting tired of it that I got
(02:35):
an appreciation for it and ending up loving it. If
that makes sense, that's really cool. Yeah, it does make sense. Actually,
you have subsumed it by attrition, I guess, yeah, yeah, sure,
so yeah this was your pick um. I don't know
that I ever would have gotten around to this one
because I'm not like a huge mariachi fan. Got nothing
against it, but like, my exposure to mariachi is sadly
(02:55):
like speedy guns all is Um cartoons and like Mexican
restaurant visits. But now that I've researched it some I
have kind of developed more of an appreciation of it
than I had before. But one of the things that
struck me about it, Chuck, is that if you listen
to like old mariachi and like relatively new mariachi, like
there's a some there's something about there's like a through
(03:16):
line where it's very clearly the same kind of music
after decades and decades centuries. Really you could say, um,
and I think that's really cool that it's not like
like I went to look for disco mariachi and yeah,
it doesn't exist like I found some I found like
a mariachi band doing covers of some disco favorites, like
(03:38):
you know, but it was still mostly disco with a
little bit more horn than than normal. Um. But it's
like a really like I don't want to say unchanged
because it's definitely evolved in other kinds of merged with
other kinds, you know, but but it's you can recognize
it from nineteen hundred to nine as mariachi music. Yeah,
(03:59):
And you know, I think one of the through lines
that I saw, and it's something we talked a little
bit about before we recorded was and I think the
name of this episode of already titled the Rodney Danger
Field of Musical Genres, But it's a it's a genre
that I think is always worked at gaining respect globally
and among you know, the intelligentia and the classical community.
(04:24):
And I think part of that is rooted in some
just inherent racism that America feels towards Mexico, which I
think is just something that's that's just there. It's a
country that is our closest neighbor, obviously Canada as well,
but uh, it's an interesting place and that you know,
fifty percent of the country, I think, since the pandemic
(04:46):
lives below the poverty line, but it's also like a
top ten country economically globally, which was hard to believe.
So it's Mexico, I think has a lot of people
living in poverty and a lot of very wealthy people,
so a big wealth gap there. Uh. And this music
is a part of their proud tradition. And I think
(05:06):
little things have happened over the years, and we'll talk
about a lot of them that have helped kind of
uh up their respect anti where it's not just a
Mexican restaurant music to two people here and around the world.
And I think like movies like Coco coming along, like
just little things like that have happened over the years
that really helped kind of bring it to the four
where people realize what a kind of cool music it is.
(05:28):
Yeah for sure. Uh. And yeah that's just because you know,
people's exposure to it is strictly a Mexican restaurant doesn't
mean like that's where it exists like that. It's moved
into concert halls, um Uh, it's moved into like schools
and colleges like it's it's it's it's definitely gained a
lot of respect. But I think what you're saying is
(05:49):
is is correct. You know largely that there is a
certain sense of, if not racism, at least xenophobia or
a sense of foreignness. Yeah, that probably prevents like the
average waspy American from getting really deep into mariachi. Um.
But I think also in this this stands from Mexico too,
that it's a it's a classist thing too, because mariachi
(06:11):
music is rooted in the rural areas. It's a proud
rural worker tradition. It's like super um egalitarian in that sense.
And you know, people of you know, certain classes, they
don't like that kind of stuff. They find it low brow,
or they they it doesn't appeal to them or whatever.
And so I think that even as mariachi has evolved
(06:33):
over the decades, that same old kind of grudge or
view that's become outdated over time to a large extent,
still remains among some people agreed, this is one of
our best interests yet. All right, So let's go back
to the beginning. How where did mariachi come from? Uh? Well,
and by the way, we're I'm really worked on a
lot of these pronunciations. I'm gonna do my best, but
(06:54):
as always, we try, We're we're gonna try. But yeah,
there's a lot of pronunciation challenges up in this one,
all up in here. Uh So, we gotta go back
to colonial Mexico and the original form of the music
came and this is pretty obvious. Is obviously some Spanish influence,
(07:15):
but something that may surprise folks is that also enslaved
Africans that the Spanish brought to the colonies, a lot
of the rhythmic traditions of that music is present in
the origins of mariachi as well. Yeah, and there are
a lot of people say, plus there was indigenous music
at the time, so those things always just kind of
blended and gelled together, which is pretty um appropriate for
(07:39):
mariachi as we'll see over the decades, like it's they've
not hesitated to be like, oh I really like that sound.
I didn't think of using that instrument and incorporating it
to make a new a new sound. Yeah, yeah, totally. Um,
you gotta go to western Mexico to uh Jalisco, where
we talk about a musical form called sun Holly Sience.
(08:01):
I know, I got that one right, because prexit over
and over, uh and the crack. I don't want to
have practice for nothing, holly, yeah, very nice, okay, Um,
I think we should each pronounce everything, okay, and then
Jerry can just blend them together. Had a little guitar
(08:23):
own on top of it, and we're all set. Uh.
So that music was happening in Jalisco and western Mexico,
but it was you know, similar kinds of music were
happening in other places in Mexico. And like you said,
these were farm workers. They would play for special occasions,
they would Uh. It's interesting in the early mariachi did
not have horns, which is almost hard to believe because
(08:47):
horns are so vital to it now. But violence, guitar
and harp were sort of the first mariaci instruments. Yeah,
mostly string string ensembles, right, and they were they were
songs performed by the peasant class working on haciendas. And
at the time before the Mexican Revolution UM that ran
(09:08):
roughly from nineteen and nineteen twenty UM, there was a
feudal system essentially that that that was the hacienda um
and the people who worked on those haciendas were very
much exploited. But one of the jobs you could have
is a mariachi performer. I got the impression like, if
you're a mariachi performer, that was your job. You didn't
(09:29):
necessarily work in the fields or do anything else. That
was the role you played on the hacienda. And the
thing is that kind of um inequality is just unsustainable.
It doesn't matter what century you live in, it doesn't
matter what country you live in. Eventually, as one group
is just so thoroughly exploited by another group, that the
exploited groups going to revolt. And that was the basis
(09:50):
of the Mexican Revolution, that it was a class revolution
where the workers rebelled and said no more, You're not
going to exploit us anymore. Right, And as you'll see,
they wrote a lot of music about this stuff in
the form of the mariachi songs. But um Kokula, which
is in Jalisco outside of Guadalajara, is um where some
(10:13):
people say it started, even though you can't draw like
written history there. If you want to look at the
word in print, which is something we always seem to
talk about the first time we see things written down, Uh,
it is a letter from a Catholic priest in eighteen
fifty two that was denouncing it, basically saying, you know,
these big drunken festivals in this music that you're doing,
(10:34):
uh is a problem. Please cut it out right, signed
local crank priests exactly. So, Um, that was the like
you said the first time in print, right, and yeah
before that it was a local place name. Um. But
really Mariachi as we understand it, the word the etymology,
(10:55):
I guess, has long been kind of disputed. And here's
the little fun fact. I had no idea about. Uh.
The French, as in France occupied Mexico from eighteen sixty
two to eighteen sixty six. Did you know that? Sure
you knew that. I did. I think I've seen that
in movies. I had no idea. The only reason I
wouldn't know anything. So so during that for your occupation
(11:19):
of Mexico by the French, apparently local musicians would be
hired to perform at weddings. So there was a longstanding
myth that the word mariachi was a kind of a
local butchering of the French word mariage. Yeah, not true, No,
that's not. Actually the answers a lot cooler. I think, well,
they still don't know for sure. I mean, my money
(11:41):
is on the tree. Is that what you were talking about? Yeah?
What else could it possibly be? I don't know, because
there's a tree, it's separated out differently, but it is
the word mariachi. It's just mariachi. That sounded totally Italian.
That's probably probably put the stress in the wrong thing.
But that was a tree that legend has it, or
(12:03):
people say at least was the wood that they made
the instruments out of, and that I don't know, that
seems pretty convincing to me. For sure. It was an
indigenous Cora word too, so hats off to them as well. Um,
there's another there's one more that I'm like, I don't
know about this one, but they're they're like, no, the
g is from the Cora language, but the maria refers
to the Virgin Mary, and that these were religious songs.
(12:26):
At first, I didn't see anything about these being particularly
religious at any point in time, did you not? Really?
And I mean, I'm sure they're religious mariachi songs, but
most of the stuff I've seen is about like working
on the farm, or these love ballads and stuff like that. Yeah,
or just getting you know, crunk, getting down. Yeah. So,
(12:47):
like I said, the hacienda system, I don't believe it
actually ended, but I think it was very much disrupted
during and right after the revolution, and as a result,
there was you know a lot of people who were
displaced as workers, including mariachi musicians, who no longer had
like a regular gig on the local hacienda. And so
whenever there's a disruption in the countryside, those people tend
(13:10):
to make it towards city centers to see if there's
work or other ways to support themselves. There's a big
influx of people to Mexico City around the nineteen teens
in twenties, and a lot of them were mariachi musicians,
and they brought their different traditions with them, because depending
on what state you're talking about, each state has its
own kind of musical mariachi tradition. And in that in
(13:32):
that era in in Mexico City is when they first
started to really kind of blend together. Yeah, I think,
I mean, I love this kind of thing where different
whether it's food or musical styles, when different people of
different cultures all of a sudden are living among each
other and start sharing opinions and ideas. That's just I
don't know. I think that the best stuff in history
(13:52):
is created that way. And that's what happened there. And
they brought their musics together. This is when band sizes grew.
It was not necessarily like a quartet like it had been.
All of a sudden, you could see Mariachi in the
you know, like twelve people playing in a band. This
in big time game changer. This is when horns came
into the mix. Uh. And you know, basically this was
(14:16):
what nineteen teens you said in twenties, maybe yeah, Mariachi
would never be the same after the introduction of those trumpets, no,
for sure. Um And apparently in pretty short order they
figured out how to do you know, more than one trumpet.
As we'll see, there's actually one band that was responsible
for that. But one of the other things they started
doing two was wearing charos, those um cowboy outfits, the
(14:39):
very like slick cowboy outfits with like the short waistcoat
and the tight pants and the ankle length boots and
a wide bow tie and a big sombrero that that
emerged from this era as well too, where all of
a sudden, these guys were in the big city wearing
peasant guard with straw hats. This is probably a little
ghost all of a sudden, and they were making pretty
(15:00):
good money. So you could outfit like a dozen Mariotti
musicians and matching outfits and you know, probably attract even
more money because people would want to hire you because
you had that kind of thing going on. And it
became a tradition pretty quick. Can I admit something. Yeah,
if it were not for uh being accused of cultural appropriation,
(15:22):
I would wear Chatto clothing at every fancy event I
ever went to. So I think it's so cool looking.
