Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho: The Journey of a Mexican Regional Music 9781477325575

Citation preview

Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture

Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho The Journey of a Mexican Regional Music Yolanda BroYles- González, rafael fiGueroa Hernández, and francisco González

University of Texas Press

Austin

Copyright © 2022 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2022 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 utpress.utexas.edu /rp-form ♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Broyles-González, Yolanda, 1949– author. | Figueroa Hernández, Rafael, 1959– author. | González, Francisco (Harpist), author. Title: Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho : the journey of a Mexican regional music / Yolanda Broyles-González, Rafael Figueroa Hernández, and Francisco González. Other titles: Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture. Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2022. | Series: Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021050918 ISBN 978-1-4773-2555-1 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4773-2556-8 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-4773-2557-5 (PDF) ISBN 9781-4773-2558-2 (ePub) Subjects: LCSH: Barradas, Mario, 1926-2018. | Barradas, Mario, 1926–2018— Influence. | Harpists—Mexico—Biography. | Folk music—Mexico—Sotavento— History and criticism. | Mexican Americans—Music—History and criticism. Classification: LCC ML419.B184 B76 2022 | DDC 787.9/5092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021050918 doi:10.7560/325551

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

vii

xi

Chapter 1. Mario Barradas’s Life in Music Mario Barradas

1

Chapter 2. Musical Reflections on Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho 41 francisco González Chapter 3. Son Jarocho’s Indigenous Expressivity across Geographies 53 Yolanda BroYles- González Chapter 4. Mario Barradas and Mexican Cinema rafael fiGueroa Hernández

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Mario Barradas Discography 149 rafael fiGueroa Hernández About the Authors Index 171

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Acknowledgments

We profoundly thank the Living Powers of the Universe that go by so many names. We thank the Spirit of the Land and the Peoples of the Land in Sotavento, Veracruz, in the Kansas prairie, and in the Tohono O’odham and Yoeme desert homeland where we worked on this book. May those Living Powers continue to animate all Son Jarocho communities, musicians, dancers, singers, cooks, and decimistas! We are greatly indebted to a fifth collaborator whose name does not appear on the cover of this book yet whose editorial work can be felt throughout the volume. His name is Francisco González, the younger, and he arduously polished the entire manuscript and made it publishable. Profound thanks to Kerry E. Webb, senior acquisitions editor at the University of Texas Press, for her impressive editorial input and graciousness. She made the tough publication process a lot less painful. We also thank Lynne Ferguson, senior manuscript editor at the University of Texas Press. We thank the entire Barradas family, especially Mario Barradas and his wife, Guillermina González, who walked so affirmatively with us on this book journey. In Xalapa, Veracruz, Alma Haydee Rodríguez Reyes and Guadalupe Rodríguez Reyes became sisters to us, and their family showed us great kindness and help in all possible ways. Our well-being was in many ways secured through them. We acknowledge the Barrio Libre Yaqui ceremonial community in Tucson, Arizona, as we thank all our beloved family members on both sides of the border who express support in so many ways: Pilar Ramírez, Francisco Cajeme González, Esmeralda Guadalupe Broyles-González, Eduardo Figueroa, Andrés Figueroa, Lupe Morales, April Morales and family, Tío Juan Ramón Sainz Rodríguez, Nino Felipe Molina, Tía Nely Verdugo Aguilar, Patricia Aguilar Verdugo, Comadre Olivia and Compadre Robert Hernandez and all vii

