Why mariachi music matters to some people
HERE comes a troupe of mariachis, trying and failing to creep stealthily up the walk to a little house in a lost corner of Dumfries, Virginia. It’s a quarter past midnight and 10 degrees. Forgive them for being an hour late - they’ve` been speeding from one gig to another all evening.
Their mere arrival makes the neighbourhood begin to seem not quite so frozen and silent. Is it the bravura of the tailored jackets, big- shouldered and so white they almost glow in the gloom? The sparkle and jangle of the silver-buttoned ornaments that run up the hems of their tight black pants? The gleam of their patent-leather boots?
They tune their instruments on the fly as they reach the house. Pum pum, goes the guitarrón searching for its bass tone. Shhhhhhhhhh, says Antonio Celis, coming out to greet them. He wants to preserve the element of surprise until the last minute for his sister’s birthday party. Just inside the front room, Celis whispers his request for the first song. “Listo!” say the mariachis: Ready!
Maria Reyna Celis, who just turned 46, hears them before she sees them: A merry trumpet blast announces the melody, filling the house and probably penetrating the dreams of neighbours. The other instruments join in, and the mariachis play while marching down the stairs to the basement where the party is in swing. Maria grew up in the Mexican state of Jalisco, but for 25 years she has lived in the United States, where she works construction and has raised four children. For her, she says, this music has never lost its power to
Scenes like this play out all over the Washington area on weekends, and not just in Latino homes. For some time, mariachis have been the life of many D.C. parties.
conjure the past and relieve the stress of life in America.
The first song ,“EnTuDía” (“In Your Day”), is more than 60 years old. Just a memory has remained Of the childhood that finally passed Let’s celebrate your happy day Your friends, relatives and I Maria and Antonio dance a two- step together, and soon almost everyone is dancing. “How we love you, Reyna!” the friends and family from three generations chant in Spanish. The concrete floor and walls are painted white and decorated with balloons. Chairs for a few dozen guests are pulled back along three walls, while the five musicians stand along the fourth in a classic mariachi lineup: Trumpet, violin, guitar, guitarrón (a six- string bass shaped like a fat guitar) and vihuela (a five- string small guitar). The musicians share lead vocal duties and also sing as a chorus. The crowd requests tunes from deep within the bottomless well of mariachi songs - “Guadalajara,” “Caminos de Michoacán,” “Como Mexico No Hay Dos” - and know them well enough to belt out every lyric. Scenes like this play out all over the Washington area on weekends, and not just in Latino homes. For some time, mariachis have been the life of many D.C. parties. The late Senator Edward Kennedy, for instance, used to invite mariachis to gatherings, where he would sing “! Ay, Jalisco, No Te Rajes!” and tell stories of his brother Bobby and the farmworkers.
On this Saturday night, I’m following Mariachi Nacional de D.C., led by Pepe Gomez, 34, one of the busiest mariachis in town.
That’s him with the cropped hair and dimpled cheeks, grinning with unfeigned ecstasy as he sings “El Mariachi Loco” and frantically strums his vihuela. Tonight he and his colleagues will log 200 miles crisscrossing the area to five gigs, and that’s considered a slow night in the fallow season between New Year’s Eve and Cinco de Mayo. As we make the rounds, I can’t help thinking how, for these gatherings of Latinos, more than music is in the air. Earlier on this Saturday, as the mariachis were pulling out their suits, President Trump returned to the subject of his wall that Mexico supposedly will pay for.