I love it. Uh, And I think I might just
have to settle for a nudy suit. Uh you know
what those are? Birthday? No, you probably do. It was
(15:43):
there was a tailor and he was a lot of things.
In fact, he might make an interesting episode one day
named Nudy Cone. And he made these suits that uh
like Graham Parsons war and Ryan Stone cowboy type stuff
with like roses embroidered on the suits and all that stuff. Uh.
So nuty suits became really popular with like the earliest
alt country scene and like rodeos and stuff. So I
(16:06):
think I could get away with a newty suit, okay,
but why you're not part of the cowboy culture, you're
appropriating that. Why is it any different? Like why couldn't
you just wear a charo suit? I think if you
think something is cool and you're wearing out of respect
and because you think it's super cool, not because for
whatever reason. If you're just positively wearing something, I don't
(16:27):
see how somebody could legitimately accuse you of cultural appropriation.
And if they did, I think they'd be wrong. No,
I'm with you. It would be from fear of being
accused of that more than anything being accused. I think
because people would probably think, like Tom Hanks showing up
in Big in that thing, they would think I was
being funny or making a joke, where I'm like, no,
I actually think I look really cool because this is
(16:49):
a really cool suit and the tailors that make this
stuff are amazing and I would love to show it off.
So the difference would be you would show up and
just not say anything about your charo suit. I don't
know I would be the way to do it, okay,
because you're not trying to be like, hey, get a
load of this, get up you're just like, this is
what I'm wearing. If you're wearing a regular suit, I
wouldn't say anything about that. So I definitely shouldn't have
(17:11):
a squirting flower in my lopell no, or like a
little a spray paint. Can cap you do a little hat? Answer? Yeah,
I would have a little elastic chord that hangs like
like a little tiny bell hat pat totally. Uh No, anyway,
I just think those are super cool, and I think
nudy suits would be maybe a short stuff. Okay, I'm
(17:32):
glad you explained nudy because I think no, there's not
a T. It's in U d I E. Okay, So yeah,
that's exactly. That was a guy's name. Hey, you want
to take a break and come back because we're like
eighteen minutes into this great one. Hey, let's do it. Okay,
we'll be right back everybody. So one more thing, Chuck
(18:09):
about this kind of diaspora towards Mexico City. Um, there
was there was. There was a change in how they
performed too. They started performing in like public places, in
like bars and plazas. Um. And they also started to
be more mobile. They would move around in part because
(18:30):
they were busking basically, so if there was a somebody
that looked like they might be a paying customer, they
might follow them around for a little bit and see
if they could get them to pay for a song
or request a song or something like that. So that mobility,
the charos, suits, and the expansion and like rearrangement of instruments,
including the horns, those were all big things that happened
in the twenties. Yeah, And I think that tradition when
(18:53):
you see a small mariachi quartet moving around a Mexican restaurant,
it's sort of rooted in that tradition. And I think
that's another reason I didn't have an appreciation now that
I remember back is whenever that happened when I was
at dinner with my family and I was a kid,
I could just see the air leave my dad's body
and just like he hated it so much. He hated
(19:15):
any attention at all, being like pointed publicly his way,
like at Disney World. Theory like let me pick somebody
from the audience, if they ever looked at my dad,
he would just shake his head. I can not smile
or anything, whereas I could not be more different. I'm
like raising my hand wanting to jump up and volunteer
for whatever. And I love it when the mariaci comes
(19:37):
by the table, even though Atlanta doesn't have nearly enough
of that. UM. And I think just word of advice
if you never if you feel awkward and you don't know,
like do I eat or not? Uh yeah, you just
keep eating and like smile at them and just enjoy
the whole thing. I don't think it means, hey, stop
what you're doing and only look at us. It's it's
a part of the lively atmosphere of enjoying the food.
(19:58):
But you can also, if you're in your dad mindset,
order a double margarita stat Uh. Yeah, he didn't drink though.
Oh well, yeah, I'll bet he was super He really
didn't have to discomfort. Uh. So we're talking nineteen fifties
about this time and as uh, this is when we
had a couple of trumpets come on the scene. Uh.
(20:19):
And again we'll talk about the two gentlemen who worked
out how to how to do that. Uh. You had
a few violins usually, and then you had two really
key instruments, um that are basically ubiquitous in any madiachi.
One is the vihuela, which you might call a guitar,
but it's a little different. It's smaller, it's got five strings. Uh,
(20:40):
it's it's higher pitched, so the G, D and A
strings are all tuned in octave higher, so it sounds
a little different. But it's got those nylon strings. Uh yeah, yeah, Well,
I mean you strum it with your fingers as well,
but uh, fingerpicking and strumming. Uh. And then you've got
the really the heart of the band, and the most
important strument is that guitar on that I talked about,
(21:02):
and that's that it sort of looks like a stand
up bass with a super super short neck that you
are playing. It's really really big bodied and uh. This thing, though,
is not plucked like a standard bass. It also has
five strings, although there are some five string basses, but
traditionally you think of a four string bass. Uh, but
it's not plucked. You're playing octaves on the strings with
(21:25):
a guitar on, yeah, and you're playing it like a guitar,
So it looks like a hilarious, oversized, novelty guitar until
you hear it and then you're like, okay, it's pretty awesome. Yeah,
but that's the whole rhythm section. Because one thing you
will never hear someone say is did you get a
load of that drummer in the mariachi band? Right, Yeah,
it's true. That huge, deep, hollow body like produces all
(21:47):
of the sound you need from that. Yeah, it's it's
pretty great. It's really a key some other things though
you might you might overhear people saying it a mariachi
show is wow, wasn't that accordion player amazing? Where the
French horns or the flout ist even because they like
wind instruments and they like accordions, and one of the
(22:09):
things that they'll play, as we'll see are things like waltz's,
polka's And that was because of the influence of German
immigrants to northern Mexico and southern Texas in the nineteenth century,
that that that music influenced mariachi as well. That's right.
One of the big respect boxes was ticked in when
(22:32):
UNESCO came forward and said, mariachi the string music. The
song in the trumpet is now officially added to what
is called the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
of Humanity, which is a great sounding list. I love
the whole intangible aspect. I went to a place in Kyoto,
(22:53):
UM that was like a bamboo forest, and Unesco added
the sound of wind moving through that bamboo floors to
that same lists. We should, at the very least, we
should do this list. We could just read it off
and be like that one's awesome too, here's another. Yeah,
I love it. Okay, So yeah, that's a huge deal.
(23:14):
I mean, and that was two thousand eleven. So Mariatta,
it's like this is this is never going anywhere um
and it wasn't going to anyway. There was a guy
who bring in Jalisco's second Ministry of Culture. His name
was Alejandro Cravotto, and he said at the time that
there's no Mexican musical musical expression more widespread throughout the world.
(23:34):
And he also said that it's so much a part
of Mexican people's lives that they they hear it. It's
played from their baptism to their burial. And it's absolutely true.
They play baptisms, they play funerals, and they play everything
in between. Two yeah, but it's interesting when that happened.
There was a TV musician and a TV house named
(23:55):
Cornelio Garcia you like that that said this happened, that said,
you know, Maryachi still isn't getting the respect among academics
here in our own country. Uh. And you'll see that's
one of the sort of recurring themes over and over
is within Mexico itself, it's gained more acceptance in the
US than it has in some parts of Mexico among
(24:17):
higher classes. Yeah, and I think that's that kind of
classic's grudge that I was referring to is still around,
you know, because again, it's the music of the revolution,
and the revolution was the revolution of the peasants, and
it's really prideful, patriotic music, you know in a lot
of ways too, and it's the music of Mexico. There's
a Mariachi song called El Sonde la Negra and it's
(24:40):
um considered Mexico's second national anthem. Yeah, so it's it's
like it's just so woven into the fabric that, Yeah,
it's pretty tough. Like if if you live in Mexico,
if you're born and raised Mexican intellectual and you don't
like Mariachi, I'm sure you just have a miserable life
down there. You're the Mexican version of my dad. Uh
(25:01):
so you mentioned the different musical sounds incorporating things like
waltz and polka. Uh. Fan dango is also another like
it these African rhythms that we were talking about, and
they have you know, obviously the ballads and the waltzes
and things like that, but some other uh sort of
song styles. Uh. One of them is called rancheria. And
(25:23):
these were very much songs of the Mexican Revolution. These
are the ones that are really the patriotic songs of
the peasant class talking about how great and that's what's
so cool about it too, was like these songs weren't
talking about Maybe some did, but it seems like they
were never talking about oppression. They were celebrating the farm
and celebrating ranch life and stuff like that, right exactly, Yeah,
(25:46):
I'm romanticizing it. You could even say, Um, there's a
very famous song called the valve Are evolve Are? I
think it's maybe how you'd say it. Sure it was
in practice that one. It was very famously performed by
a named Vincente Fernandez known as El Rey de la
Musica Renchera. And this guy is my speed, Like he
(26:07):
he looks like a total tough guy from the seventies,
but he also looks like he probably smells really good,
and he's like, um singing this this like one plaintive
love song where his heart's clearly broken. Um in a
Mexican restaurant with a horse in there with him, and
he plays his song on the jukebox and starts singing it,
and it's really awesome. So I really kind of like
(26:29):
VINCENTI Fernandez as of yesterday. Yeah, that's a good song.
I remember hearing a lot of ballads when I lived
in Yuma. I my sort of best friend for that years,
this guy named Mark, And this was like a big
cultural shift for me to all of a sudden, my
best friend was this Mexican guy, and I hung out
at his house a lot and just got kind of
(26:51):
thrown into like the real deal culture as opposed to
the kid dancing around the spray paint lid. And it
was just they were also sweet and so nice and
and Mark's dad, like I remember seeing this picture on
the fridge of Mark's dad in the seventies and he
was like he had these sideburn shops and was riding
a Chopper motorcycle and was wearing like a beaded vest,
(27:13):
and I was like, do you have any idea how
much cooler your dad is than mine? And it was
like your dad was it is just like the coolest
looking dude I've ever seen. And I remember like his
mom would play these great Mexican uh mariachi ballads and
I like the ballads, Okay, I really like the up beat,
upbeat stuff a lot more, but it's kind of fun.
It's like these these ballads are so like sort of
(27:37):
slow and languid and syrupy, and you could they just
feel very sincere, Yeah, for sure, like in in some
some places gut wrenching UM. In uh last June, a
bunch of mariachi I think something like fifty of them
showed up at Uvaldi to basically sing um and just
(27:57):
just two mourn with everybody there. And there's plenty of
videos on it. And if you want to just have
your guts wrenched, like go watch that. It's It's just
really amazing how um just applicable this music is to
all these different like UM events or or occasions. You know, yeah, absolutely,
(28:19):
Uh that song you were singing, by the way, that
are you kind of Lee read sang it with the
I I ai uh that is very famous ranch era
and that song is uh uh ci Alito Lindo. That's
the that's the one that everyone has heard. Everyone has
heard either that or Laka, which is not a ranch era,
(28:40):
that is called a corrido. Yeah, so I am not
a harderd percent certain that there's a clear dividing line
between ranchers and currito's because the Voliver Volver song is
it tells a story. So that's one of the defining
characteristics of a carito. It's a ballad, and it's not
necessarily just about like love lost or even love game.