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Acknowledgments

their children and grandchildren, Lydia Guadalupe Mendéz Aguilar, Comadre Doris Alfaro Márquez, Compadre Miguel Arizmendi, Gregoria Elías, Vicky Elías, John Gleason, Elidio Méndez, Tía Luzita Tinajero, Father Frankie Tinajero, Robert Perales, Henrietta Álvarez, Austin Houk, Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo, Alejandra Hernández, and all nephews, nieces, and grandchildren. We thank all those who have expressed interest in this project across the years, especially the Son Jarocho musicians, singers, and dancers, most especially José Luis Xocuit García Canela for his continuing and unwavering support. He came to learn about the music, but we learned just as much from him. We thank Emilio Bozzano Azpiri, a generous friend whose skills as a sound technician and musician were crucial in turning Mario Barradas’s practice room into a recording studio, working pro bono to make Mario’s last recording. We remember our friend the late Stanley Bullock, a stellar musician who found Africa in Veracruz. Stanley assisted in the last music recording session with Mario Barradas. Rest in peace, dear friend. We thank Alec Loganbill for valuable comments and his work in bringing the manuscript to publication. Profound gratitude goes to all those colleagues who have shared the enthusiasm of getting to know this kind of Son Jarocho better, a Son Jarocho that opens a path of its own from the 1930s to the present. Gracias for the countless messages going back and forth with Maestro Rubén Vázquez, Eduardo García, Carlos Barradas Reali, and others who are convinced that this is not only a branch of Son Jarocho but an invaluable part of the trunk. We struggled to complete this work during the 2020–2021 COVID global pandemic that continues to take the lives of millions. We recognize with love cherished presences who are bright lights across dark times: Keisha Clark; family members in Cajeme, Sonora; Comadre Rosemary Tona-Aguirre; Gustavo Gil; Carol Gil; George Sánchez-Tello; Renae Hernández; Laura Mancuso; Familia Cuevas León; Familia Cuevas Ramírez; Allison Celik; Piccallili Farm; Killer Produce; and our powerful Guardians Louie, Kumar, Copetón, Rusko, Baxter, and Layla. Our beloved godchildren always inspire us: Alfredo Ricardo Leon, Araceli Raquel Leon, Alex Ricardo Leon, Silvia Patricia Aguilar Verdugo, Xavier Fernandez, Fernando Fernandez, Robert Hernandez, Angel Hernandez, Eileen Gutiérrez Hernández, Quetzal Hernández-Sánchez, José Matus, Evelyn Guerra, Erica Aguilar-Soltero, Miguel Ehekatl Arizmendi Alfaro, and Ana Maria Borrego. Colleagues at Kansas State University in the American Ethnic Studies Department and beyond provided uplifting encounters. We want to express heartfelt appreciation to Tushabe wa Tushabe, Nikhil Moro, Kennedy Clark,

Acknowledgments

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Scott Tanona, Alisa Wolfe, Christie Launius, David Robles, María G. Vallejo, Sonya Baker, Kathy Roeser, and the social science department heads. Thanks to Centro de Estudios de la Cultura y la Communicación de la Universidad Veracruzana. Last but surely not least, we give special thanks to the excellent manuscript reviewers and the University of Texas Press faculty board and all the editorial team. Their comments were an invaluable catalyst in the final stages of the manuscript.

Introduction

Son Jarocho is a musical structure and lyrical expressivity native to the eastern Gulf of Mexico coastal area known as Sotavento (“leeward”). The concept of Sotavento and that regional name predate national and state divisions; it denotes cultural affinities within a shared geography. The Sotavento geographical area encompasses parts of the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Tabasco, and Veracruz. Many of the people from Sotavento refer to themselves as Jarocho or Jarocha, hence the term “Son Jarocho.” Son Jarocho features a defined musical structure that also allows for improvisation. It is performed by ensembles using locally made traditional string instruments. Son Jarocho performance is traditionally embedded within communal festivities that include instrumental music, dance, food, and other social activities associated with the festivities. It features prominently in the Indigenous community celebration known as fandango, a fusion of performance praxis, dance, food preparation, and poetic expression that is often tied to spiritual practices such as recurring fiestas patronales, rites of passage, and other celebrations. This book is the study of a chapter in Son Jarocho’s long history: the professionalization of Jarocho musicians in the twentieth century and the role of Mario Barradas Murcia (1926–2018) in that process. From his youth in rural Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, to his success in Mexico City and his international resonance, many parallels to his life are apparent in the experiences of today’s professional Son Jarocho musicians. In its place of origin, the Sotavento region, Son Jarocho was a rural, aurally transmitted musical form. Once it moved into the city, it became an international musical commodity, assisted and in some cases defined by the technological advances of the early twentieth century. Mario Barradas’s migration to the capital city brought changes to traditional Son Jarocho as the musical xi

