by Kip Lornell
The mass media finally caught on to the mariachi revolution in the early 1930s when these ensembles appeared in films produced by the fledgling Mexican-based motion picture industry and began regular broadcasts on XEW. This clear-channel Mexico City radio station featured many forms of Mexican folk music to an audience throughout the country as well as into northern South America and the United States. This trend continued throughout the decade and was further amplified by the indigenous “cowboy” films that were so popular in Mexico and had their counterparts in the Republic “B” films that featured Tex Ritter, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and other silver screen cowboys. Some of them featured mariachi music, thus bringing this music to audiences throughout the country and, increasingly, to an audience that had relatives in the United States. By the outbreak of World War II, mariachi had become the type of music most closely identified with Mexico’s musical culture, and the trumpet had been established as the most prominent lead instrument in these ensembles.
These interactions of the popular media, nationalism, and its folk roots helped to reinforce the “folkness” of mariachi. For many Americans mariachi has gradually emerged as the quintessential form of Mexican music and, by extension, Mexican American music. Its folkness in the eyes of people in the United States who consume mariachi has been reinforced by three factors. First, the songs are sung in a foreign language and, therefore, seem more exotic. Second, the music is performed on instruments (the guitarron and vihuela) that resemble members of the guitar family but are ultimately unfamiliar to most of the people eating at a Mexican restaurant in Duluth, Minnesota, or Altoona, Pennsylvania, that may have hired a mariachi to entertain their patrons. And finally, the outfits worn by the musicians probably strike many people as “native.”
Such commoditization has helped to sell mariachi to a wider audience than, for example, that of conjunto music. This and other forms of Mexican American styles may be more closely allied with their folk roots, but none of them has been as widely disseminated as mariachi. While the grassroots support and interest in mariachi has been strong within the Chicano community, its association with things more urban, commercial, well ordered, and familiar has helped to move the interest in this music to a far broader geographical and ethnic series of communities. According to Sheehy, Silvestre Vargas epitomizes the ability of a musician to market mariachi and has led one of the best-known bands, Mariachi Vargas de Telcalitlan, since the 1950s. It is Vargas who can be heard on dozens of recordings, on soundtracks, and on live shows both in Mexico and the United States.
The culture of mariachi in the United States has altered greatly over the past several decades. By the middle 1970s this music was being taught in San Antonio, Texas, and soon thereafter in other Texas schools and in Arizona and California. These efforts were quickly followed by festivals that combined performance with master classes. Now mariachi is being taught in formal academic settings, from high school through the college level, and there are more than a dozen major festivals in the southwestern United States. Mariachi was recognized by colleges and universities a bit earlier (at UCLA in the middle 1960s) in programs in ethnomusicology.
Secondarily, mariachi has moved upscale in some other arenas. It has been the province of males and has most often been heard in cantinas (drinking establishments that largely cater to males of all ages), small restaurants, and other similar establishments. The movement occurred when larger restaurants highlighted mariachi ensembles on a stage to provide its patrons with a more formal show. It seems to have begun in Los Angeles and within a decade has moved to larger cities, such as Denver, Houston, and Tucson, with a major Hispanic presence.
In the minds of some of the musicians these two changes altered the musicians’ station, moving them to a higher social—and often economic—status. These changes in status and performance situations have opened mariachi to a somewhat more diverse audience and have also diversified its racial and gender makeup. A handful of European-Americans, including Mark Fogelquist and Daniel Sheehey, have moved from the academic ranks to become noted mariachi performers. Likewise women, most notably Rebecca Gonzales (a Chicana violin player), are now a small but growing part of the contemporary mariachi scene.
Native American Influences
It would be inaccurate and misleading to suggest that all styles of Mexican American music that are found near the border are the result of an Anglo-American and Mexican mix. Native Americans were part of the cultural landscape of the Southwest long before either Spanish or Anglo settlers arrived. Given the historical development and cross-fertilization that has characterized the region for several centuries, such creolization should not be surprising. These musical/cultural interactions represent a complex series of interactions with roots, in the music that accompanies matachines dances, back to medieval Spain.
