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Mission from Mexico
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Kalamazoo Gazette, Mission from Mexico >>
In the spring of 1994, Victor Pichardo and Juan Dies were invited to play a short set at an art gallery in a Chicago Latino neighborhood.
They put together a makeshift band and decided to perform a variety of lesser-known traditional Mexican folk music because they "realized there wasn't anything like it" in the Windy City. Most people knew mariachi, but not styles such as gusto, son jarocho or chilena.
"People were flabbergasted by the group, and we had only been rehearsing for a couple days," Dies said during a phone interview from Chicago.
The musicians all had different careers prior to the gallery gig, but the show triggered a response that, more than 14 years later, helped lead to a 2008 Grammy Award nomination for Pichardo and Dies and the band they founded that day, the Sones de Mexico Ensemble. They will play at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Dalton Center Recital Hall on the Western Michigan University campus.
Based on the early buzz, Dies and Pichardo quickly came up with the name Sones de Mexico. "Son" is a term that encompasses the many regional styles of Mexican folk music. They started booking dates almost immediately, playing 60 shows in Chicago in the rest of '94 and 130 the following year. For the next decade, the ensemble grew its repertoire, incorporating more styles from around Mexico and picking up the instruments required for each unique sound. Four years ago, Lorena Iniguez, a professional dancer, was added.
Then in 2005, Dies, a native of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, quit his full-time job as director of community programs for Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music to focus solely on Sones de Mexico. At that point, the ensemble had been at it 10 years, including some lineup changes and the release of two full-length albums, but without "measurable signs of success."
Venezuelan-born percussionist Javier Saume, who graduated with a bachelor's degree in music from the Chicago College of Performing Arts of Roosevelt University in 2005, joined the band more than two years ago on an invitation from classmate Zacbe Pichardo, son of the Sones de Mexico co-founder. Saume had mostly performed Venezuelan music and needed to learn traditional Mexican folk quickly.
The members of the Sones de Mexico Ensemble are, from left, Lorena Iniguez, Victor Pichardo, Zacbe Pichardo, Javier Saume, Juan Rivera and Juan Dies.
"I was very confused," Saume said of his first show with the ensemble. "Basically, I started asking, listening to music."
He picked up on similarities between joropo, music from the plains of Venezuela, and certain regional styles of Mexico. It eased his transition, he said. The ensemble decided to add a drum set, a nontraditional instrument for Mexican folk, to give live performances more power. Saume was to man the kit.
With the current lineup of multi-instrumentalist Dies, Iniguez, Victor and Zacbe Pichardo, Saume and Juan Rivera set, the ensemble turned its attention to a new album. In 2007, Sones de Mexico independently released "Esta Tierra Es Tuya (This Land Is Your Land)." The album's title track is a cover of Woody Guthrie's song but with changed lyrics to reflect their views on immigration policies. It also includes a new take on Led Zeppelin's "Four Sticks" using Aztec instruments such as a conch shell and a quijada, which is a skeletal donkey jaw. Dies said the band plays about 30 styles of Mexican folk and uses about 70 different instruments.
The album was nominated for best folk album at the 2007 Latin Grammy Awards. The band also was featured on Public Radio International's "The World" last November. Dies decided to "give it a shot" and sent the album to the Recording Academy for consideration at this year's Grammy Awards. In February, Sones de Mexico was nominated for best Mexican/Mexican-American album. Since then, the doors have flown open, Dies said.
"It was a shot of very positive energy," Dies said. "The band's in a very good place. Everyone is very positive."
'Three instruments in one"
One of the more fascinating parts of Saturday's Sones de Mexico performance will be the interaction between professional dancer/multi-instrumentalist Lorena Iniguez and percussionists Zacbe Pichardo and Javier Saume.
Iniguez, 31, was born in Chicago and starting [sic] dancing at age 4. She later joined the Mexican Folkloric Dance Company of Chicago as a principal dancer. She also studied communications at Northeastern Illinois University under a dance scholarship with the resident flamenco troupe Ensemble Espanol. She learned to dance theatrically, where the dancer is the star.
In 2002, two years before joining Sones de Mexico, Iniguez visited a small town in Veracruz, Mexico. It was early February, and the town was holding a "huge festival" in honor of the Virgin Mary. During the festival, she experienced the Mexican traditional style of dance.
Traditionally, Mexican folk musicians gather and play music during such festive times. Eventually, people started digging holes and placing wooden platforms over them, Iniguez said. The platform, called a tarima, served as a sort of stage for dancers.
The dancers' foot-tapping, or zapateado, resonated and became a supplement to the musicians. But, unlike her training, the dancers were not the focus. When musicians recited poems, dancing was toned down. There were also strict rules on when you left the tarima for other dancers. At the Veracruz celebration, Iniguez absorbed everything while waiting in line.
"It reminded me of when I was a little girl," she said about the lines for the tarima. "It was like when we played jump rope."
The traditional form was worlds apart from what she'd done in Chicago.
"I'm telling you, that's where I learned the rules," she said. "The dances are more subtle. The footwork is more subtle. It was almost like culture shock for me."
She now has the advantage of both experiences, plus a colorful wardrobe, to add another layer to the Sones de Mexico show. Iniguez stressed her dancing is not as much a visual element, but "a component of the music."
Her tarima, which is handmade by the ensemble's co-founder Juan Dies, is part of the percussion section.
The encore, typically, is a more traditional folk version of "La Bamba." During the finale, Iniguez goes into a cumbia, a more playful style of dance. Saume and Pichardo battle her, so to speak. It's her feet against their hands. As the song builds, their pace quickens.
"It's like three instruments in one," Saume said. "It's not like I'm playing and she's playing something -- no. I follow her."
Ticket stub Sones de Mexico Ensemble, Grammy Awards-nominated traditional Mexican folk music ensemble, 2 p.m. Saturday, Dorothy U. Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU campus, 1903 W. Michigan Ave. 387-4671. Free.
-- John Liberty, Kalamazoo Gazette 09/11/08 >> go there
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