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form adapted to the spirit of a nation torn between the continuity of regional tradition on the one hand and a perceived modernity on the other. In the midtwentieth century, Barradas was among the first to record Son Jarocho and play it live on the radio, along with iconic ensembles such as Conjunto Tierra Blanca and Conjunto Medellín. As Jarocho music increased in popularity, its performers increased in number. The style created by Barradas and his colleagues remained the high-water mark of Son Jarocho for nearly half of the twentieth century, but the cycle of rebirth, flowering, dissemination, and decay has long been a characteristic of traditional music, and Son Jarocho traditions fell into decline as younger consumers turned to media and as corporations marketed foreign recordings on the radio and television. By the late 1960s, Son Jarocho and its fandango were disappearing. For many people, these customs became a way of the past and even an embarrassment. Barradas’s style was dismissed as touristy, folkloric, or passé. Why play jarana, a traditional Son Jarocho instrument, when one could play the electric guitar? However, the late 1970s and ’80s saw new interest in rural Son Jarocho. This was due to the rescate (rescue) movement, whose mission was the revitalization of marginalized rural traditions. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Son Jarocho tradition had again exploded in popularity not only in Veracruz but all over Mexico and among Mexican/Chican@ youth in the United States. There now exist two separate schools of Son Jarocho, one imagined as more commercial and the other imagined as more traditional. Each school questions the other’s legitimacy, and each is largely unappreciative of the other’s history. In truth, both have responded to the demands of their respective times. The two schools share many similarities; technology, popular culture, and the commercial music markets have affected the image and performance dynamics of both. The greatest similarity is in the schools’ origins; both arose from love of their homeland and its deeply rooted music. Music has never respected borders, and Son Jarocho is no exception. So, too, is this book a transnational creation of four collaborators: two musicians and two scholars. It has involved shared writing, critique, translation, transcription, tons of coffee and pan dulce, and extensive travel between Mexico and the United States. Our collaborative discussions consumed hours, weeks, years, as we wrestled with each segment of the manuscript. As a collective, we examined and refined our individual contributions, viewpoints, and experiences. We are happy to begin with Mario Barradas’s oral history. Following Barradas’s lifetelling, each member of our team contributes an analytical text on aspects of Son Jarocho and Barradas. The first contribution is by Francisco González,

Introduction

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who explains the genesis of this project: his apprenticeship and friendship with Barradas, which spanned more than fifty years. A Chicano musician from East Los Angeles, González examines the Son Jarocho factions that developed in the 1980s. He has harvested the Mario Barradas legacy in two ways: he recorded the oral history featured in this book, and as a master harpist, he has paid tribute to Barradas’s musical importance. Yolanda Broyles-González, an elder of Tucson’s Barrio Libre Yaqui ceremonial community, is an ethnic studies performance scholar. Her essay positions Son Jarocho within an Indigenous knowledge system as a poetic community manifestation of Indigenous land-based roots and sensibilities. The essay contextualizes Son Jarocho within the mutually sustaining relational elements of a larger ancestral knowledge system: the memory arts of Indigenous America. Broyles-González highlights Son Jarocho’s connectivity to the land base, expressed with rich nature imagery that brings forward a love of the physical environment, and that includes social justice demands. Son Jarocho challenges colonization, builds community, and asserts ancient ties to the land base in both Mexico and the United States. Broyles-González translated the book’s Spanish-language portions into English. All translations are hers, unless otherwise noted. Rafael Figueroa Hernández, whose personal and scholarly roots are in Sotavento, Mexico, edited the Spanish-language narrative. He also prepared the Mario Barradas discography. Figueroa’s essay examines the relation between Barradas and the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, beginning in the 1940s. He follows Barradas’s childhood experience of the film Huapango in 1938 and continues with an assessment of Barradas’s involvement with film media as a musician from 1946 to 1979. This book was born amid border crossings, recording sessions, pláticas y sones (conversations and sones), instrument making, string making, academic dialogues, all-night fandangos, the Chican@ movement, Mexican migrations northward, Chican@ migrations southward, and the rescate movement of Son Jarocho. It is with great joy that we affirm our ancient continent without borders, especially at this time when politicians and white supremacists criminalize migrants at the US-Mexico border as “invaders.” We present this volume as part of an American music history that thrives outside the academy.

Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

CHAPTER 1

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music Mario Barradas

Life in Sotavento Veracruz My Family I was born on January 19, 1926, in Tierra Blanca, Veracruz. My mother’s name was Luisa Murcia Durán, and she was from a town called Tlacojalpan. Not Tlacotalpan, but Tlacojalpan, a requinto town.1 My mother was very much a dancer because in the requinto towns people love to dance. They would sometimes even set up the tarima right next to the train platform.2 There, musicians played son viejo at a slow pace.3 Sones sometimes lasted two hours each. According to my father, my maternal grandparents were thought to be from Galicia because their last name was Murcia. My maternal grandfather was Juan Murcia and my maternal grandmother was Isabel Durán. My parents met in Tlacojalpan, which is now called Otatitlán. After getting married, they moved to Tierra Blanca, where my father bought a small plot of land and built a house, which still stands to this day. We were twelve children, and my mother toiled all day. When my father worked in the afternoon, she took him his dinner, and when he worked in the morning, going in at seven, she took him his breakfast. On my mother’s side we have family in Playa Vicente, Loma Bonita, Tlacojalpan, El Santuario, Tuxtilla, and El Obispo, which was the name of a nearby railroad station. On my father’s side, the Díaz family is from Juachín; my father used to tell us we shouldn’t go to that place because the family had too many enemies there. My father passed away first, and my mother afterward. My mother stayed in Tierra Blanca with her family until her death. They are both buried in Tierra Blanca. Not one of my mother’s siblings is left. Only the memory of my mother remains. My father, Manuel Barradas Díaz, was born in 1899. He worked his way 1

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

into a permanent position with the railroad by 1927. He was a boiler worker on the night shift, from midnight to seven in the morning, for fourteen years. After that, he worked the day shift until his retirement. My father told me about my grandfather, Pedro Barradas. My grandfather was a cattle rancher, but my father had never met him. When my father, Manuel, was at his mother Calixta’s ranch, he would drive cattle from one place to another. On one of these trips, he delivered them to a man in La Mixtequilla who turned out to be his father—my grandfather. My grandfather had abandoned my grandmother, Calixta. That’s why my father didn’t know him. When they did meet, my grandfather Pedro treated my father very well. They conversed, and my father mentioned that he wanted to learn to play harp. Pedro told him to stay there with him, that a skilled harpist, El Negro Carmona, lived nearby and could teach my father. My father did not agree to stay because Pedro had abandoned my grandmother and the children. My father returned home and never saw my grandfather again. I am going to talk a little about my father’s brother, Santiago Barradas Díaz. He played harp; he really loved the harp. Around 1926, he and my father started working on the railroad tracks as day laborers. They earned between eighty and ninety centavos an hour, starting at six in the morning, working twelve-hour shifts. They had no medical services and no hospitals. There was nothing. My father, Manuel, wanted to play harp, but my grandmother would tell him, “No, no, you shouldn’t play harp. Santiago plays harp, so you should learn to play jarana.4 That way you won’t have to look outside the family for someone who plays jarana. That way the money stays here. If you earn five pesos, you don’t have to give half to someone else.” In order to learn jarana, my father and uncle had to saddle up their horses and ride more than five kilometers to their lessons. They say my father only went once, and from that one lesson he learned to play jarana, even though it had gut strings that easily went out of tune. They say my father took a pencil with him, and when the jarana teacher showed him how to tune, he marked the strings over one of the frets when it was in tune. After my father did that, he could tighten the strings until the pencil marks reached the right place. My father never went back to the jarana player. My uncle Santiago was so obsessed with the harp that he ended up dying from lung illness. My father used to say that they would get home after working twelve hours on the train tracks, and my uncle would grab the harp and forget to eat. He ruined his health and died young of pulmonary illness. That was Santiago Barradas Díaz, my father’s brother. El Santuario is a requinto town; its people played only requinto and jarana.