Ethnomusicologist Brenda Romero notes that “the longest continuously Latino populated areas in the United States are Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, where music has always been an integral part of the daily life of the Hispanic population who traditionally describe themselves as Mejicanos” (Lornell and Rassmusen, eds., 1997, 156). The Native American population—mostly Pueblo—of this region has been living on this dry and rugged land for tens of thousands of years. This rich cultural mix has become even more complicated over the past 150 years, when most of the Anglos arrived in the Southwest, and has resulted in uniquely American genres, two of which—matachines and waila—are discussed here.
The fiddle tunes that accompany matachines dances provide one of the most interesting forms of Hispanic Indian musical forms. This style is associated with the Pueblo and Mejicanos citizens of northern New Mexico and has been part of the local expressive culture for centuries. The term “Mejicanos” is preferred by older Hispanic Americans (the younger ones usually prefer Chicano) living just north of the urbane small city of Santa Fe as well as farther south near Albuquerque. In these rural areas the Pueblo and Mejicanos have lived in close proximity for some three hundred years, often in stunning poverty, and the matachines performances are one result of this blend.
The matachines is more than music, for it combines music, dance, and ceremony that, ironically, evolved in Mexico as a way to proselytize Indians, though today it is associated with either saints or the Christ Child. The matachines has survived through scores of years and reflects the importance of renewal and faith through its preservation. American Indians frequently adopt ceremonies from other sources (mostly other tribes), especially those that are perceived to be powerful or effective. In this instance, however, this ritualized form was adopted from their Spanish neighbors and is largely performed as a pantomime while wearing masks and with musical accompaniment. It is a family and community event that is essentially closed to non-Pueblos and is most closely allied with New Year’s or Christmas when we are looking forward to the renewal offered by the new year.
Over the passage of many decades, the relationship between the Mejicanos and the Indians evolved. The Pueblos felt that it was critical to include the fiddles and the tunes played by their Hispanic neighbors as part of this ceremony, which celebrates a king’s spiritual victory. According to Romero the term matachines might be taken from an anachronistic word for a masked dance or with an Italian term referring to a jester or roving performer. The ceremony is accompanied by a guitarist and fiddler, who play one special melody with each of its discrete sections. The danza (the matachines complex itself, not a specific dance) spotlights four characters and between eight and twelve dancers.
In this part of the world among Pueblos “music is always sung and almost always paired with dance, an essential component of communal ceremonies. Dance helps to demonstrate the interdependence of man, nature, and the spiritual world” (Lornell and Rassmusen, eds., 1997, 160). The songs utilize both vocables and words and are typically sung in unison, which underscores the cooperative or community-oriented nature of Pueblo life. The old-style instrumental music, which is becoming increasingly rare,
is usually provided by a fiddle/guitar duet with strong roots in melodies found as long ago as the fourteenth century in Spain.
The twentieth-century matachines, then, is a blend of the Mejicanos and Pueblos of New Mexico. Despite this syncronicity that led to so much intertwining, the Mejicanos matachines and Pueblos matachines remain related but separate affairs. Though they live in close proximity and celebrate the matachines in similar ways, the Pueblo in particular zealously guard this ceremony. Because the matachines has implications beyond its religious (remember that the ceremony is held near Christmas) connotation, it has become integrated into their social structure. The San Juan Pueblos (who live near Albuquerque), the dance, and all of its parts are organized by the tribal authority, so that the whole complex of events has become the Indians’ social structure throughout the year.
