Mexico’s World Cup triumph rekindles its mariachi tradition, restoring the music to the heart of national celebration and cultural devotion.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
In Mexico, a curse has been broken. For the first time since 1986, the national soccer team won a knockout round. This evening, they’ll face England at the legendary Azteca Stadium. The good news has led to massive celebrations across the country that have been fueled by tequila and mariachis. But as NPR’s Eyder Peralta reports, the most Mexican of music has been having a tough moment.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: La Plazuela del Mariachi sits mostly empty in Guadalajara these days. Trash is strewn along the gutters. The bars are in disrepair. A drug dealer hands out pills from her perch on a plastic chair, and the few mariachis that remain mill around hoping someone, anyone, will pay them to sing.
ANGEL FRANCISCO VARGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “This genre is dying,” says Angel Francisco Vargas (ph), who’s dressed in a white mariachi suit.
VARGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “Now people have memory sticks and speakers, so it’s cheaper to play recorded music.” This plaza was legendary. It sits in the heart of the state where this music was born. And in the past, Mexicans from everywhere who really wanted to make it as mariachis flocked here. Like folk musicians made pilgrimage to Greenwich Village, mariachis came here. Vargas, whose dad and granddad were also mariachis, says they left him here at this plaza when he was just 15 years old.
VARGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: Mariachis would rent rooms in all the buildings surrounding the plaza. Vargas, who is now 53, says in those days the old mariachi leaders were tough and eccentric. They’d only pay you if you were good, and they’d fire you for messing up a note.
VARGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “The old band leaders fired you by leaving a piece of cheese in your jacket. But the music,” says Vargas, “was so good, sometimes it would marvel even competing mariachis who would gather around to listen.”
VARGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “The groups used to be 10 to 12 musicians. Now it’s five to six because people don’t want to pay.”
VARGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “Now we can’t even complete a group because musicians don’t want to play.” The plaza, though, still has an air of romance. The stone buildings surrounding it have grand arches, and just beneath a statue of a mariachi, there is a shrine to Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. In the old days, says Vargas, men would woo women with serenades.
VARGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “Now, even romance is dead,” he says, “everything changes.” Indeed, on that day, we hear more vuvuzelas than trumpets.
(SOUNDBITE OF VUVUZELA)
PERALTA: But the next day, Mexico plays against Korea, and downtown Guadalajara fills up with people, and Mexico wins.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) Mexico. Mexico. Mexico. Mexico.
PERALTA: So walking down one of Guadalajara’s main streets, and it is mayhem. There’s people jumping on top of trash trucks. There are people waving the Mexican flag. You can hear the vuvuzelas. There are, like, fire breathers. There are people taking shots of tequila. And right now, we’re walking with hundreds – I don’t know – maybe probably thousands of people toward the plaza.
And by the time we reach the plaza, the communion has started.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
PERALTA: People are drinking. They’re happy. They’re paying for music. J. Guadalupe Caradache Garcia (ph), one of the mariachis, couldn’t be happier.
J GUADALUPE CARADACHE GARCIA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “Alcohol. Women. And they pay you,” he says.
CARADACHE GARCIA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: There’s no job like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in Spanish).
PERALTA: “Mariachis,” he says, “are used for everything – funerals.”
CARADACHE GARCIA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “Parties, weddings.” He hired a mariachi for his divorce. “Mariachis,” he says, “are magical.”
CARADACHE GARCIA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “So magical,” he says, that when he sings, his stutter disappears.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in Spanish).
PERALTA: The plaza slowly fills up. The old bars come to life. The mariachis gather large groups of people around them. And for a moment, at least, a World Cup win has made them masters of the universe.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in Spanish).
PERALTA: “My beautiful love. I am like a kid with a new toy. Happy, so happy.”
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing in Spanish).
PERALTA: “I can’t help it. I want to scream, my dear love. God has sent you just for me.” Roberto Perez (ph) is listening and can’t hold back tears.
ROBERTO PEREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “I am Mexican, and I am feeling everything this country feels.”
PEREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “And the mariachis bring out everything we have inside us.”
PEREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: “Because we’re Mexican, and we love everyone.”
PEREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in Spanish).
PERALTA: That day, they play all night, still the guardians of one of Mexico’s most sacred trinities – tequila, mariachis and football.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
PERALTA: Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Guadalajara, Mexico.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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