How mariachi band won Alice Cooper’s contest
As a trumpet player for a mariachi band, Fidel Amador saw his chances of doing well in Alice Cooper’s Proof is in the Pudding contest last year as “not very high, to be honest,” he says, with a laugh.
“It was kind of a shot in the dark.” His bandmate Desiree Figueroa, who plays violin and sings, “was a little bit skeptical,” she says, “because I assumed everyone in the competition would be rock bands performing rock music. And we didn’t really know any of that.”
But a friend of their manager had convinced him that it would be “awesome” if they could infiltrate that world and boldly go where no mariachi had gone before.
So Mariachi Juvenil de mi Tierra “decided to give it a try,” Amador says.
They’d done their share of mariachi competitions prior to the Proof is in the Pudding contest.
But despite the fact that they were now competing against artists from a wide array of rock-related genres, their approach was not that different than the way they’d gone about those other competitions.
“We wanted to showcase our talent, so we wanted to play songs that would be challenging for us to show our skill,” Amador says.
“And we wanted to choose songs that are high in energy and that the crowd would love from a genre of music that they’ve maybe never heard before.”
A winning strategy
That proved a winning strategy with Mariachi Juvenil de mi Tierra advancing to the final round at the Van Buren, where they won the whole thing with a rousing performance in their matching charro outfits.
“As we started to advance more and more in the competition, we started to realize that we really had a shot,” Figueroa recalls. “And I think we did really well in the final round. We brought it all that night.”
As confident as Figueroa and her bandmates were that they done their best that night at the Van Buren, they were still “in disbelief,” says Amador, when the announcer said they’d won it all.
“I really didn’t think we would win,” he admits, with a laugh.
Hillary Clara, a violinist who also sings, had gone so far as to prepare the younger members of the group for the defeat she thought was coming. The nine performers who took the stage that night are now between the ages of 15 and 23.
“I told them, ‘Yes, we’re in this competition. Give it your all and enjoy. There are other musicians enjoying our performance. But it’s OK. If we don’t win, don’t get discouraged. We are just here to show what we have.”
Alice Cooper himself was thrilled to see them win it all.
“Because it showed that it had nothing to do with ‘It’s gotta be rock, it’s gotta be cool, it’s gotta be this, it’s gotta be that,’” he says. “It really was ‘Who was the best at what they did?’ And they were the best at what they did. I mean, they were really top of the line.”
What they brought to Proof is in the Pudding
Amador credits the win to the lively energy of mariachi music. The talent with which they put that energy across wasn’t lost on the judges. And they practiced really hard.
“We knew the music,” guitarron player Carlos Olalde says. “We wrote it down. We texted each other to make sure everyone knew what they were doing.”
That extends from the music itself to the presentation of it.
Guitarist Omar Hernandez says, “We worked a lot on our overall appearance on stage, not being a statue but kind of loosening up a little bit, showing a happy expression.”
Playing Alice Cooper’s Christmas Pudding
Among the prizes was the chance to open Alice Cooper’s annual Christmas Pudding concert at the Celebrity Theatre, showing the audience “something a little bit different” in the bargain, as Hernandez puts it.
That night was “amazing,” Amador says. “I will remember it probably for the rest of my life, being able to share a stage with some of the biggest names in history. Rob Halford. Alice Cooper. Slash was a big one.”
Meeting the man of the hour, Alice Cooper, Amador recalls, was “awesome,” even if he didn’t that much about him going in. He learned, though, studying his videos on YouTube as his band continued to advance, and developed an appreciation for his music.
It’s very different than what Mariachi Juvenil de mi Tierra are doing, of course. “But what I like about music,” Amador says, “is that no matter which genre, it’s the soul that’s always there. He’s expressing his soul and I feel like that’s what we’re doing as well.”