Nonetheless, some Mejicanos—almost all of them musicians—participate in the Pueblo matachines. Few Pueblos today play the older guitar-accompanied fiddle tunes that are integral to their matachines danza. Much of the rest of the ceremony is more blended. The choreographed movement, for example, can be traced to Spanish sources, yet the costuming is unambiguously Indian. Even with all of this cross-cultural movement, Pueblo’s believe that this ceremony is authentic. Romero writes that “time and circumstances, as well as its ritual practice, have authenticated the ceremony. Most Pueblos are aware that the ceremony was brought by the Spanish-Mexicans but believe it is theirs now, incorporating into it various general ceremonial practices common to the more traditional Pueblo dance and adapting Spanish-Mexican practices in unique ways” (Lornell and Rassmusen, eds., 1997, 179). They are comfortable with the matachines and the ways in which the religious meanings are transmitted to other members of the community. Although someone from outside of the community can dissect the ceremony and point out the diverse elements that go into contemporary matachines, it serves its purpose as long as the Pueblo believe that it is a legitimate cultural expression.
Another syncretic form of Hispanic-Anglo-Native American folk music in the Southwest is generally known by the colorful name chicken scratch. Much contemporary chicken scratch, with its use of saxophone, accordion, and guitars, can be described as a highly regional and idiosyncratic version of country/western music crossed with a polka band. The fact is that this music has strong roots in the Southwest’s mix of Mexicans, Indians, and Anglos.
Although I’d heard of it, my initial encounter with chicken scratch occurred at the 1993 Festival of American Folklife—the annual event held on the Mall that is framed by the Smithsonian Institution, the Lincoln Memorial, and our nation’s Capitol. That summer’s annual event featured the “United States–Mexican Borderlands” and included foodways, crafts, and storytellers as well as music. I expected conjunto and mariachi but I thought that I’d wandered into the wrong festival when I heard what initially sounded (at a distance) like a Dutchmen polka band from central Minnesota! As I walked closer my error became clear—the rhythmic drive and instrumentation weren’t quite right. When I turned the corner, saw the band members, and heard the band switch from a polka to a rancherolike song sung in Spanish, then I realized what I’d stumbled upon. At last . . . live chicken scratch music.
Chicken scratch (or waila, as it is also often referred to) is most often performed by members of the Tohono O’odham Tribe, whose nation is situated in southern Arizona just to the west of Tucson. Like so much of the history of the Southwest, the Tohono O’odham were touched by the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries who worked with so many American Indians long before this area of the country was part of the United States. The Tohono O’odham were taught not only about the Catholic faith but were sometimes also instructed how to play violins, guitars, and other related stringed instruments. This facility to perform held ramifications for music in church and was translated to the secular realm, where Tohono O’odham musicians soon learned tunes that were utilized to accompany such European dances as the waltz, schottische, and (of course) polka. Small ensembles of Tohono O’odham musicians—most often playing guitar and fiddle—played for small events and local festivals as far away as Tucson and as early as the mid-1800s.
The instrumentation used to provide waila music changed very little until the late 1940s, when the influence of conjunto music altered this lineup. The guitars and fiddles were gradually augmented and often replaced by the standard norteno instrumentation of guitar, string bass, drums, button accordion, and, oftentimes, alto saxophone. The change reflects not only the influence of Mexican Americans on Indians but also the acculturation that is one of the hallmarks of the Southwest. Furthermore, the prominence of saxophones in today’s waila can be at least partially attributed to the boarding schools attended by so many Tohono O’odham youngsters beginning in the 1920s. Folklorist Jim Griffith observed that “during the 1960s most reservation villages had electricity, and electric instruments became practical. As a result, most [modern] waila bands used electric guitars and bass guitars, and accordion and saxophone players play into microphones” (Lornell and Rassmusen, eds., 1997, 193).
The context for contemporary waila, which is ultimately derived from a Spanish term, baile, meaning “social dance,” varies. It is heard at the wildly popular dances mostly held on the nation, and at weddings and birthday parties. But the most important context is the village feasts, which everyone from the youngest to the most elderly attend. “These feasts occur on the assigned day that a particular saint is venerated in the village. If possible, the priest will come by and say the mass in the morning. . . . After the mass and procession are over the feasting starts. . . . Traditional feast foods include shredded beef stew with red chile, beef and beef bones cooked with corn, squash, and other vegetables, pinto beans, potato salad, locally made flour tortillas and wheat bread that has been baked in a communal, outdoor oven, and Kool-aid, coffee, and cake” (Lornell and Rassmusen, eds., 1997, 197). Village feasts are important not only for their meaning to the Catholic population but also for the socialization that occurs on a nation that encompasses three million acres in which many of the people live in very small enclaves.