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 3

My father played there during the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910. The rebels would arrive and say, “Manuel, play me this one, play me that one.” It was all music for dancing. The rebel forces would leave before dawn. They were afraid of the government’s soldiers because when the government soldiers came, the shooting would start, so they would tell my father, “We’re leaving. How much do we owe you?” My father would say, “You don’t owe me anything.” But they would take out their money belts and pay him. They would give him gold coins—two, three, even four—because their belts were full. That was more than enough. The sun would rise and the rebels would leave. My father said that the rebels stole a new harp from him, one that hadn’t even been played. He had bought it in the Port of Veracruz from a man named Don Tañón, who made harps. The harp had cost twenty-five pesos. In those days, my mother lived on the ranch with many women. My mother was among the youngest. When the rebels came, they took her oldest sister. They said they would come back for the other sisters later because they were still too young. After fifteen days, the rebels released my aunt and she came back. My grandfather was a friend of General Moisés Vidal and told him that the rebels had stolen one of his daughters, that she had returned. “I only came to let you know,” my grandfather told the general. The general said, “I want you to come back tomorrow at nine in the morning, along with your daughter, so I can assemble my people. If the person who did this is among them, there will be punishment.” The next morning my aunt identified her kidnapper among the assembled troops. “That’s him,” she said. “What do you want me to do?” the general asked. “Kill him!” And they killed him, right in front of my aunt. Later, when she was already very old but couldn’t die, people would say it was because she hadn’t forgiven that rebel. We were a family of twelve children, but of the twelve some died at three or four months old. One of my brothers died from parasitic worms. They gave him medicine for the worms, and he suffocated when they came out of his mouth and nose. His name was Aquilino Barradas. He was my companion, the next one born after me. After him came the rest, which were Francisco, Andrea, Pilar, Adolfina, Plácido, Carlos, José Gabriel, and Fructuoso. My uncle, Aurelio Ramos, lived in Matías Romero, Oaxaca. His wife, Juana Gallegos, was from Espinal. She could cure all illnesses. Once, I stayed in her house, and I found out how she did it. I accompanied my uncle to look for his cattle and we returned late, around eight o’clock that night. My uncle told me

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not to go home, that I should stay at his house, and so I did. Around midnight my aunt got up and knocked three times on the door and summoned the Devil. She had a pact with the Devil, so he would give her work as a healer. The next day, many people came to get healed. She had started saying her prayers and didn’t realize that I was awake. I thought she was going to fly, because they say witches can fly, but nothing happened. I told my parents what had happened, and from that day forward we rarely visited those relatives. Working for the Railroad My father began working for the railroad after I was born, in 1927. He retired in 1963 as a boiler worker, with a special salary. I did his paperwork for him in Mexico City. I filled out his papers because he had more than the thirty years of service needed to retire with one hundred percent of his salary. While living in Tierra Blanca and working for the railroad, my father became nostalgic for the ranch and bought a mare. He kept her in a stable, and I went with him every day to find fresh grass to feed his horse. He had a stopwatch to time her because he was going to race her. He knew her abilities; he knew the time it took her to run two hundred yards or three hundred yards. My father once let someone borrow his mare, and she was used to steal cattle. The man who borrowed her took her around ten o’clock at night and returned her at five or six in the morning. But she arrived sweating from all the chasing and from herding stolen cattle. Later, that man asked to borrow the horse again, but my father refused. My father had his plot of farmland. When I was young, I would ride with him on the back of the mare, and we would harvest corn along with two or three friends who he would pay a little something. He had a blacksmith shop where he would do work for the people working the land. He would make plowshares, for example. When a plowshare wore out, the workers would come to him and he would make them another one. That’s how he earned extra money. My father dreamed of returning to the countryside ranch where he had been raised. But it wasn’t possible. What my family had owned before—cattle, horses, land—the rebels stole all of it during the Revolution. That’s why my father came to Tierra Blanca to work for the railroad. He only made five pesos per day, but the pay was reliable. La Rama When he was nineteen, my father was playing in Tlacojalpan, and the requinto players invited him to carry the tree branch, or sacar la rama,5 as it is called. To

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 5

this day, many good requinto players are born in that area. In December they begin to carry the tree branch called La Rama on the day of the first Posada,6 on the sixteenth of December. They call it La Rama because you cut a branch and you decorate it. They would begin in the town of El Santuario, and after walking through the entire town, they would go to the next town, and the next, and they wouldn’t finish until February 2, at La Candelaria in Tlacotalpan.7 They would sleep a little bit and then get up, straighten themselves out, and again start walking through the towns. People would forget to go to work. During that season nobody worked. My father only lasted eight days. He said, “Eight days was all I could take with them. I couldn’t take the lack of sleep.” The others kept going with the requinto, jarana, and tarima [wooden dance platform], dragging everything with them. Rutilo Parroquín once had me practically sequestered at El Santuario. We had paraded La Rama, and at the end he told me, “We collected sixty pesos. What do you want, money or bottles of liquor?” I answered, “If you don’t mind, I prefer the bottles. What do I want the money for?” They wouldn’t let me leave, and I stayed with them for four days or so, during the time of the Posadas. In Veracruz, La Rama, from December 16 until Christmas Eve, is about the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some of the verses praise the Lord. Since my mother was from Tlacojalpan, she really liked everything having to do with La Rama. She was an enthusiast. Every year she would tell me to prepare a branch, and then she would hire a friend to carry it. I couldn’t do it because I had to take the harp. We would start in our neighborhood, and from there we would go toward the center of town. We took a little box to put the money in, and we would start walking. At the houses you stop at, they give you sweet fried hojuelas or other fried pastries;8 they hand out honey, food, and tamales. They give you whatever they are making for themselves. We would stop at the houses to sing La Rama, and once we reached the center of town we would go to the stores to play and sing, and they would gift us things. We took a basket to gather all the stuff. We would make four, five hundred pesos, and at the end we shared the money. The next day, as soon as it got dark, we would go out again to sing La Rama. All of us dressed like Jarochos. We wore denim jeans, guayaberas, and Jarocho straw hats. The Railroad Workers Pitch In and Buy My Father a Harp As part of his railroad work, my father transferred to the town of Matías Romero, in the state of Oaxaca. We lived in the Rincón Viejo neighborhood. A man from Tierra Blanca lived there, a railroad worker named Vicente García.

