- Francisco: I think being a musician is something
that you do for the rest of your life
and you just keep growing in it.
It's one of those skills that you can't say,
"I've learned everything."
It's an art, and I think what art does
and has done over the history of, you know,
the world is allow us to convey meaning into our life
that sometimes routine and habits don't allow us to do.
[trumpet notes]
[vocalists singing]
My name is Francisco Hernández.
I am the director.
I'm a vocalist and vihuela player
of Mariachi Monarcas in Milwaukee.
- My name is Marianna Tellez.
I am a violinist and I'm also a vocalist
in Mariachi Monarcas.
- [speaking Spanish]
Mariachi Monarcas.
[upbeat music]
[Francisco and Marianna singing in Spanish]
- Francisco: Mariachi music stems originally
from the regions in Mexico that had been colonized.
Mariachi has a set of subgenres.
The ones that originate from the state of Jalisco,
which is where mariachi evolved from,
are more about self-identity or sometimes just random events
that people like to celebrate.
Sometimes you can see songs, what we call sones,
in which the song is about celebrating
the birth of cows, you know,
or it can be about a set group of people, you know,
a set of people that were at an event,
a major event in the state,
or maybe just about someone's mom, et cetera.
It's just a celebration.
- But there's a lot of songs that are about emotion.
I always say they're about heartbreak, love,
or just celebrating Mexico.
So it's really emotional, but it can be historical as well.
Typically in mariachi, there's not going to be a lot
of original compositions.
Every group will kind of write their own arrangements
and add their own flair to it.
- I think there's a lot of room to express ourselves.
There's a lot of room to influence the people
that are listening to us
and bring about emotions to them too.
I think that's one of the most beautiful things
about mariachi music is
how heavy some of the songs can be,
but at the end of the day, you're gonna still applaud to it
for making you feel sad, you know?
That's where the expression, the self-expression comes from.
- More recently, we've been doing popurrís,
which are kind of like mashups of songs.
So we'll pick a genre, we'll pick an artist.
Recently, we wrote "Popurrí Mexico," which is a mashup
of I think, like, four, five, six different songs
that celebrate Mexico,
and they just have really beautiful lyrics with that.
So in the mariachi, you have your violin section.
Usually that section's a little bigger.
You have trumpets, you have a guitar,
a vihuela, which is kind of like a smaller guitar
with a brighter sound.
It has a bump on the back.
It's really unique.
[bright vihuela music]
And then there is the guitarrón, which is the bass of the group.
It's kind of like a bigger version of the vihuela,
but with less strings,
and it's basically the heartbeat of the group.
[mellow guitarrón music]
A big thing about mariachi music that made me decide
that I wanted to pursue it is just the sense of pride
that not only you have when you play mariachi music,
but that you see, if you see one of these big groups
like Mariachi Vargas,
it's just such a proud moment to see your culture up there,
and it shines, and it's beautiful.
I've struggled with my identity, you know, being away from Mexico
and living in the U.S., you do have sometimes
that disconnect with the culture
because you're kind of in between cultures.
So I really kind of found a lot of my identity
through mariachi music and that sense of pride, just,
it still drives me to this day.
- What really got me interested in mariachi music
was the elegance that comes with it
and how you can play around with it and modify it.
There are traditional aspects that you need to keep in music
and your setup,
and the instruments that you have in mariachi music,
you know, it is something that you have to respect
as part of a tradition.
And in regards to the elegance of it,
there is a respect, I think a discipline that you need
to construct within yourself to be a mariachi.
You need to be always very clean with your attire
and with your sound.
- So what we wear, they're trajes de charros,
so it's typically, men will wear pants,
women will wear a long skirt,
and they have these middle, like,
plates on the side called galas.
Sometimes they have bordalo,
which is really beautiful embroidery on the sides.
They'll have a vest and then they'll have a jacket
that goes on top of it that also has that embroidery
or those galas, those metal pieces on 'em.
- It's a traditional attire that's very,
if someone wears it wrong, it can cause a lot of commotion
in the mariachi community.
I think it is about maintaining the dignity of the music.
And since it is oral tradition, the best way to do that
is by keeping each other accountable.
I'd say mariachi music a lot of times has that,
especially in showcase performances,
has that perspective of presence
and a little bit of showing off, I think.
And what you wear has a huge influence
on how you present yourself to your audience.
You want to eventually wow them.
Something that I always like to see in the audience is
that people, even though you might be playing like,
a heartbreak song,
they might not be going through anything, but they feel it.
And you might sometimes see people in the crowd do gritos,
so it's like a little shout that we do
just to let it out, you know?
[undulating shout]
It can be sad, it can be outta happiness,
and it's something that for people that are not familiar
with the mariachi genre or with gritos
that are done in Mexico, not just in mariachi,
but just in general, you might see people going out,
doing gritos just to feel themselves.
It's something that's kind of, like, welcoming to us
as artists, and we know that we're pleasing our audience,
not just from a musical perspective,
but more from, it's an indirect way of saying,
"Oh, we're of the same community,
connected by our culture."
- Marianna: Although there is a big Latino population here
in Milwaukee, there's not too many groups
out here in the Midwest.
So I think it's especially important to bring back
that music that our parents would listen to as children,
that we listened to growing up on the radios at home.
Really have that connection back to our roots
and be able to share that connection
and to be able to share those memories
and that tradition with all of the people here.
It's very important
to not only have that culture brought back
to our people here who might be missing it,
who love it, but to also educate others on it as well.
- Not everyone with a Mexican soul lives in Mexico.
We are scattered all around the globe,
and a good amount in the United States.
Sometimes, you know,
we find ourselves in circumstances where people come
and ask us about who we are, what's our background,
and living in a, sometimes in a city
or a place where we are far away from our traditions,
where we don't have those people
to pass down our traditions to us,
it's nice to find that little sense of identity.
[singers singing in Spanish]
[crowd cheering]
[bright guitar music]