Though its precise origins are sketchy, mariachi emerged in northwestern Mexican state of Jalisco in the late 19th century, sung by musicians who traveled from village to village for saints days and fiestas. During the Mexican revolution mariachi soldiers played corridas to Pancho Villa and other heroes; afterward the rousing melodies incorporating indigenous rhythms became a patriotic symbol of Mexican nationhood.
Despite its prominence, including the “singing charro” movies and radio broadcasts of the 1930s, the genre was viewed as slightly declasse, its musicians as “human jukeboxes regurgitating whatever tune the customer requested,” in the words of Daniel Sheehy, acting director of the Smithsonian Latino Center and director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
It was in America, unexpectedly perhaps, that the image began to change. Almost 30 years ago the San Antonio conference, spawned by the Chicano movement, helped legitimize the musicians as marquee performers and inspire inclusion of mariachi in national music education. Today some 500 public schools offer mariachi classes along with choir and orchestra.
“It was a cultural and educational breakthrough, putting a new frame around an old music and Mexican culture on the main stage of American society,” Sheehy said.
Ronstadt used her stardom to raise the profile of Mexican music. Canciones de Mi Padre, released in 1987 and her first album of traditional mariachi music, became the biggest selling non-English album in US history at the time, with sales of more than 2 million copies. The next year it was adapted for a Broadway show, in which she appeared in full Mexican costume, complete with fake braids.
“She put us on center stage,” said Cano, 75, a national heritage fellow who recently performed with the mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman and the Mexico City Philharmonic in Los Angeles. “After Linda mariachis became popular in concert halls, not just at the cantinas and the pinata parties.”
Through the music of her father and grandfather, Ronstadt seemed finally to inhabit herself, like Peter Pan finding his shadow. On the radio the soulful melodies of traditional mariachi ensembles still lie under the radar, though individual artists accompanied by mariachi bands, like Vicente Fernandez, regularly top the Latin charts. For many Mexican-Americans, mariachi remains the emotional sound track of daily life, performed at baptisms, weddings, birthday parties, funerals.
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