MARIACHI GROUP
The mariachi is Mexico’s best-known folk-derived musical ensemble. The word ’mariachi,’ most likely of indigenous origin, denotes a type of ensemble as well as an individual member of such a group. Since the 1950s, the standard mariachi has consisted of two trumpets, three to six violins, a vihuela, a classical guitar and a guitarrón; all players usually sing. A mariachi can perform alone or accompany one or more vocalists. Its instrumentation allows for great versatility, and contemporary mariachis perform a wide variety of national, international and popular genres. Mariachis are most common in Mexico and the southwestern United States, but can be found throughout the Americas and on other continents as well.
Top mariachis are highly organized, well rehearsed, elegantly uniformed show groups of 11 or more musicians, each of whom has extensive musical training. Such ensembles make recordings, perform frequently on mass media, give concerts and accompany renowned vocalists. On the opposite end of the spectrum are poorly uniformed groups of seven or fewer musicians with little or no formal training, who may never have played together before, and who often wander from bar to bar, offering their services. Most mariachi groups fall somewhere between these two extremes. Many groups stand around public squares or plazas, waiting to be hired. Mariachis of all levels may perform regularly at a restaurant, bar or nightclub, and virtually all play contracted engagements such as parties and weddings. Services are normally paid for by the hour or by the song. Visitors to Mexico frequently assume a mariachi is playing only for tips, but this is almost never the case.
A mariachi is expected to play songs upon request, and a typical group might have well over a thousand selections in its working repertoire. Pieces are traditionally learned by ear and committed to memory; little written mariachi music is available. Even though it is often learned directly from other musicians, almost the entire contemporary mariachi repertoire can be traced to arrangements found on popular recordings.
The formal mariachi uniform -- with its tightly fitting ornamented pants, short jacket, embroidered belt, pointed boots, wide bow tie and sombrero is a gala version of the traje de charro (Mexican horseman’s attire), that was borrowed from Mexico’s equestrian tradition.
History
String bands comprised of members of the violin, harp and guitar families have been popular in rural Mexico from the colonial era to the present. Regional variants of these ensembles that evolved in Jalisco and the surrounding states of Central Western Mexico were the precursors of today’s mariachi. The contemporary mariachi, however, is an urban phenomenon that evolved mainly in Mexico City.
The earliest mariachi known to have visited Mexico City was that led by Justo Villa, which performed for President Porfirio Díaz in 1905, and two years later made the first phonograph records of mariachi music under the name Cuarteto Coculense. In the 1920s, the groups of Cirilo Marmolejo and Concho Andrade became the first mariachis to take up permanent residence in the nation’s capital. Both performed in Plaza Garibaldi, a downtown square that has since become the world’s center of mariachi activity. A variety of regional musical instruments were combined in Mexico City, and the most functional of these became standardized, while others fell into disuse. The resulting instrumentation, popularized through the media, was adopted almost universally.
Beginning in the 1930s, the mariachi became a kind of folkloric house orchestra for Mexico’s burgeoning radio, film and record industries, where its main role was that of accompanying popular ranchera (country style) vocalists. Mariachi Tapatío de José Marmolejo, formed in the mid-1930s, was the first stellar mariachi, and Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán has been considered Mexico’s leading mariachi since the mid-1940s. Other Mexican groups that were influential during the latter half of the twentieth century include mariachis México de Pepe Villa, Perla de Occidente, Los Mensajeros, Los Monarcas, Nuevo Tecalitlán, Oro y Plata, de América and Dos Mil (2000).
Mariachi Mass
Jean Marc Leclerc, a French-Canadian friar serving in Mexico, is credited with creating the first mariachi mass, in which he borrowed folk themes from different Latin American countries. Leclerc and Mariachi Hermanos Macías debuted the Misa Panamericana in Cuernavaca, Morelos, in 1966. It became immensely popular, and within a few years was performed by mariachis everywhere. Contemporary mariachis perform other masses and religious pieces as well, and mariachi mass has become a tradition in Catholic churches throughout Mexico and its diaspora.
Mariachi Music in the US
Mariachi music has also become a tradition in the southwestern United States, and Los Angeles has in many ways become to the United States what Mexico City is to Mexico as an urban mecca of mariachi music. Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano, formed in that city in 1961, was the country’s pioneer group in popularizing this music among non-Hispanics. Mariachi Uclatlán, founded that same year at the University of California at Los Angeles, pioneered the involvement of educational institutions in mariachi music, and today hundreds of US schools offer mariachi performance classes. Mariachi Cobre, founded in Tucson, Arizona in 1971, was the first prominent Mexican-American mariachi. Cobre and Los Camperos are traditionalists, whereas groups like Sol de México of Los Angeles embrace jazz and pop genres, and others like Campanas de América of San Antonio fuse Texas-Mexican and Caribbean styles with that of the mariachi.
Although mariachi music has always been a male-dominated art form, Mexico has had a number of all-female mariachi groups since the 1940s. Similar ensembles have existed in the United States since at least the 1970s and mariachis of mixed gender are becoming more common, particularly in the United States.
—Jonathan Clark
Bibliography
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Pearlman, Steven. 1988. ’Mariachi Music in Los Angeles.’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
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Sheehy, Daniel. 1997. ’Mexican Mariachi Music: Made in the U.S.A.’ In Musics of Multicultural America: A Study of Twelve Musical Communities, ed. Kip Lornell and Anne K. Rasmussen. New York: Schirmer Books, 131-54.
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Stevenson, Robert. 1952. Music in Mexico: A Historical Survey. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
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