Mexican Music

A Quick Look into Mexican Traditional Music

Mexican music

Every person who is interested in the Mexican culture must know about the most popular of its expressions: music.

Through history, musical expressions have experienced a huge evolution, from the sound of the drums of a Mayan or Aztec ceremony to the modern expressions of Mexican rap. However, this evolution is additive more than destructive. That means that, far from replacing music style with another, Mexican music rather incorporates previous rhythms and styles into new ones. Although recently almost every young Mexican music artist chooses more modern musical styles as a way of expression, like Mexican gangster rap, the most widely known “product” of the Mexican music history is The Mariachi.

The term “Mariachi” comes from two of the many native languages of Mexico, the Nahuatl (used mostly by the ancient Aztecs), and the Coca (a language known to be used by many independent Mayan tribes). Originally the word “Mariachi” was used to refer to a dance performed by a group of dancers on a wooden platform. This means that the Mexican term “Mariachi” was an equivalent to the Spanish term “Fandango”. Nowadays, however, Mariachi refers to a certain music style, and also to the band that plays that music.

The Mariachi was originated in the region of Jalisco, more exactly in the city of Guadalajara. At first, the Mariachi ensembles traveled from town to town singing about very common subjects, mostly love. This caused the Mariachi style to spread throughout all Mexico, and soon it was the highest representative of the Mexican music.

A typical Mariachi ensemble was formed by four or five guitars, a “guitarrón” (a sort of a large bass guitar), violins, some “vihuelas” (a kind of guitar with a round back), and a harp with 28 to 40 strings. In some regions of Mexico a small snare drum was commonly included into the ensemble.

The typical arrangement of a Mariachi Mexican music ensemble has evolved through time, especially since the late 1930s. Today, a Mariachi ensemble is considered to be a complete folk orchestra, and its instruments include trumpets and violins as the melody group, and guitars, harp, guitarrón and vihuelas as the harmony group.

Among the Mexican music played by Mariachis there are famous tunes like “La Bamba”, “Cielito Lindo”, “La Cucaracha” and the extensively known Mexican hat dance.

The presence of Mariachis is almost a requirement on national celebrations as well of public parties and “fiestas”, which often feature two or three different bands that play different kinds of Mexican music.