In case you don’t believe the sticker on the shrink-wrap that boasts Sones De Mexico’s latest recording is free of any synthesized sounds, the album comes with photographic evidence. Included with the liner notes to the ensemble’s 2007 release, Esta Tierra Es Tuya (“This Land is Your Land”), is a brilliant color photo of the ensemble accompanied by 70 acoustic instruments that were used to make the recording, including several guitars, violins, drums, wind instruments and even conch shells.

Group co-founder Juan Dies says the Chicago ensemble’s mission of playing a wide variety of traditional Mexican sounds from different regions of the country makes such an arsenal a necessity. “It’s taken years of collecting the instruments and learning how to play them,” he says. “The instruments are owned by different people in the group, so each of us brings our own collection to the ensemble.”

Not lacking for things to strum, blow, bow or hit, Dies is still on the lookout to expand the group’s tonal palatte. He recently acquired a set of hand-drums made by a builder in Mexico City. The instruments were hand-carved from tree trunks to Dies’ specifications, which were based on archeological research from Aztec designs.

While the drums are good for playing traditional Aztec songs, they are also helpful for channeling the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll, particularly the lumbering boom of drummer John Bonham. Hidden deep in the band’s collection of folk tunes is an instrumental cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Four Sticks.”

“The song is sort of an attempt to reach out to a group of listeners that we think would appreciate what we are doing but would not naturally pick up a Mexican folk record otherwise,” Dies says.

As disparate as the sounds may be, Dies says Sone’s music has a lot to offer fans of blues-based and progressive rock that appreciate intricate musicianship and the reinvention of classic sounds. “The shows we do are very fast-paced,” he says. “There is a lot of variety of musical sounds from one song to the other. We like to keep the audience’s attention and bring up new elements and surprises.”

Dies, 43, came to the United States from Mexico in 1983. After setting aside his roots for eight years to build his technique playing American rock ‘n’ roll and blues, he returned to his roots and started playing traditional Mexican music again, partly as a response to the portrayal of his homeland by American media. “The media treats it as either a tourist destination with party music and Cancun and Cabo, which is very superficial, and the movies show the technologically inferior, backwards, rural place — the ‘Cisco Kid’ kind of Mexico.”

Thirteen years ago he teamed with music director Victor Pichardo to form Sones de Mexico with a goal of elevating traditional Mexican music to the status of high art, following the model of American jazz.

“Jazz had to earn its own respect,” Dies says. “It started as whorehouse music, and now it’s at Carnegie hall. The Marsalis family has dignified jazz music and musicianship, and we’re trying to do the same.”

The goal of making a place for Mexican music and culture is also reflected in the title track of the band’s last album, a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” sung in Spanish. As the immigration debate in America grew more heated in recent years, Dies was struck by the song. He felt it represented the American dream but also seemed at odds with how some were addressing immigration issues. “What if we sang that song in Spanish?” he remembers thinking. “Just by the act of singing that song in Spanish alone, it would put that contradiction in evidence.”

Dies says it is reasonable for immigration to be regulated, for the safety of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike, but he cannot understand the hate and resentment many express toward immigrants. “We don’t come here for the weather,” he says. “Everyone who comes here, comes to work, and if we don’t work, we have to go back.”
Dies and Sones have visited many Mexican immigrant communities in the United States, and he says the people there are eager to hear the music of their homeland. “When they see us, they feel so refreshed and reconnected with a part of their culture they had missed,” he says. “When we play this music, they get very emotional.”

-by Eric Gallippo