They can be a crime, it can be about heroism.
(29:04):
And I saw on a site called Remes cla Um
that that's usually paired with like a moral lesson of
some sort. So it's like a ballad basically, is the
is the best way to put it, as we already did. Yeah,
and you know what, this is a great time to
mention that I was wrong. We had our sort of
ballad disagreement a while back when I said that ballads
were love songs, uh, and we had a lot of
(29:26):
people right in they were like no, no, no, like
your own Billy Joel Chuck saying the ballad Ability to
Kid and uh, the Ballad of Curtis Lowe by Leonard Skinner.
They're like these they're just story songs. But I think
I just was thinking more love ballads and that's a subgenre. Sure. Yeah,
so correction made. So wait a minute, were they saying
Josh was right? Oh yeah, you were way right? How
(29:47):
did I miss this bunch of emails? Then I forgot
to frame them and sin the view like yeah, but
I have like a filter set on my outlook anytime
it says the phrase Josh is right or any variation,
and it goes right to the top of you have.
You have searches out for the words correct. Sometimes I
hit up people who have already sent in listener mail
(30:08):
just to kind of goad them into sending those kind
of emails. Uh. And then the final little style that
will cover is when we mentioned at the beginning, Uh,
the son hallis Salencia and that is the original folk style. Yeah,
that's that. Yeah. That elsn de Lenegra, the second um
national anthem of Mexico, and that's usually accompanied by a
(30:29):
dance called zappa tied. Hey I nailed this first time.
I would say tato oh man, I actually surprised myself.
I had that like, um like little or fanany like
like surprised look, and I still didn't get it. Right,
Come here, Sandy, come mere girl. Right, but that's like
(30:49):
a heel stomping foot dance. That's pretty cool if you
just look that up. That's what we were doing in kindergarten. Okay, okay, gotcha,
I got you. You're doing this still so embarrassing, tiato.
I guess so we called it the Mexican hat dance,
which is probably wrong too. I'm quite sure it was.
(31:10):
It sounds. Yeah, of those two, I'm pretty sure Mexican
hat dances the wronger in nineteen seventies America. Of those, uh,
that's right. I guess. The last thing we should mention
about the music um itself. Like the sound is one
of my favorite parts of this or any music, which
is multiple voices singing together. I love choral music. I
(31:33):
love three, four or five part harmonies. I love There
probably is no just thing as five part harmony. Why not?
I don't know. Is there a limit? I don't think so,
only in your mind? Oh hold on, uh yeah, but
there's there aren't. I mean there are there are singers
that have backing mariachi bands, but there in a mariachi band,
(31:57):
there's typically not what's called elites singer that someone may
take a lead on the song, but it's usually a
lot of people singing at once. Yeah, it's like Chicago,
basically everybody can sing right and they take turn. You'll
actually you'll actually see uh, like you know, a guy
stopped playing um his trumpet and moved to the front
(32:18):
and start singing on a on a new song. Like
that's just kind of how laid back it is. One
of the other cool things about mariotchi two is if
you watch, like if you watch the violinists, they'll be
like three or four of them just standing there potentially,
and they'll all start to bring their bow to their
instrument at different times. It's not it's not this precision timing.
(32:41):
And because there's multiple instruments, one can come in like
you know, a half measure late or something like that,
and it makes no difference. Was there you can't hear
it in the first place. But it's just like it's
not meant to be this uh intensely perfect, imprecise music.
And and that's actually seen in a way that it's
passed along like you, um, you don't you can now
(33:04):
as I I think the sixties. You can go to schools,
um sometimes public schools like elementary and middle and high schools.
But there are some college curriculum that UM teach you mariachi.
But traditionally it was passed down just by practicing, like
it wasn't written down. It was like here's how you
play see Elito Lindo, you know, um, and you would
(33:26):
pick that up. Or else you go watch your favorite
mariachi band in the town plaza and you know, basically
be a groupie long enough that they'd let you start
playing with them. That kind of thing. That was Coco.
Did you ever see Cocoa? I did not know. One
of the best uh movies, animated films. It's just fantastic
that but one definitely the best looking animated film I've
(33:48):
ever seen. But that was the kid in Coca was
like a little mariachi groupie would and would just like
and you know, his parents didn't want him hanging around
Like all of this stuff is kind of spot on, uh,
really good movie thown, great music, UM, but mariachi finally
would make its way to the United States long before
Cocoa in the nineteen forties. In Los Angeles obviously has
(34:12):
always had a strong proud Mexican American community there and
then up through the nineteen sixties, which during the zoot
suit Um episode, we talked a lot about the Chicano
movement in the sixties where Mexican immigrant communities all of
a sudden kind of stood up for themselves and organized
(34:33):
and it was very much akin to the Black Power movement,
and they adopted a lot of mariachi songs has kind
of part of their movement. Yeah, and some of they repurposed.
There's a famous song called de caloris Um that talks
about how beautiful the landscape is in spring, and they
basically repurposed it to to be more of a metaphor
(34:53):
for how, you know, the beauty of different people of color,
you know. Um. Other ones were actually written. There's a
song called l Pickett Sign It's hilarious. Did you listen
to it? I did, and it doesn't It doesn't sound
very mariachi. It more sounds like a nineteen sixties acoustic
guitar protest song, which is exactly what it was. But
it was, you know, part of the um the United
(35:16):
farm Workers Union strike and the larger Chicano movement too.
A big respect box again was checked in the eighties
when Linda Ronstat came out with her album, UH concionis
Dami Padre And this was a very big deal. I
don't know if you remember this at the time, but
(35:37):
it was. Linda ron Stat was a huge star. And
I can't recommend the documentary about her enough. It's called
The Sound of My Voice. One of the great UH
singers of all time UH in any genre is Linda Ronstat.
And she has Mexican heritage, and not many people know
this because she's very fair skin. Her name is ron
(35:58):
Stat is German, but she that's why she made that album,
and she did interviews at the time, and and the
documentary talks a lot about her Mexican heritage, and it
was I think she's part German too, and that was
like you were talking about the German influence in Mexico.
It was she. It was a big melting pot and
she was a part of that melting pot. I think
(36:19):
her uh, either father or grandfather was Mexican. And so
she came out with this album and it was huge.
It went double platinum. And this was in the like
mid late nineteen eighties, and it gave a huge boost
to the mariachi music. Yeah, and she was playing with
like some legit mariachi bands. I think she hosted basically
(36:39):
three of them on her album. She played with one
of the mariachi Vargus on Saturday Night Live. Yeah, I
mean it was a giant, enormous thing. I don't remember
when it happened, but I can just imagine America being like,
wait what and then listen being like, oh, this is
really good. But that also explains a longstanding mystery that
I never understood before, which is why on the Mr
(37:00):
Plow episode of The Simpsons, when Barney is hanging out
with Linda Ronstead, she tries to adapt the Mr. Plow
song into Spanish. Really yeah, or she's like that funny
Senior Plow nois macho solda mente umbaraco, which Mr Plow
is not mainly only a drunk, and it's like it
(37:22):
lasts like to three seconds, but no idea. Man, that
was so random. God, don't you love that when a
Simpsons joke hits, you know, twenty years later exactly thirty
years actually, that episode came. That is crazy. All right, Well,
let's take another break. I'm gonna go get my spray
paint candle it. That's really tough to say, isn't it.
(37:44):
It really is that stumble you say it, spray paint
candle it. Yeah. See, I've been practicing in my head
because I knew this moment would come. I've been stumbling
over the whole time. So I'm gonna keep rex in
saying that and We'll be right back. Spray paint candle it.
(38:17):
Very nice, everybody, very nice? All right. So now we
are in the mid twentieth century and Mexican cinema is
all of a sudden finding its way into theaters all
over the world, and that means Mexican music is going
to be introduced in more places all over the world,
which includes mariachi and uh, depending on where you are
(38:40):
in the world, it might have taken hold more than others.
And this is I think it is a really cool
thing when something from one disparate culture makes this way
to another place, and for some like Hasslehof in Germany,
like all of a sudden, that place really loves this thing.
And that happened in Yugoslavia. One of the reasons is
at time political leaders there um didn't want a lot
(39:04):
of Soviet music, they didn't want a lot of American music,
and they saw this Mexican music as neutral politically, So
it was a little more not encouraged, I guess, but
not shunned. And all of a sudden there were some
parallels being drawn between the revolutionary traditions in both of
those countries, and even today in places like Serbia and
(39:26):
Croatia there are mariachi bands that play. Yeah, and this
wasn't like a fringe thing like mariachi. From what I
can tell, there's a really interesting Roads and Kingdom's article
that Olivia dug up Um that basically says like mariachi
was as as big as any music in Yugoslavia in
like this, I'm guessing fifties, sixties and seventies is the
(39:48):
impression that I had, maybe I ever heard Yugoslavia music.
I listened to a little bit, well, I listened to
a little bit of Mariochi. That's the other thing too.
It doesn't matter if it's a Serb playing um mariachi,
a Japanese band playing mariachi or um. You know, somebody
from Texas playing Mariochi. It is the same music. Mm hmm,
(40:09):
it's pretty cool. Yeah, I think honoring that tradition, like,
no one wants to put a spin on something that
is so much just what it is. I looked, Uh,
there are Japanese mariachi, one called Mariachi Samurai that's been
around for twenty plus years. Uh. There is confirmed mariachi
(40:30):
band in China, as we will see there in the
big festival happening this year. There is one from Sweden
that's showing up. So it definitely like took hold in
different parts of the world in the twentieth century. So, Chuck,
I feel like we should talk about some notable mariachi. Yeah,
and we should also point out that when we say mariachi,
(40:51):
that can be a band, that can be an adjective
describing the music, or it can be, as in the
case of the great Robert Rodriguez film El Medriachi, it
can be a single individual is a mariachi. I still
never saw it. I've only seen Desperado. I've seen it
like fifty times, but I never moved on to El Mariachi.
(41:11):
Well moved back. El Mirachi was the first one, and
then Desperado was kind of a remake, but kind of
not like Evil Dead an Evil Dead too. Yeah, very
much in uh yeah, in a lot of ways. You
should check out al Mariachi. It's the one he made
for like eight thousand dollars or whatever. I'll check it out.
