Welcome to the October Mariachi Newsletter

Dear Mariachi Educator, 

MENC would like to wish you a productive 2008–2009 school year!

Every month, we will provide you with articles and other resources for your mariachi classroom. In the coming months, the articles will focus on mariachi performances, so you can share with your students the cultural significance and application of the music. For articles on mariachi pedagogy and getting the year started, visit the Mariachi Newsletter Archive.

Please visit www.menc.org/mariachi often for updated curricula, resource listings, and professional development opportunities. A mariachi mentor will be available through May on the Orchestra Forum.

MENC Mariachi Staff

17th San Jose Mariachi and Latin Music Festival Mariachi Education Workshops

By Mack Ruiz

In late September, San Jose Mariachi and Latin Music Festival, formerly known as the San Jose International Mariachi Conference, celebrated seventeen years of delivering mariachi and Mexican dance workshops to participants from the San Jose and surrounding Bay area. Also attending this year were students from parts of southern California and Arizona.

The San Jose mariachi music workshops are structured and taught every year by the members of Mariachi Cobre of Walt Disney with members of the San Jose-based Mariachi Azteca.

This four-day program is designed for mariachi students of all ages. It delivers instruction at the basic, proficient, and advanced levels in accordance with the MENC National Standards for Music Education.

The core classes delivered instruction and guidance with instruments of the mariachi ensemble, including violin, trumpet, guitarrón, vihuela, guitar, and voice. In addition, specialty workshops offered ensemble techniques and mariachi history.

Core Classes

This year, the festival workshops offered six musical selections arranged by Steve Carrillo of Mariachi Cobre. The song list included

  •  Los Caballitos
  •  Camino de Guanajuato
  •  Las Abajeñas
  •  Serenata Huasteca
  •  Yo Creo Que es Tiempo
  •  Crucifijo de Piedra

The goal of the core class was to teach these musical treasures to students through systematic guidance with certain musical rudiments. Therefore, all students received a work booklet containing musical manuscripts of each song. The songs were accompanied by a journal to guide the student through the learning process. This allowed students to remain active in scribing notes and writing answers to questions. Among the topics were key signatures, time signatures, musical terms, symbols, and proper left hand chord positioning for guitar and vihuela. In addition to the journal, each student received a personal copy of Sandy Feldstein’s Practical Theory Complete: A Self-Instructional Music Theory Course. This valuable text was used in conjunction with class activities as a reference text. Last but certainly not least, each instructor used an audio CD containing the festival song list. The core workshops were truly a multi-conceptual learning experience. The activities were inviting to students while always keeping them on their toes. 

Mariachi History Class

On the first day of the workshop, guest instructor Dr. William Gradante delivered a captivating aural and pictorial presentation on the legendary José Alfredo Jiménez and the Canción Ranchera. Through the generations, mariachi students and enthusiasts have remained captivated by the songs of this beloved singer and composer. The presentation connected students with a personal and historical perspective of the legend and his lyrics. Students gained an understanding of José Alfredo Jiménez from his birth in 1926 to his young adulthood as a professional soccer player and, later his professional performing career. Mariachi Cobre music arranger Steve Carrillo collaborated with Dr. Gradante before the festival to incorporate two Jose Alfredo Jiménez songs into the list: “Camino de Guanajuato” and “Serenata Huasteca.” During his presentation, Gradante showed an illustration that outlined the actual road or “Camino de Guanajuato” as it related to the lyrics in the song. All mariachi students attended the history class in four one-hour sessions.

Music Ensemble Techniques Session

Mariachi Cobre is an essential part of the curriculum and offers educational outreach through the Ensemble Technique Session.

The ability to take musical direction from section leaders and focal points within the ensemble is vital to a successful performance. In the orchestral genre, the conductor communicates musical directives to the principals of the sections with the use of a baton. The mariachi ensemble shares similar characteristics, but like chamber music, the mariachi ensemble must operate without a conductor. The use of body movements, eye contact, facial gestures, and breathing are essential elements of musical communication.