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MUSICAL EXAMPLE
Chicken scratch is a highly regionalized and creolized musical genre. It’s also very chameleonlike because it sometimes sounds like a midwestern polka band or, at other times, similar to older styles of fiddle music from northern Mexico. Southern Scratch falls into the former category, and it’s one of the most popular and active groups in southern Arizona. The group mostly performs for local community events, though they are occasionally asked to play for folk music festivals elsewhere in the United States. According to Jim Griffith, this schottische remains the most popular rhythm among Tohono O’odham dancers and “Madre Mia Chote” is one of the genre’s most popular tunes.
Title “Madre Mia Chote”
Performers Southern Scratch
Instruments Ron Joaquin, bass; Ben Jose, guitar; Rupert Vagaes, accordion; Fernando Joaquin, saxophone; Jose Velasco, Jr., drums
Length 3:20
Musical Characteristics
1. The song is in a major tonality.
2. The moderate tempo is perfect for dancing.
3. Its meter is duple with a rhythm similar to a polka.
4. The form is a simple ab with a c section inserted in the middle.
This selection is taken from Smithsonian Folkways 40418.
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The polka still dominates when waila is played. Lately the cumbia (a style that migrated from Columbia through the Caribbean) has augmented the waltz and mazurkas in breaking up the steady diet of polkas. The accordion and saxophone are the predominate lead instruments, and they often state the melody in unison while playing an eclectic set that might include an old-time fiddle tune followed by “Beer Barrel Polka” and the “Waltz You Saved for Me.” Despite the length of songs heard during a dance, waila musicians rarely take solos. The musicians usually restate the melody time and again until the dance is complete
d. In this respect it is much like the old-time dance music played by fiddle bands in the southeastern United States.
FLORIDA
The southern borderland between the United States and the Hispanic world does not end at the juncture where the Rio Bravo spills into the Gulf of Mexico. Florida, especially its southern third, bears the imprint of many years of Hispanic American culture. In the late fall of 1983 I was employed by the Florida Folklife Program and a fieldwork assignment took me to Ammockolee, Florida. A small town located between Tampa and Miami, Ammockolee’s economy is dominated by vegetable crops, such as lettuce and tomatoes, that end up on tables across the country during the winter. And the community contains a large number of Hispanic American (oftentimes of Mexican extraction) and some Haitian workers who live in enclaves in which Spanish is the predominate language, bodaga is the preferred name for the corner grocery store, and where the smell of fried corn tortillas fills the air. Although I have visited Indian reservations in the Southwest and logging towns in the northeastern corner of Maine where French is commonly spoken and few of the roads are paved, this rural and astonishingly impoverished section of Florida caused me to stop and reconfirm that I was in the United States. I wondered if I had not been magically conveyed to one of the nearby, small Hispanic Caribbean islands.
In a sense I had been transported to another part of the world. The cultural and economic connections between south Florida and the Caribbean, in particular, are quite strong and long-standing. But since the late 1950s the “face” of southern Florida has radically changed due largely to in-migration by several hundred thousand Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and smaller numbers of people from South America. In 2010 the greater Miami/Dade area was approximately 15 percent black American, 25 percent Anglo-American, and 60 percent Hispanic. What was once viewed as a winter resort town for snowbirds has been recast as a multicultural, sophisticated, sprawling metropolitan region that serves as one of the most efficacious cities in the United States. And the music, as well as other cultural attributes, of these recent transplants has arrived with them. Most of them have arrived recently enough that their musical language has had little chance to blend with the longer-standing Anglo- and African American traditions, but this process is inevitable and will only accelerate in the future.