I'll check it out. I'm pressure me. It's good. Back off,
(41:36):
bub all right, go ahead, tough guy. Tell me some
some notable matriachi. One of the first actually was Um
the Quartetoko Linse Okay, I think that's that's good. There's
a guy named Husto Villa and he Um was the
(41:56):
first mariachi to performer his His quartet was at the
mex Can Capital back in nineteen o five. They were
also the first ones to put the som whacks as
early as nineteen o eight. So these guys were holding
it down because remember mariachi, it had only been fifty
sixty years old tops when it was first being started
to be played, you know, in the rural areas. So
(42:17):
these guys were the first in Mexico City playing this
stuff and at the turn of the twentieth century, that's right.
We could also mention mariachi Vargas, this is a tough
one day to call it Lan will say it again
to caliplan O. Now I added a t to make
(42:42):
it I think you I think you said it right
the first time that that's a tough one. But um,
this was one of the more famous, uh maybe the
most famous and longest running mariachi group ever. They were
founded in eight and is still around today. Um. Obviously
over the years they just you know, swap people in
and out, but it's still still the same band under
(43:03):
the same name, which is pretty cool. And they really
kind of established the mariachi style from that region and
uh used that harp early on. Yeah, so they've been
playing since the nineteenth century. In the thirties, they made
their way to Mexico City because again this is like
now the epicenter of mariachi music. And I don't know
(43:24):
how or exactly what they did, but they were named
during that decade the official mariachi of the Mexico City
Police Department. I thought that was really funny, really, like
did they follow them around on like raids and stuff
and like playing music or that would be pretty great. Um.
They also started to show up in movies, um, and
(43:45):
they would play. They would back up a guy named
Pedro and Fonte, who was like a pretty huge star
during the Mexican Golden Nage of the thirties to the fifties. Um,
and these movies were typically vehicles of his and I'm
guessing those were a lot of the ones that made
their way to Yugoslavia. Yeah. Probably. Uh, let's just pick
out a couple of more of these, because we could
(44:08):
just list people all day long. I'm gonna well, since
we mentioned these guys earlier, we need to shout up
Miguel Martinez and Jezus Cordoba, who were from the band
uh Mariachi Mexico de Pepa Villa, and they were from
the nineteen fifties. And those are the two guys who
worked out how to use two trumpets together. Uh. And
it sounds like you just play the same thing at
(44:30):
the same time and the same melody, but that that
wasn't exactly what they did. Uh. They mixed it up
and I think they played in harmony and all of
a sudden, two trumpets were a thing. Yeah. There's another group,
Mariachi Los Camperos, that was founded by Nadi Kano Um
and he really kind of like with this this existing
(44:51):
band into shape UM and got them into Carnegie Hall
in nineteen sixty four. They were the first mariachi group
to perform there. Um they opened their own restaurant, Lafonda
de los Camperos in l A. And that explains why
vincent A. Rodriguez was in is basically in a Mexican
restaurant where I guess just a restaurant, and in the
(45:12):
two videos I've seen of his UM, so that became
kind of like a thing like you would have your
own like home base where you could perform every every
night of the week if you wanted to, and also
probably attract more business. Plus you're making that restaurant money
on the side too. Yeah. And you know, highly recommend
if you go to Los Angeles you want to do
something fun one night. There are quite a few restaurants
(45:35):
there that have not the roaming the tables mariachi, but
the full like twelve to fourteen symphonic on a stage
performance scene. Uh. And there's a lot of fun to
go to these places and get some great food and
margarita's and and listen to these performances. So look it up.
It's online. I don't have any I can the one
I went to I could texted my friend but he
(45:56):
never answered, so I can't remember the name of it.
I'll tell you another place to get all that same
experience as Epcot Center. Are you talking about Mariachi Cobra. Yeah,
they've been the house um Epcot Mexico Pavilion Mariachi band
since two. Not a bad gig. That's a pretty good streak.
That's a forty year streak. Well, I love it. They're
(46:17):
just like, why hird, Like these guys are great, so
let's just keep them on forever exactly, And that band
was like, Florida's pretty great, We're just gonna move here. Uh.
If you notice we keep talking about men. Uh, Like
many many musical genres have we've seen that we've covered
throughout the years, and except for disco, actually notably is
that women have had a harder time getting a toe
(46:40):
in the pool, and Mariachi is no different. At the beginning,
it was exclusively men, and they were playing in these
sort of rough and tumble places where people were getting
boozed up on survesa and it was not seen as
an acceptable thing for women to do. In the mid
nineteenth century, in Mexico, but Olivia is keen to point
(47:01):
out there always have been exceptions. Beginning in the early
nineteen hundreds. That was a thirteen year old named uh
Rosa Quirino who had played with male mariachi bands, but
uh eventually went on to lead her own group and
apparently used to carry a piece to protect herself on
the road because it was dangerous business. I also saw
(47:21):
that she would um threaten heckler's and people who harassed
her while she and her band were playing with it.
She would say, a gentlemen, we are working and she
would produce her gun and just let them see like
she was not to be trifled with. She also wore
like bandal aros like Pancho Villa. Oh cool, Yeah, she
sounds pretty goods Uh. In the early um, I'm sorry,
(47:43):
late nineteen forties, Uh, they're start. You started to see
some bands that were all women so mariachi groups in
Mexico City. Eventually they would make their way to Los
Angeles in the US. The first all female uh Mariaci
group was last Lancritas and this was an Alamo, Texas
in nineteen seven. And I believe there is even now
(48:08):
an all l G B t Q plus mariachi group
with the very first transgender woman in the history of
the genre, with Natalia Melndez. Yeah, mariachi are courious, are courious. Yeah,
I mean things have come a long way. Yeah. There's
also another one worth mentioning Florida tot tolo Achi. They're
(48:30):
from New York. I think there are four piece and
they are really amazing too. But even even still today,
even with all of these like really great all female
mariachi bands, um, they still are just kind of viewed
differently than the male performers are. There was a anthropologist
in two thousand thirteen named Mary Lee m Holland, and
(48:52):
she basically just started studying the difference between male and
female mariachi performers and found that the male performers are
typically expect to represent like that kind of rural rough
and tumble body um humorous sometimes uh like just macho
kind of vibe, while the female performers were expected to
(49:13):
like be sober and like dignified and pretty. Don't forget
pretty had me pretty too, And then they were judged
on that, And I mean that's I guess it's to
be expected, but I get the impressions that the female
performers were still just be just treated differently depending on
where they performed, and they said, by and large they
(49:35):
tended to prefer performing at weddings and baptisms and that
kind of stuff rather than like at bars and like
the public applauses where the male performers typically go. Who
wants to be heckled, objectified and have to flash your gun? Yeah?
Exactly what else you got? Uh? I think that's about it.
(49:57):
I mean the last section here is just where to
here's some mariachi music, and I think you can you
can hire him out in your town to play a
party if you want a bet you every big city,
in many small towns, if you look up on the
inner webs, we'll have mariachi that you can hire. You
can go to look up and see if there are
Mexican restaurants that have that music you can go check out. Uh.
(50:19):
There are festivals now and and certainly Mexico and all
over the world where you can go here lots of mariachi,
or just dial some up on your favorite music service. Yeah,
you could do a lot worse than um. Starting with
Vincente Fernandez, Is that your guy? He is definitely he's
a good gateway mariachi performer. I think you know. Yeah,
(50:42):
by the way, shout out. Since I mentioned women in disco,
Rolling Stone magazine just came up with with They're they're
doing a bunch of top two hundred lists. They came
out with their top two hundred dance songs of all time. Uh,
and not just disco, just like club anything. And Donna
Summer was number one with I Feel Love one of
the greatest songs ever. That's a great one. You're right. Well,
(51:04):
since Chuck doesn't have anything else and I don't either,
I think that means everybody that it's time for listener mail. Yeah,
we're gonna call this breaking news. It's fun when a
stuff you should know mystery and uh, Australia woke up
and started emailing us one after the other around midday
Georgia time today because the Somerton Man has been solved.
(51:29):
Somerton Man mystery. I'm like, I'm bivalent about this. I
I don't know how I feel interesting. Did you want
it to remain a mystery? Yeah? I think I did. Actually,
I don't think there was any harm in it remaining
a mystery forever and I almost feel like this guy
just kind of cheated. All right, Well here we go. Uh,
long time listener, first time writer from Adelaide, Australia. I've
(51:52):
got excuse to right in. I thought you and your
listeners might be interested in breaking news. After exhuming the
body last year, Professor Derek Abbott Boo, a researcher at
the University of Adelaide, has completed DNA matching. No, I
get what you mean. He didn't do like just good
detective work, unless you want to discount DNA is good
detective work. I mean, there's that show called The New
(52:14):
Detectives and it's all about this kind of thing. But
I don't know, all right, so we like the Old Detectives. Yeah,
in this in this particular case, I got no problem
with using DNA evidence to capture contemporary murderers. How about that, alright?
Or two exculpate then exonerate. Yeah, childs All of a sudden,
(52:34):
don't you know who that is? Oh? Jackie Child's from Sinville. Yeah,
totally all right? Great? Uh. Summer to man was Carl Webb,
an engineer and instrument maker from Melbourne who came to
Adelaide seeking a reconnection with his estranged wife. The name
of the tie t Keene was his brother in law.
(52:56):
The book of Persian poetry still a mystery. So you
got that going for you. That's good. Uh, And thanks
for the show. And that is from Rafe and many others.
But Rafe was the first person we got to so
or they got to us. Yeah, thanks a lot, Rafe
and everybody for sending that in. Um yeah, who knows. Well,
at least the Tamim shoot part is still a mystery. Okay, Yeah,
(53:17):
that's right. Well, if you want to get in touch
with us like Rafe did and kind of bring us
down at me at least, you can do that via email.
Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Ah yeah, yeah yeah, And welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Jerry's hanging out here wearing
a giant sombrero, and that makes this stuff you should know.
I was actually gonna sing that that's funny that you
(00:23):
thought of the same dang thing. That's that's the one.
That's the one that I've you know, I grew up on. Yeah.
I think I told the story once before about when
it's funny how these things you remember from your childhood.
When I was in kindergarten, they taught us the Mexican
hat dance, and we danced around uh not hats, but
(00:47):
spray can lids, like like like spray pant lids. Why
because you know, we didn't have little sombreros, Okay, And
it's one of those things we're looking back like bless him.
They were teaching us about another culture, which is great
for a five year old, but like looking back all
these you know, white suburban at Landing kids dancing around
(01:10):
spray pant spray paint candle its is a little little cringe.
