Mariachi festival draws crowd, feeds community pride in Napa | Arts & Entertainment

Known as the “Pride of Tucson,” the students came from Mariachi Las Aguilitas de Davis Bilingual Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona, for their first performance in Napa. Their set was followed by Luther Burbank Center for the Arts Mariachi Cantares de Mi Tierra and Ballet Folklórico from Santa Rosa, along with Mariachi Garibaldi, from Southwestern College in Chula Vista south of San Diego.

Their heads raised proudly, the Mariachi Las Aguilitas students, donning matching embroidered uniforms, strummed on guitars and vihuelas, plucked harps and guitars, stomping their feet at various intervals. As they finished their set and took a bow, audience members cried out, “Otra! Otra! Otra!” — “Another! Another! Another!”

Moving up in years, the high school-aged Mariachi Cantares de Mi Tierra took to the stage, with the men wearing matching embroidered gray coats and fitted pants and the women in ankle-length dresses. A young male violinist and vocalist sang the lyrics to “El Tirador,” a song composed by Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán from the Mexican state of Jalisco. Its lyrics describe a hunter’s pursuit of birds and also serve as a metaphor for the pursuit and fleeting nature of love. 

The Ballet Folklórico joined the Mariachi Cantares de Mi Tierra on stage, with the dancers wearing red laced skirts and performing the faldeo, the rhythmic, graceful movement of their skirts in tandem with the mariachi songs.  

The festival ended with a melodic set from the maroon-clad Mariachi Garibaldi, a renowned group composed of adult performers that has toured in countries around the world, from Peru and Jordan to China and Russia. Many of its members have gone on to work professionally both nationally and internationally.  

Claudia Chavez, a Napa resident whose daughter performed with the Santa Rosa-based Ballet Folklórico, was happy to see the mariachi tradition grow in the region. 

“I really like it,” she said of the festival. “I think it’s really critical to the Napa Valley.”

Both mariachi music and folkloric dance have diverse expressions and histories, but are deeply integral to Mexican culture within the nation as well as in its diaspora. Mariachi songs have tugged on the heartstrings of generations of Mexicans, who have been drawn to lyrics that channel the most universal of expressions. 

“A lot of songs revolve around love stories,” said Jaime Valenzuela. “Good ones or bad ones.”

Valenzuela, the director of Mariachi Las Aguilitas, explained that nothing completes the mariachi music sound like its vocals — soulful, melodic and full of raw emotion. Mariachis will sing about love in all its forms, he said, from the unrequited and lost ones to the love that comes from pride in one’s Mexican roots.

Yet it is the instruments — guitarrón, vihuela, guitar, golpe, harp, trumpet and violins — that play an essential role in creating the “organized noise” of mariachi music, according to Valenzuela. 

The most distinct is the guitarrón. “That’s the bass, the heartbeat of the mariachi,” Valenzuela said.

The vihuela, meanwhile, works together with the guitarrón to keep the rhythm, he said. A small, high-pitched string instrument, the vihuela is considered a percussion rhythm instrument. The strumming pattern it creates is the sound that most people associate with mariachi.  

The trumpet, a newer instrument in the genre, adds the powerful, bright brass sound that many people associate with modern mariachi. 

Last but not least, according Valenzuela, is the role of the violin, which adds melodic lines and harmonies to the musical ensemble.

“You can have as many violins as you like and, by adding all kinds of harmony parts, you can make it sound like an orchestra,” he said. 

While its exact origins are not fully known, mariachi — which refers to both the musical genre itself, as well as an individual performer associated with it — is most strongly associated with the central-west Mexican state of Jalisco. It was nurtured in the fusion of traditions from the indigenous peoples, Spaniards and Africans, the three broad racial groups that have played an essential role in Mexican culture and identity. 

The matching embroidered coats and fitted pants, wide bowties, and sombreros, known as the “traje de charro” — charro suit — is often associated with mariachi music. It is also considered to be one of the Mexican national emblems. The charro suit was originally associated with lower-status cowboys during Mexico’s colonial era. 

After the 10-year Mexican Revolution that ended in 1920, many rural farmworkers from states like Jalisco migrated to large cities like Guadalajara, as well as the capital, Mexico City, bringing with them the mariachi traditions. Many of these migrants formed mariachi bands and played in plazas and other public venues for a fee.

At the same time, the Mexican government initiated a campaign to establish both mariachi music and the charro suit as unifying symbols of Mexico in the then-fractured nation. Mariachi bands would perform during presidential inaugurations and independence day celebrations, as well as on the radio. They were also featured prominently in Mexican cinema beginning in the 1930s.

As mariachi music naturally evolved, it incorporated other folkloric traditions like the waltz and the polka from Central Europe, as well as instruments like the trumpet that were popularized by jazz and Cuban music. 

While mariachi bands were traditionally exclusively male, women have played an increasing role in the tradition, with all-female mariachi bands becoming more common. 

Mariachi music has grown in popularity in Napa in recent years, according to both residents in attendance as well as the organizers of Saturday’s festival. 

Claudia Chavez, the Napa resident, said that she was surprised that the mariachi festival was so new, given the predominance of the Mexican community in the region. 

“I thought mariachi would be bigger here, honestly,” she said. “But I’m glad to see that it’s growing.”

While the city and county of Napa as a whole have sizable populations of Mexicans, mariachi — both its appreciation and participation — has not been as well established here as it has in other Mexican communities in the state, particularly in Southern California.

“Mariachi is generational,” Omar Peña, the manager of the Office of Student Life at Napa Valley College, told the Napa Valley Register. “That knowledge gets passed down parent to child, which feeds into the community.”

That Napa’s Mexican community is largely composed of immigrants and their first-generation children is one possible reason why the mariachi tradition is in its nascent period of institutional support here. 

Alejandro Guerrero, NVC’s assistant vice president of student affairs, hopes to develop mariachi music at the college. Guerrero wants the college to expand its existing music program to offer teaching of mariachi music and a possible degree certification. Right now, he said, the college is in the difficult process of finding an available mariachi instructor.

The inclusion of mariachi music in the college’s curriculum, Guerrero believes, also serves NVC’s deeper mission of creating a welcoming culture for students of diverse backgrounds.

“Having students belong is a very important part of our campus culture,” he said. “And music education really helps foster that.”

Guerrero also noted that the performing groups invited to perform at ¡Viva Mariachi! are emblematic of how local institutional investment in mariachi culture and expression reaps big rewards. 

The Santa Rosa-based LBC Mariachi Cantares de Mi Tierra and Ballet Folklórico, for example, is part of the Luther Burbank Center’s free, 150-student program that provides three levels of mariachi instruction and two levels of folkloric dance. The program also supports Mariachi Rosa, Northern California’s first all-female mariachi ensemble. 

Mariachi Cantares de Mi Tierra recently earned third place in the California State Fair Mariachi Competition, making it the first group from Sonoma County to place in the top three at a statewide mariachi event.

For Guerrero, not only learning about and appreciating musical traditions like mariachi, but also dedicating resources to nurture them, strengthens Napa’s naturally diverse communities. 

“This is who we are,” he said. “This is our community. And this is what we are trying to build.”