Through this workshop presentation, students at the San Jose Mariachi Workshops observed firsthand how Mariachi Cobre implements the use of focal points within the sections of the mariachi ensemble. Cobre members demonstrated several instrumental and vocal examples of the utilization of these points to achieve accuracy in musical performance. Steve Carrillo, Musical Director of Mariachi Cobre, offered practical methods for cueing the ensemble, particularly at the beginnings and ends of phrases. He emphasized the concept, “the ensemble that breathes together, plays together.” The band offered various musical examples that included violinist Antonio Hernández’s cue in the popular bolero, “Si Nos Dejan.”

This song enters on beat one of a 4/4-bolero measure. It may be cued by counting or tapping three quarter notes followed by a quarter note breath, coupled with placing the bow in a circular motion on the string and using the scroll of the violin to give an angular downbeat. Steve mentioned the importance of cueing in the spirit of the song to solicit the best response from musicians.

All students at this year’s San Jose Mariachi and Latin Music Festival were offered valuable performance opportunities. The Student Showcase on September 25th at the Theatre on San Pedro Square featured student workshop vocalists and mariachi groups. This opportunity allowed students to perform before an audience of peers, family, and community.

In addition to the Student Showcase, all students performed at the Gala Concert held at the San Jose State Events Center. This wonderful opportunity allowed students to perform selected workshop songs in an arena-style concert with Mariachi Cobre and a large cast of Ballet Folklórico dance students.

The theme of the concert celebrated three women pioneers of mariachi: Lucha Reyes, Amalia Mendoza, and Lola Beltrán. Their styles and artistry captivated and inspired millions throughout the years, including recording artists Linda Ronstadt, Lila Downs, and Aída Cuevas, who each sang tributes to these three “Divas of Yesterday” with songs like “Cucurrucucú Paloma,” “Amarga Navidad,” and “Paloma Querida.”

For more information, visit www.sanjosemariachifestival.com.

Lucha Reyes, “La Inmortal”

By William J. Gradante, PhD

My role at the 17th San Jose Mariachi and Latin Music Festival was to present a symposium which would explore the historical significance of three pioneers of mariachi music history. They are linked historically and culturally in that,

  •  they have been and will forever be associated with the canción ranchera,
  •  they figured among the most beloved, respected, and influential vocalists of their respective eras, and
  •  they are deeply deserving of the honor accorded them by this year’s festival, in that they truly were pioneras, female pioneers in the performance of mariachi music: Lucha Reyes, Lola Beltrán, and Amalia Mendoza.

My presentation on Wednesday morning, September 24, included biographical background information illuminating the careers of each of these unforgettable artists, including specific canciones rancheras they made famous; the songwriters who provided their respective repertoires; and the mariachi ensembles, trios, duets, solo vocalists, and movie actors with whom they associated. Here, I will focus my attention on the individual whose life I find most compelling not only because she came first, blazing the trail for her companions to follow, or because her career is such a study in contrasts, from insurmountable highs to abysmal low, but because so much mystery and mythologizing has surrounded her career. As a result, the pages which follow might very easily be rewritten utilizing an entirely different set of dates, locations, and apocryphal events, depending upon which sources one chooses to deem most logical or believable.

Lucha Reyes has been called “la Reina de los Mariachis” (“The Queen of the Mariachis”), “la Mejor Exponente de la Canción Mexicana” (“The Greatest Practitioner of the Mexican Canción,”) and “la intérprete más auténtica de la verdadera canción mexicana” (“the most authentic performer of the true Mexican canción”). When I was in Guadalajara with mariachi scholars Jesús Jáuregui and Arturo Chamorro — along with the venerable Ignacio Orozco, the veritable “walking encyclopedia” of mariachi lore — it was repeatedly made clear to me that if I wanted to experience the true essence of la canción mexicana and the canción ranchera, I had to begin by immersing myself in the music of “La Inmortal,” Lucha Reyes.