It's an it's a weird, like at a detail, but
I'll bet it was still adorable to see. You know,
it's an odd substitute, like we didn't decorate them. I
would get that they were just the lids, right, no
brims or anything like that. So it's more of like
(01:30):
a fees dance. Yeah. Sure, it was like a fest
Hits minus the tassel. So Chuck, I just want to say, um,
if this pick is from your recent trip to the Yucatan,
that is a vacation that just keeps giving. Now it's
not at all. We heard no mariachi down there. Uh.
I don't know why I thought of this. I'm not
(01:52):
sure other than the fact that it's a music that
I like and it's a fun like when people are
over and it's a Friday night where happy hour and
up some cocktails. Putting on a mariachi mix is always
a good move. Uh. And you know, when I lived
in l A, I lived in a Mexican neighborhood in
(02:13):
a largely Mexican neighborhood and a Mexican or Mexican American
apartment complex. I was the only gringo there and so
the music was just blaring out at all times, and
I really got tired of it for a while, but
it was in getting tired of it that I got
(02:35):
an appreciation for it and ending up loving it. If
that makes sense, that's really cool. Yeah, it does make sense. Actually,
you have subsumed it by attrition, I guess, yeah, yeah, sure,
so yeah this was your pick um. I don't know
that I ever would have gotten around to this one
because I'm not like a huge mariachi fan. Got nothing
against it, but like, my exposure to mariachi is sadly
(02:55):
like speedy guns all is Um cartoons and like Mexican
restaurant visits. But now that I've researched it some I
have kind of developed more of an appreciation of it
than I had before. But one of the things that
struck me about it, Chuck, is that if you listen
to like old mariachi and like relatively new mariachi, like
there's a some there's something about there's like a through
(03:16):
line where it's very clearly the same kind of music
after decades and decades centuries. Really you could say, um,
and I think that's really cool that it's not like
like I went to look for disco mariachi and yeah,
it doesn't exist like I found some I found like
a mariachi band doing covers of some disco favorites, like
(03:38):
you know, but it was still mostly disco with a
little bit more horn than than normal. Um. But it's
like a really like I don't want to say unchanged
because it's definitely evolved in other kinds of merged with
other kinds, you know, but but it's you can recognize
it from nineteen hundred to nine as mariachi music. Yeah,
(03:59):
And you know, I think one of the through lines
that I saw, and it's something we talked a little
bit about before we recorded was and I think the
name of this episode of already titled the Rodney Danger
Field of Musical Genres, But it's a it's a genre
that I think is always worked at gaining respect globally
and among you know, the intelligentia and the classical community.
(04:24):
And I think part of that is rooted in some
just inherent racism that America feels towards Mexico, which I
think is just something that's that's just there. It's a
country that is our closest neighbor, obviously Canada as well,
but uh, it's an interesting place and that you know,
fifty percent of the country, I think, since the pandemic
(04:46):
lives below the poverty line, but it's also like a
top ten country economically globally, which was hard to believe.
So it's Mexico, I think has a lot of people
living in poverty and a lot of very wealthy people,
so a big wealth gap there. Uh. And this music
is a part of their proud tradition. And I think
(05:06):
little things have happened over the years, and we'll talk
about a lot of them that have helped kind of
uh up their respect anti where it's not just a
Mexican restaurant music to two people here and around the world.
And I think like movies like Coco coming along, like
just little things like that have happened over the years
that really helped kind of bring it to the four
where people realize what a kind of cool music it is.
(05:28):
Yeah for sure. Uh. And yeah that's just because you know,
people's exposure to it is strictly a Mexican restaurant doesn't
mean like that's where it exists like that. It's moved
into concert halls, um Uh, it's moved into like schools
and colleges like it's it's it's it's definitely gained a
lot of respect. But I think what you're saying is
(05:49):
is is correct. You know largely that there is a
certain sense of, if not racism, at least xenophobia or
a sense of foreignness. Yeah, that probably prevents like the
average waspy American from getting really deep into mariachi. Um.
But I think also in this this stands from Mexico too,
that it's a it's a classist thing too, because mariachi
(06:11):
music is rooted in the rural areas. It's a proud
rural worker tradition. It's like super um egalitarian in that sense.
And you know, people of you know, certain classes, they
don't like that kind of stuff. They find it low brow,
or they they it doesn't appeal to them or whatever.
And so I think that even as mariachi has evolved
(06:33):
over the decades, that same old kind of grudge or
view that's become outdated over time to a large extent,
still remains among some people agreed, this is one of
our best interests yet. All right, So let's go back
to the beginning. How where did mariachi come from? Uh? Well,
and by the way, we're I'm really worked on a
lot of these pronunciations. I'm gonna do my best, but
(06:54):
as always, we try, We're we're gonna try. But yeah,
there's a lot of pronunciation challenges up in this one,
all up in here. Uh So, we gotta go back
to colonial Mexico and the original form of the music
came and this is pretty obvious. Is obviously some Spanish influence,
(07:15):
but something that may surprise folks is that also enslaved
Africans that the Spanish brought to the colonies, a lot
of the rhythmic traditions of that music is present in
the origins of mariachi as well. Yeah, and there are
a lot of people say, plus there was indigenous music
at the time, so those things always just kind of
blended and gelled together, which is pretty um appropriate for
(07:39):
mariachi as we'll see over the decades, like it's they've
not hesitated to be like, oh I really like that sound.
I didn't think of using that instrument and incorporating it
to make a new a new sound. Yeah, yeah, totally. Um,
you gotta go to western Mexico to uh Jalisco, where
we talk about a musical form called sun Holly Sience.
(08:01):
I know, I got that one right, because prexit over
and over, uh and the crack. I don't want to
have practice for nothing, holly, yeah, very nice, okay, Um,
I think we should each pronounce everything, okay, and then
Jerry can just blend them together. Had a little guitar
(08:23):
own on top of it, and we're all set. Uh.
So that music was happening in Jalisco and western Mexico,
but it was you know, similar kinds of music were
happening in other places in Mexico. And like you said,
these were farm workers. They would play for special occasions,
they would Uh. It's interesting in the early mariachi did
not have horns, which is almost hard to believe because
(08:47):
horns are so vital to it now. But violence, guitar
and harp were sort of the first mariaci instruments. Yeah,
mostly string string ensembles, right, and they were they were
songs performed by the peasant class working on haciendas. And
at the time before the Mexican Revolution UM that ran
(09:08):
roughly from nineteen and nineteen twenty UM, there was a
feudal system essentially that that that was the hacienda um
and the people who worked on those haciendas were very
much exploited. But one of the jobs you could have
is a mariachi performer. I got the impression like, if
you're a mariachi performer, that was your job. You didn't
(09:29):
necessarily work in the fields or do anything else. That
was the role you played on the hacienda. And the
thing is that kind of um inequality is just unsustainable.
It doesn't matter what century you live in, it doesn't
matter what country you live in. Eventually, as one group
is just so thoroughly exploited by another group, that the
exploited groups going to revolt. And that was the basis
(09:50):
of the Mexican Revolution, that it was a class revolution
where the workers rebelled and said no more, You're not
going to exploit us anymore. Right, And as you'll see,
they wrote a lot of music about this stuff in
the form of the mariachi songs. But um Kokula, which
is in Jalisco outside of Guadalajara, is um where some
(10:13):
people say it started, even though you can't draw like
written history there. If you want to look at the
word in print, which is something we always seem to
talk about the first time we see things written down, Uh,
it is a letter from a Catholic priest in eighteen
fifty two that was denouncing it, basically saying, you know,
these big drunken festivals in this music that you're doing,
(10:34):
uh is a problem. Please cut it out right, signed
local crank priests exactly. So, Um, that was the like
you said the first time in print, right, and yeah
before that it was a local place name. Um. But
really Mariachi as we understand it, the word the etymology,
(10:55):
I guess, has long been kind of disputed. And here's
the little fun fact. I had no idea about. Uh.
The French, as in France occupied Mexico from eighteen sixty
two to eighteen sixty six. Did you know that? Sure
you knew that. I did. I think I've seen that
in movies. I had no idea. The only reason I
wouldn't know anything. So so during that for your occupation
(11:19):
of Mexico by the French, apparently local musicians would be
hired to perform at weddings. So there was a longstanding
myth that the word mariachi was a kind of a
local butchering of the French word mariage. Yeah, not true, No,
that's not. Actually the answers a lot cooler. I think, well,
they still don't know for sure. I mean, my money
(11:41):
is on the tree. Is that what you were talking about? Yeah?
What else could it possibly be? I don't know, because
there's a tree, it's separated out differently, but it is
the word mariachi. It's just mariachi. That sounded totally Italian.
That's probably probably put the stress in the wrong thing.
But that was a tree that legend has it, or
(12:03):
people say at least was the wood that they made
the instruments out of, and that I don't know, that
seems pretty convincing to me. For sure. It was an
indigenous Cora word too, so hats off to them as well. Um,
there's another there's one more that I'm like, I don't
know about this one, but they're they're like, no, the
g is from the Cora language, but the maria refers
to the Virgin Mary, and that these were religious songs.
(12:26):
At first, I didn't see anything about these being particularly
religious at any point in time, did you not? Really?
And I mean, I'm sure they're religious mariachi songs, but
most of the stuff I've seen is about like working
on the farm, or these love ballads and stuff like that. Yeah,
or just getting you know, crunk, getting down. Yeah. So,
(12:47):
like I said, the hacienda system, I don't believe it
actually ended, but I think it was very much disrupted
during and right after the revolution, and as a result,
there was you know a lot of people who were
displaced as workers, including mariachi musicians, who no longer had
like a regular gig on the local hacienda. And so
whenever there's a disruption in the countryside, those people tend
(13:10):
to make it towards city centers to see if there's
work or other ways to support themselves. There's a big
influx of people to Mexico City around the nineteen teens
in twenties, and a lot of them were mariachi musicians,
and they brought their different traditions with them, because depending
on what state you're talking about, each state has its
own kind of musical mariachi tradition. And in that in
(13:32):
that era in in Mexico City is when they first
started to really kind of blend together. Yeah, I think,
I mean, I love this kind of thing where different
whether it's food or musical styles, when different people of
different cultures all of a sudden are living among each
other and start sharing opinions and ideas. That's just I
don't know. I think that the best stuff in history
(13:52):
is created that way. And that's what happened there. And
they brought their musics together. This is when band sizes grew.
It was not necessarily like a quartet like it had been.
All of a sudden, you could see Mariachi in the
you know, like twelve people playing in a band. This
in big time game changer. This is when horns came
into the mix. Uh. And you know, basically this was
(14:16):
what nineteen teens you said in twenties, maybe yeah, Mariachi
would never be the same after the introduction of those trumpets, no,
for sure. Um And apparently in pretty short order they
figured out how to do you know, more than one trumpet.