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Since García knew that my father played, he made a harp for him. He told my father, “Let’s see, try it out and see how it sounds.” My father played that harp, although he eventually gave it back because it didn’t work. It sounded terrible. But while he was playing it, I was listening. One day I put a nail in the wall and put a harp string on it. I was about ten years old, and I began to pluck the string along with what my father was playing, and he said, “This one is going to be a musician.” Since that harp wasn’t any good, the other railroad workers all pitched in and gave my father money for a new one, which he ordered from Tierra Blanca. The man who sold him the harp was Agapito Quevedo, a Son Jarocho harpist. He was already quite old when my father asked him to find a harp. Agapito said he would sell my father his harp because he wasn’t going to play it anymore. He sold it for forty-five pesos. When the delivery notice arrived from the express train, I went to pick up the harp. But when I got it to the house, my father couldn’t find the tuning key. He said, “Without it, I can’t tune the harp.” It didn’t occur to him that the railroad’s blacksmith shop could have made him a tuning key. Instead, he wrote to Don Agapito Quevedo, all the way over in Tierra Blanca. After eight or ten days, Quevedo responded, “Manuel, the key is tied to a bass string below, inside the harp.” And there it was. On that harp, my father learned to play music from Oaxaca: “La sandunga,” “La Llorona,” and other songs such as “La bruja.” He also played “Espejito compañero” and other songs by Lorenzo Barcelata, such as “La jaibera,” which in those days was at its peak of popularity. In his first years as a railroad worker, my father was simultaneously a musician. Once, he rode his mare to Vista Hermosa to play with my uncle Benjamín Ramírez, who was harvesting corn and rice. My father began to play, but a little past midnight, the harp started breaking strings, and no one knew why. I had been told that putting a rattlesnake rattle inside an instrument makes it sound stronger, so I had put one in my father’s harp, but my father didn’t appreciate that. He gave me a powerful scolding. Growing Up: Trains, Sugarcane, and Jarocho Harp It was wonderful to leave by train from the Port of Veracruz at 9:45 in the morning, toward Oaxaca. That route was called Veracruz to the Isthmus, VCI.9 It went all the way to Suchiate, in Chiapas, passing through towns including Medellín, Boca del Río, and Paso del Toro. It would arrive at Tierra Blanca during the lunch hour, around 1:45. At that point, if the locomotive had anything wrong with it, workers would repair it. Since they had a telegrapher, they

