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Wisconsin State Journal, Concert Preview >>
More than mariachi: Sones de Mexico aims to change American perceptions of Mexican music
By GAYLE WORLAND
You may know mariachi music. But that doesn't mean you know Mexican music.
With 108 million people and centuries upon centuries of musical heritage, Mexico is home to genres ranging from the country and western ranchera to the Oaxacan son istemeno.
When the Sones de Mexico Ensemble brings an array of these traditions -- as well as some funky hybrids -- to Capitol Theater Friday night, each member of the sextet will play up to 10 musical instruments. And not just guitar, violin and trumpet. Think accordion, marimba, conch shell, deer antlers, vibra slap, ankle shakers and donkey jaw.
Their new Latin Grammy-nominated CD, "Esta Tierra Es Tuya (This Land Is Your Land), " is filled with precisely-performed, life-brightening music, including an "Aztec arrangement " of Led Zeppelin 's "Four Sticks " and a son jarocho version of Bach 's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, second movement. The title cut, inspired by the U.S. immigration debate, is a toe-tapping, Spanish-language setting of the Woody Guthrie classic, "This Land is Your Land. "
The record also includes different kinds of son, styles of folk music and dance that vary widely from region to region.
"The reason (for this mix) is to create bridges, " says Juan Dies, an ethnomusicologist and Sones de Mexico co-founder. "We are trying to get people who normally wouldn 't pick up a Mexican folk music CD to be drawn to it, maybe because there 's a Led Zeppelin song or a Bach piece. "
"It 's also part of our reality here, " he says. "We don 't live in an isolated Mexican village. We are in Chicago, and all these musical influences are around us. "
International 'brain drain'
Born in the central Mexican city of San Luis Potosi, Dies took up guitar at age 6 and moved to Indianapolis at 18 with his musician brother, painter mother and physiologist father. Dies ' father, lured to the U.S. with a job offer in clinical research, is what Dies refers to part of Mexico 's "brain drain. " But for him, the move was an adventure in music.
"When I moved to the States from Mexico, I was really thrown in to a playground of new musical styles, " Dies explains. "At age 18, I was glad to discover the blues and jazz and reggae, and actually meet people who 've been playing it for a long time. In Mexico, there were people trying to play those styles, but they didn 't have any exposure to the direct source. "
Dies earned a music degree, then began his master 's in ethnomusicology at Indiana University in Bloomington -- as an Africanist.
"Because I was interested in styles I hadn 't seen before, " he says. So he did research on African music and played in a reggae band.
It was all very interesting, until Dies started telling people about his homeland and its musical traditions, and got nothing but blank stares. For a lot of Americans, he realized with shock, the closest they 'd ever come to Mexican culture was ordering a burrito at Taco Bell.
"I guess there was some anger, some frustration, and wanting to do something about it, " he says.
"There are still a lot of people who are not ill-willed, but have not been exposed (to real Mexican culture). And I don 't blame them, but there just isn 't anything out there.
"When they turn the television on, what they see is the Spanish language television with women in bikinis and a lot of dancing. The programming isn 't that high art or flattering of us and the depth of our culture. Same thing on the radio. There 's a big lack of representation of the depth and value of our culture. "
So in grad school, Dies recruited an Irish fiddler, a Scottish trumpet player, and a Puerto Rican guitarron player, taught them to play Mexican music, and changed the focus of his studies. When he moved to Chicago in 1993, he met Victor Pichardo and the two founded Sones de Mexico.
Pichardo, the "musical foundation of the band, " "has had an incredible career, " says Dies. "I learned a lot about Mexican music from him that I didn 't know before. "
A bigger sound
The last three months have been life-changing for Sones de Mexico, thanks both to the band 's Latin Grammy nomination and a lengthy story on National Public Radio 's "Morning Edition " that prompted a flood of interest and phone calls from across the country.
"We 're a band, but we 're also a record label, and we 're a non-profit educational group, " says Dies, whose musicians will spend five days in Madison visiting schools and performing at a free community fiesta. "We try to demystify some of the notions people have about Mexican music, good and bad. Everyone associates Mexico with mariachi. Mariachi is a wonderful genre, but there 's so much more -- lesser known styles that we 'd like people to get to know. The unknown part of Mexico. "
The group 's new disc features so many different musical instruments, the CD booklet includes a two-page bar chart illustrating who is playing what when.
Dies and Pichardo are the only original members of Sones de Mexico, whose personnel has changed over the years. The band started as a quartet, then Pichardo brought on a drummer, "which was a new feature to Mexican music, " says Dies.
"But Victor had done it before in Mexico and he felt that this rural music, when it moved to the city, needed to keep pace with the roar of the city. If we were playing festivals, we were always relegated to the early hours of the festival, opening for other groups. And always the better spots were taken by larger groups with bigger sounds. He thought we should make our sound bigger, without abandoning the style of the music we were playing. "
The current Sones de Mexico roster has been together around 18 months. "This is the lineup that we released the new CD with, " says Dies. "And we 're in a very good spot right now.
"Every time a new band member comes on, it takes about a year (to train them), " he says. "It 's not like you can put an ad in the classifieds and ask for a multi-instrumentalist son player.
"Usually someone specializes in one instrument. When they come into the band, they 're asked to play different instruments, different styles of music, and not to fake the style or to try to play a son de tarimbo like it 's a son huasteco, and mix the rhythms. We have to listen to a lot of field recordings, records, expose them to all the material that 's out there. "
Still, the most important education is that of the audience, says Dies.
"They see our instruments, see that we play a donkey jaw, a marimba, and they hear the sounds of different music, " he says.
"Maybe they 'll leave a concert thinking, Wow, there 's great diversity in Mexican music. Maybe more than we thought before. ' "
If you go
What: Sones de Mexico Ensemble
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Capitol Theater, Overture Center, 201 State St.
Tickets: $10 at the Overture Center box office, 201 State St., or for an additional fee at 258-4141 and www.overturecenter.com.
FREE EVENTS
During its five-day stay in Madison, Sones de Mexico Ensemble will perform in three elementary schools, hold workshops for educators, and perform for school groups and the general public in Overture Center 's Capitol Theater. There are still more ways to see the group -- for free.
Evening for Teens: 6:30-8:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Wisconsin Studio at Overture Center, 201 State St. A night of music and dance lessons.
Community Fiesta: 6:30-8:30 p.m. Wednesday at Centro Guadalupe, 1862 Beld St. A traditional "fandango," or Mexican dance fiesta, along with dance appearances by Madison 's Tiawanaku Latin American Dance Company and Brisas del Peru. Families welcome. 11/25/07 >> go there
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