As we'll see, there's actually one band that was responsible
for that. But one of the other things they started
doing two was wearing charos, those um cowboy outfits, the
(14:39):
very like slick cowboy outfits with like the short waistcoat
and the tight pants and the ankle length boots and
a wide bow tie and a big sombrero that that
emerged from this era as well too, where all of
a sudden, these guys were in the big city wearing
peasant guard with straw hats. This is probably a little
ghost all of a sudden, and they were making pretty
(15:00):
good money. So you could outfit like a dozen Mariotti
musicians and matching outfits and you know, probably attract even
more money because people would want to hire you because
you had that kind of thing going on. And it
became a tradition pretty quick. Can I admit something. Yeah,
if it were not for uh being accused of cultural appropriation,
(15:22):
I would wear Chatto clothing at every fancy event I
ever went to. So I think it's so cool looking.
I love it. Uh, And I think I might just
have to settle for a nudy suit. Uh you know
what those are? Birthday? No, you probably do. It was
(15:43):
there was a tailor and he was a lot of things.
In fact, he might make an interesting episode one day
named Nudy Cone. And he made these suits that uh
like Graham Parsons war and Ryan Stone cowboy type stuff
with like roses embroidered on the suits and all that stuff. Uh.
So nuty suits became really popular with like the earliest
alt country scene and like rodeos and stuff. So I
(16:06):
think I could get away with a newty suit, okay,
but why you're not part of the cowboy culture, you're
appropriating that. Why is it any different? Like why couldn't
you just wear a charo suit? I think if you
think something is cool and you're wearing out of respect
and because you think it's super cool, not because for
whatever reason. If you're just positively wearing something, I don't
(16:27):
see how somebody could legitimately accuse you of cultural appropriation.
And if they did, I think they'd be wrong. No,
I'm with you. It would be from fear of being
accused of that more than anything being accused. I think
because people would probably think, like Tom Hanks showing up
in Big in that thing, they would think I was
being funny or making a joke, where I'm like, no,
I actually think I look really cool because this is
(16:49):
a really cool suit and the tailors that make this
stuff are amazing and I would love to show it off.
So the difference would be you would show up and
just not say anything about your charo suit. I don't
know I would be the way to do it, okay,
because you're not trying to be like, hey, get a
load of this, get up you're just like, this is
what I'm wearing. If you're wearing a regular suit, I
wouldn't say anything about that. So I definitely shouldn't have
(17:11):
a squirting flower in my lopell no, or like a
little a spray paint. Can cap you do a little hat? Answer? Yeah,
I would have a little elastic chord that hangs like
like a little tiny bell hat pat totally. Uh No, anyway,
I just think those are super cool, and I think
nudy suits would be maybe a short stuff. Okay, I'm
(17:32):
glad you explained nudy because I think no, there's not
a T. It's in U d I E. Okay, So yeah,
that's exactly. That was a guy's name. Hey, you want
to take a break and come back because we're like
eighteen minutes into this great one. Hey, let's do it. Okay,
we'll be right back everybody. So one more thing, Chuck
(18:09):
about this kind of diaspora towards Mexico City. Um, there
was there was. There was a change in how they
performed too. They started performing in like public places, in
like bars and plazas. Um. And they also started to
be more mobile. They would move around in part because
(18:30):
they were busking basically, so if there was a somebody
that looked like they might be a paying customer, they
might follow them around for a little bit and see
if they could get them to pay for a song
or request a song or something like that. So that mobility,
the charos, suits, and the expansion and like rearrangement of instruments,
including the horns, those were all big things that happened
in the twenties. Yeah, And I think that tradition when
(18:53):
you see a small mariachi quartet moving around a Mexican restaurant,
it's sort of rooted in that tradition. And I think
that's another reason I didn't have an appreciation now that
I remember back is whenever that happened when I was
at dinner with my family and I was a kid,
I could just see the air leave my dad's body
and just like he hated it so much. He hated
(19:15):
any attention at all, being like pointed publicly his way,
like at Disney World. Theory like let me pick somebody
from the audience, if they ever looked at my dad,
he would just shake his head. I can not smile
or anything, whereas I could not be more different. I'm
like raising my hand wanting to jump up and volunteer
for whatever. And I love it when the mariaci comes
(19:37):
by the table, even though Atlanta doesn't have nearly enough
of that. UM. And I think just word of advice
if you never if you feel awkward and you don't know,
like do I eat or not? Uh yeah, you just
keep eating and like smile at them and just enjoy
the whole thing. I don't think it means, hey, stop
what you're doing and only look at us. It's it's
a part of the lively atmosphere of enjoying the food.
(19:58):
But you can also, if you're in your dad mindset,
order a double margarita stat Uh. Yeah, he didn't drink though.
Oh well, yeah, I'll bet he was super He really
didn't have to discomfort. Uh. So we're talking nineteen fifties
about this time and as uh, this is when we
had a couple of trumpets come on the scene. Uh.
(20:19):
And again we'll talk about the two gentlemen who worked
out how to how to do that. Uh. You had
a few violins usually, and then you had two really
key instruments, um that are basically ubiquitous in any madiachi.
One is the vihuela, which you might call a guitar,
but it's a little different. It's smaller, it's got five strings. Uh,
(20:40):
it's it's higher pitched, so the G, D and A
strings are all tuned in octave higher, so it sounds
a little different. But it's got those nylon strings. Uh yeah, yeah, Well,
I mean you strum it with your fingers as well,
but uh, fingerpicking and strumming. Uh. And then you've got
the really the heart of the band, and the most
important strument is that guitar on that I talked about,
(21:02):
and that's that it sort of looks like a stand
up bass with a super super short neck that you
are playing. It's really really big bodied and uh. This thing, though,
is not plucked like a standard bass. It also has
five strings, although there are some five string basses, but
traditionally you think of a four string bass. Uh, but
it's not plucked. You're playing octaves on the strings with
(21:25):
a guitar on, yeah, and you're playing it like a guitar,
So it looks like a hilarious, oversized, novelty guitar until
you hear it and then you're like, okay, it's pretty awesome. Yeah,
but that's the whole rhythm section. Because one thing you
will never hear someone say is did you get a
load of that drummer in the mariachi band? Right, Yeah,
it's true. That huge, deep, hollow body like produces all
(21:47):
of the sound you need from that. Yeah, it's it's
pretty great. It's really a key some other things though
you might you might overhear people saying it a mariachi
show is wow, wasn't that accordion player amazing? Where the
French horns or the flout ist even because they like
wind instruments and they like accordions, and one of the
(22:09):
things that they'll play, as we'll see are things like waltz's,
polka's And that was because of the influence of German
immigrants to northern Mexico and southern Texas in the nineteenth century,
that that that music influenced mariachi as well. That's right.
One of the big respect boxes was ticked in when
(22:32):
UNESCO came forward and said, mariachi the string music. The
song in the trumpet is now officially added to what
is called the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
of Humanity, which is a great sounding list. I love
the whole intangible aspect. I went to a place in Kyoto,
(22:53):
UM that was like a bamboo forest, and Unesco added
the sound of wind moving through that bamboo floors to
that same lists. We should, at the very least, we
should do this list. We could just read it off
and be like that one's awesome too, here's another. Yeah,
I love it. Okay, So yeah, that's a huge deal.
(23:14):
I mean, and that was two thousand eleven. So Mariatta,
it's like this is this is never going anywhere um
and it wasn't going to anyway. There was a guy
who bring in Jalisco's second Ministry of Culture. His name
was Alejandro Cravotto, and he said at the time that
there's no Mexican musical musical expression more widespread throughout the world.
(23:34):
And he also said that it's so much a part
of Mexican people's lives that they they hear it. It's
played from their baptism to their burial. And it's absolutely true.
They play baptisms, they play funerals, and they play everything
in between. Two yeah, but it's interesting when that happened.
There was a TV musician and a TV house named
(23:55):
Cornelio Garcia you like that that said this happened, that said,
you know, Maryachi still isn't getting the respect among academics
here in our own country. Uh. And you'll see that's
one of the sort of recurring themes over and over
is within Mexico itself, it's gained more acceptance in the
US than it has in some parts of Mexico among
(24:17):
higher classes. Yeah, and I think that's that kind of
classic's grudge that I was referring to is still around,
you know, because again, it's the music of the revolution,
and the revolution was the revolution of the peasants, and
it's really prideful, patriotic music, you know in a lot
of ways too, and it's the music of Mexico. There's
a Mariachi song called El Sonde la Negra and it's
(24:40):
um considered Mexico's second national anthem. Yeah, so it's it's
like it's just so woven into the fabric that, Yeah,
it's pretty tough. Like if if you live in Mexico,
if you're born and raised Mexican intellectual and you don't
like Mariachi, I'm sure you just have a miserable life
down there. You're the Mexican version of my dad. Uh
(25:01):
so you mentioned the different musical sounds incorporating things like
waltz and polka. Uh. Fan dango is also another like
it these African rhythms that we were talking about, and
they have you know, obviously the ballads and the waltzes
and things like that, but some other uh sort of
song styles. Uh. One of them is called rancheria. And
(25:23):
these were very much songs of the Mexican Revolution. These
are the ones that are really the patriotic songs of
the peasant class talking about how great and that's what's
so cool about it too, was like these songs weren't
talking about Maybe some did, but it seems like they
were never talking about oppression. They were celebrating the farm
and celebrating ranch life and stuff like that, right exactly, Yeah,
(25:46):
I'm romanticizing it. You could even say, Um, there's a
very famous song called the valve Are evolve Are? I
think it's maybe how you'd say it. Sure it was
in practice that one. It was very famously performed by
a named Vincente Fernandez known as El Rey de la
Musica Renchera. And this guy is my speed, Like he
(26:07):
he looks like a total tough guy from the seventies,
but he also looks like he probably smells really good,
and he's like, um singing this this like one plaintive
love song where his heart's clearly broken. Um in a
Mexican restaurant with a horse in there with him, and
he plays his song on the jukebox and starts singing it,
and it's really awesome. So I really kind of like
(26:29):
VINCENTI Fernandez as of yesterday. Yeah, that's a good song.
I remember hearing a lot of ballads when I lived
in Yuma. I my sort of best friend for that years,
this guy named Mark, And this was like a big
cultural shift for me to all of a sudden, my
best friend was this Mexican guy, and I hung out
at his house a lot and just got kind of
(26:51):
thrown into like the real deal culture as opposed to
the kid dancing around the spray paint lid. And it
was just they were also sweet and so nice and
and Mark's dad, like I remember seeing this picture on
the fridge of Mark's dad in the seventies and he
was like he had these sideburn shops and was riding
a Chopper motorcycle and was wearing like a beaded vest,
(27:13):
and I was like, do you have any idea how
much cooler your dad is than mine? And it was
like your dad was it is just like the coolest
looking dude I've ever seen. And I remember like his
mom would play these great Mexican uh mariachi ballads and
I like the ballads, Okay, I really like the up beat,
upbeat stuff a lot more, but it's kind of fun.