The Legend Begins

The parents of Lucha Reyes, Florentino Reyes Guzmán and Victoria Aceves Orozco, were campesinos (country folk, peasants) transplanted into Guadalajara and struggling to survive the crushing poverty of the barrio. Her mother’s first child, Manuel, was born in 1900. One tragic night, her husband, a professional gallero (a trainer and breeder of fighting roosters) was shot to death in the palenque (cockfight arena).

Struggling alone to support herself and her young son, Victoria worked both as a waitress in a cantina and in a small embroidery workshop. The owner, Miguel Angel Flores Muñoz, impregnated Victoria, and immediately abandoned her and the child. Born on May 23, 1906, the baby girl was named María de la Luz Flores Aceves. (She was not, as the legends sometimes claim, actually the daughter of the famous general of the Mexican Revolution, Angel Flores.)

At the age of four, she contracted typhus. She survived, but she was left “afónica” (aphonic, mute) for over a year. In 1911, when María de la Luz was five years old, the struggling little family moved to an impoverished neighborhood in Mexico City. The feisty and highly emotional little girl quickly learned to defend herself with her fists, as she was the constant victim of teasing and other abuse from neighborhood kids who called her “La Muda,” the “Mute.” One story relates that she became upset by another loud argument between her mother and older brother. She erupted in a prodigious scream, resulting in the unexpected return of her voice. She then took to singing almost constantly and was asked to leave school permanently because she refused to pay attention to her studies, wanting only to develop her singing voice.

Sister Teresa de Jesús gave her private music lessons and put her into the parish choir. She began performing in public as both “Luz Reyes” and “Elvira Reyes,” taking on that of her brother. By the age of 13 her operatic soprano voice was heard regularly in the “carpas” (outdoor tent shows) in the Plazuela de San Sebastián by notable artists such as Los Hermanos Acevedo, Amelia Willhelmy, and tenor José Limón.

At the age of 14, she moved to Los Angeles, California. Her gifts as a lyric soprano were taken seriously. She earned great critical acclaim for her performances in the context of both the operetta and the zarzuela, the popular Spanish musical theater genre. She missed Mexico enormously and decided to return home in spite of the surprising success. By 1921, she became known for her rendition of the canción mexicana “Un Viejo Amor,” along with her performances in zarzuelas. She was ecstatic when Esperanza Iris, Mexico City’s leading exponent of the zarzuela, invited her to perform in her theater.

In 1925 she sang jazz under the stage name “Lucianne Duvasell” with the recently arrived French theatrical company called "El Bataclán de París" (“Parisian Burlesque”).

The following year, she made her first recordings of canciones mexicanas such as “Un Viejo Amor” (“An Old Love,” by Alfonso Esparza Oteo), “La Negra Noche” (“The Dark Night,” by Emilio D. Uranga), and “¿Dónde Estás, Corazón?” (“Where Are You, My Love?” by Luis Martínez Serrano).

Vocal duets and trios became wildly popular in contemporary popular music. José “Pepe” Campillo introduced Luz to the sisters Blanca, Sara, and Ofelia Ascencio to form the Trio Reyes-Ascencio, performing at the Teatro Lírico with Luz Reyes as primera voz. Although the group enjoyed almost immediate success, Luz suffered from profound depression. In need of a changege of scenery, she decided to make a second trip to Los Angeles in 1927. She was replaced in the Trio Reyes-Ascencio by Julia Garnica, with Pepe Campillo re-naming the group the “Trio Garnica-Ascencio.”

Both Luz and her traveling companion, Nancy Torres, hoped for careers in Hollywood movies, but the producers of the had no use for Luz. It was suggested that her strong resemblance to American starlet Myriam Hopkins prevented her breakthrough. Frank Fouce contracted Luz, and offered a weekly salary of $500. Her pay was eventually raised to $500 per day in addition to a percentage of the door! She also performed in various cabarets, films, and at radio stations. She married Gabriel Navarro, but alcoholism and physical abuse doomed the relationship to failure. She lost her newborn son a day or two after his birth, and was left unable to bear another child. There was also talk of an abortion. Recovering from the physical perspective, she made a brief tour of the United States before returning to Mexico in 1929.