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 7

would send a message to the superintendent. The stop in Tierra Blanca was only forty-five minutes long, so they had to be ready. From there, Jamapa was next, then Tres Valles, Loma de San Juan, Vista Hermosa, and Rodríguez Clara. In all those places, they played Son Jarocho slowly. There was no harp, only requinto and jarana. Then came the towns of Isla, Villa Azueta, Achotal, and the train would arrive in Jesús Carranza around eleven at night. It would get to Matías Romero at two in the morning. The next stop was Ixtepec, and the train would arrive at Suchiate in daylight. The route was 325 kilometers, and the train never went faster than sixty kilometers per hour. It was very beautiful. Now the railroad is gone. All those towns that were sustained by the railroad, well, they were left floundering. When I was learning to play the harp, my parents sent me to Playa Vicente to learn about business. I wasn’t with the railroad yet. My mother’s family—my aunts and uncles—owned a store, a billiard hall, a bar, and a soda fountain. My parents sent me there. I was already playing the harp, but I didn’t take a harp with me, or anything else. Sometimes I worked as a coime, the person in charge of the billiards. Other times I was a clerk in the store. I didn’t like it when my relatives would send me all the way to the Tesechoacán River to bring water. I had to walk six hundred meters with large tin cans to look for water. I would tell myself, “Well, I came to learn the commerce business, but they send me looking for water.” What had happened is that the lady who lived across the street used to give them water, but they had a falling out with her and I was the one who paid the price. After about six months, I was desperate to return to Tierra Blanca. Even though I only knew around eight sones—slow sones— and one or two boleritos,10 I wanted to continue playing the harp. Learning about business really didn’t interest me. Every day I thought, “What can I do to return to Tierra Blanca without hurting my family’s feelings?” One day I finally came up with a plan. In the spot where I fetched water, the river was deep and the bank was just steep rocks. One day, I went to the river and came back without the water cans. My family said, “What happened to you? What happened?” I told them, “I almost drowned! I bent down to get the water and I slipped. I thought it best to just let the cans go. The only things left were the stick and the chains, but the cans were taken by the water.” “Well,” they said, “it happened. It’s done!” I waited about fifteen days, so as not to tell them right away that I wanted to return to Tierra Blanca. Then I told my uncle, “So, I want to go back to Tierra Blanca. Can I, or what?” “Yes, son. If you feel like you want to go back, why not? Take down four

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

shirts, four pairs of pants, and two pairs of shoes.” They furnished me with everything and even gave me a little money. They put me on a riverboat at Playa Vicente. It took me to Villa Azueta, where I waited for the train, which finally got me back to Tierra Blanca. That was around 1940. I was fourteen years old, and I didn’t go to school. I pursued the harp, and I studied radio because I wanted to be a radio technician; I took courses at the National School by correspondence. However, I couldn’t progress because our electric current wasn’t strong enough. I relied on the electric current from the railroad, and it was as low as thirty or forty volts, never reaching a hundred volts. Around that time, my father, along with my uncle Benjamín Ramírez, decided to produce panela—raw sugarloaf—from sugarcane. They had to make their own equipment to transform cane juice from a liquid to a solid form. The equipment was called a tren de hacer panela, a series of tanks where you put the sugarcane juice. It flows from the sugar mill, where they press the sugarcane. You start processing the sugarloaf when the boiling cane juice develops froth. That juice is called agua de cachaza. They had molds that you would fill to form the panela. On his days off from the railroad, my father built the metal production line for my uncle Benjamín. I helped him cut all the sheet metal. I used a chisel because the sheet metal was thick. You had to chisel it all by hand. Since my father only did that work on his days off, he left all the cutting to me. We riveted the sheet metal together, and my uncle worked making panela. After so many days of cutting sheet metal, my hand started to swell. I was a young boy, and I wasn’t gripping the chisel tight enough; the impact bruised my hand. It began to swell and swell until my father saw that it needed to be treated. He took me to the nurse, and she cut my hand open with scissors. A lot of pus came out of my hand. She cured me, but she said I wouldn’t be able to play harp with that hand anymore. Fortunately, my hand healed very well, and after a while I started practicing the harp again. It healed perfectly. Around eight or nine in the morning, I would leave home to load sugarcane for the sugar mill. I would make two or three trips a day to the fields. Making brown sugarloaf was grueling work. Sometimes it would rain, and the oxcarts carrying the sugarcane would get mired down. The men would have to gather three pairs of oxen to pull one oxcart. The workers suffered, but the store owner would profit; he was the one who took in all the money. That’s why I didn’t like that work. I didn’t like the fields either. Sometimes you were assigned a task such as clearing a thirty-meter square of cane field. Imagine clearing all that with just a machete. You sometimes had to chop trees, all with a machete. There weren’t any chainsaws.