It's like these these ballads are so like sort of
(27:37):
slow and languid and syrupy, and you could they just
feel very sincere, Yeah, for sure, like in in some
some places gut wrenching UM. In uh last June, a
bunch of mariachi I think something like fifty of them
showed up at Uvaldi to basically sing um and just
(27:57):
just two mourn with everybody there. And there's plenty of
videos on it. And if you want to just have
your guts wrenched, like go watch that. It's It's just
really amazing how um just applicable this music is to
all these different like UM events or or occasions. You know, yeah, absolutely,
(28:19):
Uh that song you were singing, by the way, that
are you kind of Lee read sang it with the
I I ai uh that is very famous ranch era
and that song is uh uh ci Alito Lindo. That's
the that's the one that everyone has heard. Everyone has
heard either that or Laka, which is not a ranch era,
(28:40):
that is called a corrido. Yeah, so I am not
a harderd percent certain that there's a clear dividing line
between ranchers and currito's because the Voliver Volver song is
it tells a story. So that's one of the defining
characteristics of a carito. It's a ballad, and it's not
necessarily just about like love lost or even love game.
They can be a crime, it can be about heroism.
(29:04):
And I saw on a site called Remes cla Um
that that's usually paired with like a moral lesson of
some sort. So it's like a ballad basically, is the
is the best way to put it, as we already did. Yeah,
and you know what, this is a great time to
mention that I was wrong. We had our sort of
ballad disagreement a while back when I said that ballads
were love songs, uh, and we had a lot of
(29:26):
people right in they were like no, no, no, like
your own Billy Joel Chuck saying the ballad Ability to
Kid and uh, the Ballad of Curtis Lowe by Leonard Skinner.
They're like these they're just story songs. But I think
I just was thinking more love ballads and that's a subgenre. Sure. Yeah,
so correction made. So wait a minute, were they saying
Josh was right? Oh yeah, you were way right? How
(29:47):
did I miss this bunch of emails? Then I forgot
to frame them and sin the view like yeah, but
I have like a filter set on my outlook anytime
it says the phrase Josh is right or any variation,
and it goes right to the top of you have.
You have searches out for the words correct. Sometimes I
hit up people who have already sent in listener mail
(30:08):
just to kind of goad them into sending those kind
of emails. Uh. And then the final little style that
will cover is when we mentioned at the beginning, Uh,
the son hallis Salencia and that is the original folk style. Yeah,
that's that. Yeah. That elsn de Lenegra, the second um
national anthem of Mexico, and that's usually accompanied by a
(30:29):
dance called zappa tied. Hey I nailed this first time.
I would say tato oh man, I actually surprised myself.
I had that like, um like little or fanany like
like surprised look, and I still didn't get it. Right,
Come here, Sandy, come mere girl. Right, but that's like
(30:49):
a heel stomping foot dance. That's pretty cool if you
just look that up. That's what we were doing in kindergarten. Okay, okay, gotcha,
I got you. You're doing this still so embarrassing, tiato.
I guess so we called it the Mexican hat dance,
which is probably wrong too. I'm quite sure it was.
(31:10):
It sounds. Yeah, of those two, I'm pretty sure Mexican
hat dances the wronger in nineteen seventies America. Of those, uh,
that's right. I guess. The last thing we should mention
about the music um itself. Like the sound is one
of my favorite parts of this or any music, which
is multiple voices singing together. I love choral music. I
(31:33):
love three, four or five part harmonies. I love There
probably is no just thing as five part harmony. Why not?
I don't know. Is there a limit? I don't think so,
only in your mind? Oh hold on, uh yeah, but
there's there aren't. I mean there are there are singers
that have backing mariachi bands, but there in a mariachi band,
(31:57):
there's typically not what's called elites singer that someone may
take a lead on the song, but it's usually a
lot of people singing at once. Yeah, it's like Chicago,
basically everybody can sing right and they take turn. You'll
actually you'll actually see uh, like you know, a guy
stopped playing um his trumpet and moved to the front
(32:18):
and start singing on a on a new song. Like
that's just kind of how laid back it is. One
of the other cool things about mariotchi two is if
you watch, like if you watch the violinists, they'll be
like three or four of them just standing there potentially,
and they'll all start to bring their bow to their
instrument at different times. It's not it's not this precision timing.
(32:41):
And because there's multiple instruments, one can come in like
you know, a half measure late or something like that,
and it makes no difference. Was there you can't hear
it in the first place. But it's just like it's
not meant to be this uh intensely perfect, imprecise music.
And and that's actually seen in a way that it's
passed along like you, um, you don't you can now
(33:04):
as I I think the sixties. You can go to schools,
um sometimes public schools like elementary and middle and high schools.
But there are some college curriculum that UM teach you mariachi.
But traditionally it was passed down just by practicing, like
it wasn't written down. It was like here's how you
play see Elito Lindo, you know, um, and you would
(33:26):
pick that up. Or else you go watch your favorite
mariachi band in the town plaza and you know, basically
be a groupie long enough that they'd let you start
playing with them. That kind of thing. That was Coco.
Did you ever see Cocoa? I did not know. One
of the best uh movies, animated films. It's just fantastic
that but one definitely the best looking animated film I've
(33:48):
ever seen. But that was the kid in Coca was
like a little mariachi groupie would and would just like
and you know, his parents didn't want him hanging around
Like all of this stuff is kind of spot on, uh,
really good movie thown, great music, UM, but mariachi finally
would make its way to the United States long before
Cocoa in the nineteen forties. In Los Angeles obviously has
(34:12):
always had a strong proud Mexican American community there and
then up through the nineteen sixties, which during the zoot
suit Um episode, we talked a lot about the Chicano
movement in the sixties where Mexican immigrant communities all of
a sudden kind of stood up for themselves and organized
(34:33):
and it was very much akin to the Black Power movement,
and they adopted a lot of mariachi songs has kind
of part of their movement. Yeah, and some of they repurposed.
There's a famous song called de caloris Um that talks
about how beautiful the landscape is in spring, and they
basically repurposed it to to be more of a metaphor
(34:53):
for how, you know, the beauty of different people of color,
you know. Um. Other ones were actually written. There's a
song called l Pickett Sign It's hilarious. Did you listen
to it? I did, and it doesn't It doesn't sound
very mariachi. It more sounds like a nineteen sixties acoustic
guitar protest song, which is exactly what it was. But
it was, you know, part of the um the United
(35:16):
farm Workers Union strike and the larger Chicano movement too.
A big respect box again was checked in the eighties
when Linda Ronstat came out with her album, UH concionis
Dami Padre And this was a very big deal. I
don't know if you remember this at the time, but
(35:37):
it was. Linda ron Stat was a huge star. And
I can't recommend the documentary about her enough. It's called
The Sound of My Voice. One of the great UH
singers of all time UH in any genre is Linda Ronstat.
And she has Mexican heritage, and not many people know
this because she's very fair skin. Her name is ron
(35:58):
Stat is German, but she that's why she made that album,
and she did interviews at the time, and and the
documentary talks a lot about her Mexican heritage, and it
was I think she's part German too, and that was
like you were talking about the German influence in Mexico.
It was she. It was a big melting pot and
she was a part of that melting pot. I think
(36:19):
her uh, either father or grandfather was Mexican. And so
she came out with this album and it was huge.
It went double platinum. And this was in the like
mid late nineteen eighties, and it gave a huge boost
to the mariachi music. Yeah, and she was playing with
like some legit mariachi bands. I think she hosted basically
(36:39):
three of them on her album. She played with one
of the mariachi Vargus on Saturday Night Live. Yeah, I
mean it was a giant, enormous thing. I don't remember
when it happened, but I can just imagine America being like,
wait what and then listen being like, oh, this is
really good. But that also explains a longstanding mystery that
I never understood before, which is why on the Mr
(37:00):
Plow episode of The Simpsons, when Barney is hanging out
with Linda Ronstead, she tries to adapt the Mr. Plow
song into Spanish. Really yeah, or she's like that funny
Senior Plow nois macho solda mente umbaraco, which Mr Plow
is not mainly only a drunk, and it's like it
(37:22):
lasts like to three seconds, but no idea. Man, that
was so random. God, don't you love that when a
Simpsons joke hits, you know, twenty years later exactly thirty
years actually, that episode came. That is crazy. All right, Well,
let's take another break. I'm gonna go get my spray
paint candle it. That's really tough to say, isn't it.
(37:44):
It really is that stumble you say it, spray paint
candle it. Yeah. See, I've been practicing in my head
because I knew this moment would come. I've been stumbling
over the whole time. So I'm gonna keep rex in
saying that and We'll be right back. Spray paint candle it.
(38:17):
Very nice, everybody, very nice? All right. So now we
are in the mid twentieth century and Mexican cinema is
all of a sudden finding its way into theaters all
over the world, and that means Mexican music is going
to be introduced in more places all over the world,
which includes mariachi and uh, depending on where you are
(38:40):
in the world, it might have taken hold more than others.
And this is I think it is a really cool
thing when something from one disparate culture makes this way
to another place, and for some like Hasslehof in Germany,
like all of a sudden, that place really loves this thing.
And that happened in Yugoslavia. One of the reasons is
at time political leaders there um didn't want a lot
(39:04):
of Soviet music, they didn't want a lot of American music,
and they saw this Mexican music as neutral politically, So
it was a little more not encouraged, I guess, but
not shunned. And all of a sudden there were some
parallels being drawn between the revolutionary traditions in both of
those countries, and even today in places like Serbia and
(39:26):
Croatia there are mariachi bands that play. Yeah, and this
wasn't like a fringe thing like mariachi. From what I
can tell, there's a really interesting Roads and Kingdom's article
that Olivia dug up Um that basically says like mariachi
was as as big as any music in Yugoslavia in
like this, I'm guessing fifties, sixties and seventies is the
(39:48):
impression that I had, maybe I ever heard Yugoslavia music.
I listened to a little bit, well, I listened to
a little bit of Mariochi. That's the other thing too.