Upon her return, she signed a lucrative contract with the radio station XEW. In 1930 she was recruited into a touring musical review entitled “El Cuadro Folclórico del Profesor Juan N. Torreblanca,” (the “Folkloric Troupe of Professor Juan N. Torreblanca,” alternatively known as “La Típica de Juan N. Torreblanca”) with which she traveled to Central Europe. The post-World War I European audiences were not welcoming, and the company disbanded.

In a manner frighteningly reminiscent of her childhood trauma, Luz, at this crucial moment, suffered a serious aphonia, leaving her unable to sing for over a year. Numerous physicians were unable to pinpoint the reason for the disappearance of her once-famous voice. Some believed it was connected with her prolonged exposure to the raw, cold, German winter. Others pointed to her already excessive drinking habit. The final recommendation was total rest for her voice, with no guarantee a return to normalcy. Wandering aimlessly across Spain, she attempted to throw herself from an upstairs hotel window, but was rescued at the last moment by a traveling companion.

She returned to Mexico where her voice gradually returned, but she was no longer able to perform in her former soprano tessitura. Luz was suddenly a contralto! She was relieved to discover that she had a rather wide vocal range. Her “new” voice, however, was characterized by a huskiness or hoarse quality that perfectly matched her new image as the tough, independent woman, almost a “throwback” to the rifle-brandishing soldadera (female soldier) of the Mexican Revolution.

Luz would become identified with this tough, heroic soldadera persona, and generally performed in the long, full shirts, embroidered blouses, and be-ribboned braids typically associated “rancho.” She redirected her career to the performance of “la canción ranchera.” “Lucha Reyes” was born!

The first performance of Lucha Reyes as a “folclórica” took place in 1932 at the Teatro Politeama, when she performed three songs by Agustín Lara. She openly exuded a sexuality coupled with the independence and strength of a self-reliant soldadera. She was in the process of casting the mold for all future female ranchera singers. Her use of alcohol along with the mythologizing tendencies of the Mexico City press helped her become legendary. She was known to court interviews with members of the press, only to arrive too intoxicated to speak coherently or not to arrive at all. She would drink tequila with her interviewers until they were too intoxicated to perform their jobs as reporters. Lucha delighted in mixing half-truths with outright lies and deliberate misdirection. She became a master manipulator of the Mexico City press and contributed willingly to the process of the mythologizing of her own persona.

At the Teatro Trianon, she performed with Margarita Del Río as “El Dueto Reyes-Del Río.” In 1933 Felipe Enríquez, Lucha, and her faithful partner, guitarist/accompanist José “Pepe” Gutiérrez, formed first “El Trio México Lindo,” and then, when Felipe left, “El Dueto Los Trovadores Tapatíos.” Lucha debuted Pepe Guízar’s “Guadalajara” in 1937 and became permanently associated with this song, along with certain others, such as Chucho Monge’s “La Feria de las Flores” and “La Tequilera,” written expressly for her by Alfredo D’Orsay. Lucha made her cinematic debut in the movie La Tierra del Mariachi in 1935. She later appeared in Los Dorados de Villa (1939), Ay, Jalisco no te Rajes (with Jorge Negrete, 1941), and Flor Silvestre (1943). Her participation was generally limited to intervenciones musicales, brief appearances, generally as a soldadera or a cantina singer, a cancionera. A list of some of the musical selections traditionally associated with Lucha Reyes is presented below:

• El Herradero  -  Pedro Galindo
• ¡Ay, Jalisco No Te Rajes!  -  Manuel Esperón / Ernesto Cortázar
• Traigo un Amor  -  Manuel Esperón / Ernesto Cortázar
• Canción Mexicana  -  Lalo Guerrero
• La Mensa  -  Fidel A.Vista
• Por un Amor  -  Gilberto Parra
• El Juan  -  Alfredo D’Orsay
• La Tequilera  -  Alfredo D’Orsay
• La Mujer Ladina  -  Dr. Juan José Espinosa
• La Panchita  -  Joaquín Pardavé
• Ya No  -  Felipe Bermejo
• Los Tarzanes  -  Severiano Briseño
• La Feria de las Flores  -  Chucho Monge
• Guadalajara  -  José “Pepe” Guízar
• La Adelita  -  canción revolucionaria
• El Corrido Villista  -  Juan S. Garrido

