The Queens
No ‘potbellied machos’ for us; meet the women of mariachi
“My teacher told me I couldn’t play guitarrón because it was too heavy and that it would bother my stomach and if I ever planned to have kids in the future … some really bullshit excuse,” Carmen Hernandez says in the documentary Compañeras.
The film, which aired on KCET in April, exposed the untold story of Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles, one of the first all-female American mariachi ensembles. Struggling to pursue a stereotypically male profession while being mothers and wives, these women prove just how much the genre’s grown in L.A.
“When you look at the trumpet and the guitarrón, those are male instruments right there. You’re not encouraged to learn those when you’re just coming up,” her bandmate Karla Tovar agrees.
Laura Sobrino, 53, was one of the first female mariachi musicians in the late ’70s – and the former director of Mariachi Reyna. Born and raised in Watsonville, it wasn’t until she took a leave from her music studies at UC Santa Cruz to live with family in Mexico City that she started to dig deeper into her roots – or even learn Spanish. When she returned home a year later, Dr. David Kilpatrick Martín had developed an ethnomusicology (world music) program which would change her life forever; she received a B.A. with emphasis on Mexican folk music and today instructs mariachi ensembles at UC Riverside, East L.A., Rio Hondo and Chaffey colleges.
Sobrino says many people have an outdated understanding of mariachi music. “I’ve been to far too many TV commercial auditions in L.A. and asked why I was there because the call was for ‘the fat, sloppy, big-bellied mustached mariachi,’” she vents.
Others take for granted the string and horn sounds that float out of Mexican restaurants throughout Los Angeles at dinnertime like the mouth-watering smell of barbequed smoke from burger joint exhaust fans. And although it’s a staple at weddings, birthday parties and quinceañeras, it’s easy to forget that mariachi combined the use of the indigenous people of Mexico’s rattles, reed and clay flutes and conch-shell horns with that of the mestizo (mixed) and Spanish imports. The genre was born in a rural town in Jalisco, Mexico, and migrated to L.A. in the late ’50s, with musicians playing at onetime Latino talent hotspot the Million Dollar Theatre (which recently reopened) and El Mercado, a three-story Mexican market and restaurant located across the street from Evergreen Cemetery in East L.A. Groups were mostly Mexican-born males, but by the late ’70s, L.A. had its first all
female mariachi group, Mariachi Las Generalas.
Reyna founder and Cielito Lindo restaurant owner (where Reyna perform every Tuesday night) Jóse Hernandez (whose own Sol de México – another O.G. ensemble – recorded with Selena) jokes that in 1981 when Linda Ronstadt said she was Mexican-American, a lot of Mexican musicians came out of the closet. Hernandez opened South El Monte’s Mariachi Heritage Society in 1991, an organization that employs qualified mariachi instructors to teach music education to some 800 children throughout L.A.
“We had 30 kids sign up the first year, and they were all little girls,” Hernandez says.
On the Eastside, mariachi music is a form of survival. Musicians hustle everyday for work, roaming the streets in full trajes de charro (folkloric suits) and carrying their money-makers in the palm of their hands—the violin, vihuela (a small, high-pitched, round-backed five string guitar), guitarrón (a large-bodied, four-string bass guitar), guitar, harp or trumpet. The most popular meeting place is Mariachi Plaza, located at the corner of East First Street and Boyle Avenue in Boyle Heights, but due to construction of Metro Gold Line’s Eastside Extension, work has become scarce. Torn-up streets are hard to navigate by car, pushing mariachis out and forcing many to take on more aggressive approaches. Several musicians rushed my car the other day to hand me their business cards and ask if I had any special events coming up.
For other musicians, gigs are steadier. At the newly reopened La Fonda on Wilshire – where back in 1969 original owner Natividad “Nati” Cano made history by opening the first restaurant in the country to incorporate live mariachi music and thus popularizing his Los Camperos group – new in-house ensemble Mariachi Monumental de America perform three shows a night. The handsome dozen include veteran players, trumpeter Christian Quintero (a recent Bell Gardens High School graduate) and 22-year-old Hollywood-born guitarist/vocalist Stephany Amaro, who didn’t grow up listening to mariachi (she was lead guitarist in a rock band with her sister called the Fresas), but fell in love with it and has performed with Mariachi Divas and serenaded Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell with Alma de Mi Tierra.
“I’ve run the gamut of female groups, from Mariachi Las Adelitas to Ellas Son, but have played mostly with male groups and soaked up as much information as I could,” Amaro says. At 19, Jesus Hernandez of Sol De Mexico gave her private lessons during his breaks performing at Cielito Lindo. And although she was way more experienced than her competition at a Mariachi Reyna audition a couple years ago, she wasn’t chosen because she simply intimidated the other members. Such are the obstacles that arise when trying to get jumped into a close-knit band.
A former student of Plaza De La Raza’s mariachi voice class, Carlita Kristian, 18, remembers being one of only four young women taking the intimate class. “At first I was really nervous because my Spanish isn’t so good, but the instructor [Nelson Velasquez] spoke Spanglish so I could understand,” Kristian says. “I still sing ‘Cielto Lindo’ whenever my family asks me to.”
Truth be told, my pinche Spanish sucks too (I’m third generation Mexican-American; still no excuse), but when you’re open to music’s healing powers, lyrics creep right through you without any need for translation. Sones, rancheras, huapangos and boleros – the elements of mariachi – tell equally hopeful and depressing tales about love, work, death, politics and revolutionary heroes while serenatas (serenades) transport you to a dreamlike state faster than any Art Laboe oldie. Open your ears and get a kick out of lyrics like “I want a man, not a potbellied macho” (a Reyna exclusive) sung in Spanish. If you’re lucky, someone will be there to translate for you into English so you can laugh too.
Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles performs every Tuesday at Cielito Lindo in South El Monte. www.elcielitolindo.com; (626) 442-1254.
Mariachi Monumental de America performs Wed.-Sun. at La Fonda, 2501 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 380-5053.
Published: 04/30/2008
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