It doesn't matter if it's a Serb playing um mariachi,
a Japanese band playing mariachi or um. You know, somebody
from Texas playing Mariochi. It is the same music. Mm hmm,
(40:09):
it's pretty cool. Yeah, I think honoring that tradition, like,
no one wants to put a spin on something that
is so much just what it is. I looked, Uh,
there are Japanese mariachi, one called Mariachi Samurai that's been
around for twenty plus years. Uh. There is confirmed mariachi
(40:30):
band in China, as we will see there in the
big festival happening this year. There is one from Sweden
that's showing up. So it definitely like took hold in
different parts of the world in the twentieth century. So, Chuck,
I feel like we should talk about some notable mariachi. Yeah,
and we should also point out that when we say mariachi,
(40:51):
that can be a band, that can be an adjective
describing the music, or it can be, as in the
case of the great Robert Rodriguez film El Medriachi, it
can be a single individual is a mariachi. I still
never saw it. I've only seen Desperado. I've seen it
like fifty times, but I never moved on to El Mariachi.
(41:11):
Well moved back. El Mirachi was the first one, and
then Desperado was kind of a remake, but kind of
not like Evil Dead an Evil Dead too. Yeah, very
much in uh yeah, in a lot of ways. You
should check out al Mariachi. It's the one he made
for like eight thousand dollars or whatever. I'll check it out.
I'll check it out. I'm pressure me. It's good. Back off,
(41:36):
bub all right, go ahead, tough guy. Tell me some
some notable matriachi. One of the first actually was Um
the Quartetoko Linse Okay, I think that's that's good. There's
a guy named Husto Villa and he Um was the
(41:56):
first mariachi to performer his His quartet was at the
mex Can Capital back in nineteen o five. They were
also the first ones to put the som whacks as
early as nineteen o eight. So these guys were holding
it down because remember mariachi, it had only been fifty
sixty years old tops when it was first being started
to be played, you know, in the rural areas. So
(42:17):
these guys were the first in Mexico City playing this
stuff and at the turn of the twentieth century, that's right.
We could also mention mariachi Vargas, this is a tough
one day to call it Lan will say it again
to caliplan O. Now I added a t to make
(42:42):
it I think you I think you said it right
the first time that that's a tough one. But um,
this was one of the more famous, uh maybe the
most famous and longest running mariachi group ever. They were
founded in eight and is still around today. Um. Obviously
over the years they just you know, swap people in
and out, but it's still still the same band under
(43:03):
the same name, which is pretty cool. And they really
kind of established the mariachi style from that region and
uh used that harp early on. Yeah, so they've been
playing since the nineteenth century. In the thirties, they made
their way to Mexico City because again this is like
now the epicenter of mariachi music. And I don't know
(43:24):
how or exactly what they did, but they were named
during that decade the official mariachi of the Mexico City
Police Department. I thought that was really funny, really, like
did they follow them around on like raids and stuff
and like playing music or that would be pretty great. Um.
They also started to show up in movies, um, and
(43:45):
they would play. They would back up a guy named
Pedro and Fonte, who was like a pretty huge star
during the Mexican Golden Nage of the thirties to the fifties. Um,
and these movies were typically vehicles of his and I'm
guessing those were a lot of the ones that made
their way to Yugoslavia. Yeah. Probably. Uh, let's just pick
out a couple of more of these, because we could
(44:08):
just list people all day long. I'm gonna well, since
we mentioned these guys earlier, we need to shout up
Miguel Martinez and Jezus Cordoba, who were from the band
uh Mariachi Mexico de Pepa Villa, and they were from
the nineteen fifties. And those are the two guys who
worked out how to use two trumpets together. Uh. And
it sounds like you just play the same thing at
(44:30):
the same time and the same melody, but that that
wasn't exactly what they did. Uh. They mixed it up
and I think they played in harmony and all of
a sudden, two trumpets were a thing. Yeah. There's another group,
Mariachi Los Camperos, that was founded by Nadi Kano Um
and he really kind of like with this this existing
(44:51):
band into shape UM and got them into Carnegie Hall
in nineteen sixty four. They were the first mariachi group
to perform there. Um they opened their own restaurant, Lafonda
de los Camperos in l A. And that explains why
vincent A. Rodriguez was in is basically in a Mexican
restaurant where I guess just a restaurant, and in the
(45:12):
two videos I've seen of his UM, so that became
kind of like a thing like you would have your
own like home base where you could perform every every
night of the week if you wanted to, and also
probably attract more business. Plus you're making that restaurant money
on the side too. Yeah. And you know, highly recommend
if you go to Los Angeles you want to do
something fun one night. There are quite a few restaurants
(45:35):
there that have not the roaming the tables mariachi, but
the full like twelve to fourteen symphonic on a stage
performance scene. Uh. And there's a lot of fun to
go to these places and get some great food and
margarita's and and listen to these performances. So look it up.
It's online. I don't have any I can the one
I went to I could texted my friend but he
(45:56):
never answered, so I can't remember the name of it.
I'll tell you another place to get all that same
experience as Epcot Center. Are you talking about Mariachi Cobra. Yeah,
they've been the house um Epcot Mexico Pavilion Mariachi band
since two. Not a bad gig. That's a pretty good streak.
That's a forty year streak. Well, I love it. They're
(46:17):
just like, why hird, Like these guys are great, so
let's just keep them on forever exactly, And that band
was like, Florida's pretty great, We're just gonna move here. Uh.
If you notice we keep talking about men. Uh, Like
many many musical genres have we've seen that we've covered
throughout the years, and except for disco, actually notably is
that women have had a harder time getting a toe
(46:40):
in the pool, and Mariachi is no different. At the beginning,
it was exclusively men, and they were playing in these
sort of rough and tumble places where people were getting
boozed up on survesa and it was not seen as
an acceptable thing for women to do. In the mid
nineteenth century, in Mexico, but Olivia is keen to point
(47:01):
out there always have been exceptions. Beginning in the early
nineteen hundreds. That was a thirteen year old named uh
Rosa Quirino who had played with male mariachi bands, but
uh eventually went on to lead her own group and
apparently used to carry a piece to protect herself on
the road because it was dangerous business. I also saw
(47:21):
that she would um threaten heckler's and people who harassed
her while she and her band were playing with it.
She would say, a gentlemen, we are working and she
would produce her gun and just let them see like
she was not to be trifled with. She also wore
like bandal aros like Pancho Villa. Oh cool, Yeah, she
sounds pretty goods Uh. In the early um, I'm sorry,
(47:43):
late nineteen forties, Uh, they're start. You started to see
some bands that were all women so mariachi groups in
Mexico City. Eventually they would make their way to Los
Angeles in the US. The first all female uh Mariaci
group was last Lancritas and this was an Alamo, Texas
in nineteen seven. And I believe there is even now
(48:08):
an all l G B t Q plus mariachi group
with the very first transgender woman in the history of
the genre, with Natalia Melndez. Yeah, mariachi are courious, are courious. Yeah,
I mean things have come a long way. Yeah. There's
also another one worth mentioning Florida tot tolo Achi. They're
(48:30):
from New York. I think there are four piece and
they are really amazing too. But even even still today,
even with all of these like really great all female
mariachi bands, um, they still are just kind of viewed
differently than the male performers are. There was a anthropologist
in two thousand thirteen named Mary Lee m Holland, and
(48:52):
she basically just started studying the difference between male and
female mariachi performers and found that the male performers are
typically expect to represent like that kind of rural rough
and tumble body um humorous sometimes uh like just macho
kind of vibe, while the female performers were expected to
(49:13):
like be sober and like dignified and pretty. Don't forget
pretty had me pretty too, And then they were judged
on that, And I mean that's I guess it's to
be expected, but I get the impressions that the female
performers were still just be just treated differently depending on
where they performed, and they said, by and large they
(49:35):
tended to prefer performing at weddings and baptisms and that
kind of stuff rather than like at bars and like
the public applauses where the male performers typically go. Who
wants to be heckled, objectified and have to flash your gun? Yeah?
Exactly what else you got? Uh? I think that's about it.
(49:57):
I mean the last section here is just where to
here's some mariachi music, and I think you can you
can hire him out in your town to play a
party if you want a bet you every big city,
in many small towns, if you look up on the
inner webs, we'll have mariachi that you can hire. You
can go to look up and see if there are
Mexican restaurants that have that music you can go check out. Uh.
(50:19):
There are festivals now and and certainly Mexico and all
over the world where you can go here lots of mariachi,
or just dial some up on your favorite music service. Yeah,
you could do a lot worse than um. Starting with
Vincente Fernandez, Is that your guy? He is definitely he's
a good gateway mariachi performer. I think you know. Yeah,
(50:42):
by the way, shout out. Since I mentioned women in disco,
Rolling Stone magazine just came up with with They're they're
doing a bunch of top two hundred lists. They came
out with their top two hundred dance songs of all time. Uh,
and not just disco, just like club anything. And Donna
Summer was number one with I Feel Love one of
the greatest songs ever. That's a great one. You're right. Well,
(51:04):
since Chuck doesn't have anything else and I don't either,
I think that means everybody that it's time for listener mail. Yeah,
we're gonna call this breaking news. It's fun when a
stuff you should know mystery and uh, Australia woke up
and started emailing us one after the other around midday
Georgia time today because the Somerton Man has been solved.
(51:29):
Somerton Man mystery. I'm like, I'm bivalent about this. I
I don't know how I feel interesting. Did you want
it to remain a mystery? Yeah? I think I did. Actually,
I don't think there was any harm in it remaining
a mystery forever and I almost feel like this guy
just kind of cheated. All right, Well here we go. Uh,
long time listener, first time writer from Adelaide, Australia. I've
(51:52):
got excuse to right in. I thought you and your
listeners might be interested in breaking news. After exhuming the
body last year, Professor Derek Abbott Boo, a researcher at
the University of Adelaide, has completed DNA matching. No, I
get what you mean. He didn't do like just good
detective work, unless you want to discount DNA is good
detective work. I mean, there's that show called The New
(52:14):
Detectives and it's all about this kind of thing. But
I don't know, all right, so we like the Old Detectives. Yeah,
in this in this particular case, I got no problem
with using DNA evidence to capture contemporary murderers. How about that, alright?
Or two exculpate then exonerate. Yeah, childs All of a sudden,
(52:34):
don't you know who that is? Oh? Jackie Child's from Sinville. Yeah,
totally all right? Great? Uh. Summer to man was Carl Webb,
an engineer and instrument maker from Melbourne who came to
Adelaide seeking a reconnection with his estranged wife. The name
of the tie t Keene was his brother in law.
(52:56):
The book of Persian poetry still a mystery. So you
got that going for you. That's good. Uh, And thanks
for the show. And that is from Rafe and many others.
But Rafe was the first person we got to so
or they got to us. Yeah, thanks a lot, Rafe
and everybody for sending that in. Um yeah, who knows. Well,
at least the Tamim shoot part is still a mystery. Okay, Yeah,
(53:17):
that's right. Well, if you want to get in touch
with us like Rafe did and kind of bring us
down at me at least, you can do that via email.
Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
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