In 1937 Lucha married the important Mexico City impresario Félix Martín “El Negro” Cervantes, believed by most to have been the love of her life. Their tempestuous romance was a constant source of both emotional pain and artistic inspiration for Lucha, as well as raw material for the tabloid journalists. In 1940 she performed both in Cuba and for President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House. Two years later she performed with a group of international artists at the grand send-off of a number of American troops heading off to the World War II battlefields of Western Europe. She became well known for her fundraising efforts for the underprivileged and was a friend and associate of painters Dr Atl, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera, as well as actor and director Felipe “Indio” Fernández. She was in the prime of her second career.

Lucha Reyes died at half past two on the morning of June 24, 1944, after being admitted to the Red Cross Hospital at five the previous afternoon. Attending physicians indicated that she had ingested twenty-five Nembutal (barbiturates) tablets which, in conjunction with a great deal of tequila, proved a fatal combination. Her body was also severely bruised -- not surprising, considering that her current, unhappy, romance had been with pilot Antonio Vega Medina, who reportedly beat her frequently.

She was 38 years old.

Some say her depression sprang from her bitter divorce some three years earlier from “El Negro,” who frequently complained about her alcoholism. Others claim that she knew that she was dying from stomach cancer. Her brother Manuel lived a simple life as a bus driver and associated with Lucha only infrequently. His daughter, on the other hand, was her constant companion, dressing her backstage and washing, ironing, and generally supervising her theatrical wardrobe. Among those present at her funeral were comic actor Cantinflas, singer Amalia Mendoza, and the members of the “Trio Tariácuri.” Her mother, who lived to the age of 85, did not attend.

Mariachi News & Events

Saturday, October 18, 7:30 pm, Pasadena Civic Auditorium: Mariachi Champaña Nevín will perform the Concerto for Mariachi and Orchestra "Pasión Mexicana" with the Pasadena Symphony, Jorge Mester conducting. The rest of the concert features Chavez's Sinfonia India, Revueltas' Noche de los Mayas, and Moncayo's Huapango Get your tickets here.

Dia de los Muertos - A Mexican Day of the Dead Celebration
Come celebrate the lives of Mexico's musical icons with us, including Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Lucha Reyes, Lola Beltran, Javier Solis, Jose Alfredo Jimenez, Agustin Lara and others: Saturday, November 1, 7:30 pm, California Theater in San Bernardino. Visit http://sinfoniamexicana.com/ for more information.

¡Celebramos el Dia de los Muertos!

Sunday, November 2, 7:30pm, Día de los Muertos Concert, Copley Symphony Hall in San Diego. Visit www.sandiegosymphony.com for more information and tickets.

Spring 2009 Adjudication Seminars -- Three-day seminars to develop and improve effective music adjudication skills will be held March 26–28 and April 23–25, 2009, at Walt Disney World in Florida. Under the guidance of a world class music adjudicator, seminar attendees will learn adjudication essentials, observe an adjudication panel in action, learn the effective use of adjudication forms, observe live onstage clinics, listen to judges as they tape group comments, and take part in group discussions with Festival judges. These seminars are being offered through the combined efforts of MENC and NFHS, and are in cooperation with Disney Performing Arts Programs. More information and registration can be found online on MENC's NMAC page.

Remember, if you have a music education question or would like professional advice, please contact our Mentors!

This month’s featured mentors are

• Band – Daniel Kopcha
• General Music – Eileen Benedict
• Chorus – Susan Young
• Orchestra – Joyce Prichard
• Mariachi – Katherine "Kitty" Lopez
• Jazz – Dean Sorenson
• Guitar – Shelley Brobst