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 9

I would cut cane for my uncle and transport it in the oxcart. One day, I loaded the oxcart with the usual twenty-five cane bundles. I was alone, and I only had a little dog to keep me company. I loaded everything but forgot to secure the pole shaft that lets you turn and unload the oxcart. The little dog was already on the cart, so I gave the oxen a nudge with a stick. They began to pull, and when they got moving everything started falling to the ground! The oxcart got away from me, along with everything else, including the little dog. I finally finished reloading the oxcart, and when I got back to the house it was already dark. My uncle Benjamín’s ranch was in Vista Hermosa, but later he sold it and moved near a railroad station called Vicente, in Oaxaca. He bought himself some land, and my father went to play there on my uncle’s saint’s day. I stayed with them for a while, and they gave me a team of oxen I could use if I wanted to go bring sugarcane. I remember I had two oxen that were very tame. One was called Granizo and the other was called Faisán. For most of 1941, I would go home to Tierra Blanca on the weekends. There was a daily train that left Córdoba and went to Tierra Blanca, a side route that no longer exists. After almost a year, I returned home to Tierra Blanca. I had gone to a private school there because my father paid for it—four pesos a month for each of us kids. It was a special school, very good, with a very strict teacher. After six or eight months, I moved on to the second grade because at that school you didn’t have to stay the full year in any grade. You could go on to the grade level in which you were capable of doing the work. I was doing really well, but when we moved to Matías Romero in 1935 there was a different teacher, and it just wasn’t the same. I couldn’t understand the teachings anymore. When we were back in Tierra Blanca one day, my father asked me, “Will you continue your studies, or do you want to work?” I told him I wanted to work, but I didn’t tell him why. I noticed that the railroad labor was hard on my father. Also, he earned only five pesos a day. I wanted to help him, and I wanted to help the family. There was a problem with my becoming a railroad worker; in Tierra Blanca you had to bribe an official from the Railroad Workers Union, even if you were the son of a railroader. I think the bribe was three hundred pesos, and even then the job wasn’t a sure thing. My father earned sixty pesos biweekly. So raising three hundred pesos was very hard to do. But one of my uncles, Roberto Barradas, was with the railroad. He was a boiler worker in Jesús Carranza, which is near Matías Romero. My uncle and the foreman had been buddies since Tierra Blanca, and the two of them were like bosses. My uncle told me, “I will help you. I’m going to Mexico City; when I return you’ll come with

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

me to Jesús Carranza.” So my uncle stopped by on his way home from Mexico City, and he took me with him. We arrived in Jesús Carranza around eleven at night, and he introduced me to the foreman. Just then, an electrician came in and told the foreman, “My assistant didn’t show up to work.” “Yes he did,” the foreman answered. “Here he is. He’ll start working now.” It was February 4, 1942. I started working the night shift, from midnight to seven in the morning. I didn’t need to pay a bribe or anything. I only had to fill out some hiring papers, which were sent to Matías Romero, where the bosses put you on payroll. They made the worker lists, and I began to collect my pay. I would only get about four shifts biweekly, but I stayed on. Once I was settled in, I returned to Tierra Blanca for my harp, and I would practice in my uncle’s house in Jesús Carranza. In Jesús Carranza there were only requinto players. They didn’t know the harp. By chance, some day laborers from the track heard me playing. It was a father and his sons who were working on the tracks, putting in some railroad ties. The father played requinto and his sons played jarana, so they invited me to a fandango, to be held right there at the train station. He asked, “Can you come on Saturday? We’re going to play.” I knew a few sones, and so at seven in the evening the fandango began: two jaranas, the requinto, and the harp. Around ten at night, I glanced behind me and saw jaranas of all sizes. But I was the only harpist. Finally, around three in the morning I told the father, “I’m leaving now because I have to go home early to my uncle’s place.” I only worked when someone didn’t show up, whatever I could get. One day the foreman, who played requinto, asked me, “They didn’t assign you any work?” “No,” I answered. “I’m still waiting.” “Come over here with us.” I didn’t know how to do his job. You had to fit the railroad ties and then pound a thin nail with a sledgehammer. It took practice. The foreman told me, “Don’t worry, and just fit the ties for now. After we finish the work, we’ll nail them in.” There I was, doing the work called fitting, putting a little dirt under the ties with a big trowel. I worked the next day, and the next, and the next, until the eighth day, when the foreman paid me around fifteen pesos of pure 0-7-20 silver,11 under another laborer’s name. From that point on, I started building up my worker’s rights and privileges. I went to Matías Romero to file my paperwork. I took my birth certificate and all my documents, and I became an extra worker. A short time later they sent me my credentials from the Railroad Workers Union. I got my membership and my worker’s rights. That was on February 4, 1942.

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In 1942, when I was sixteen, I went to work at Jesús Carranza, which was the last railroad terminal in Veracruz. Beyond that was the state of Oaxaca. I remember something else that happened around that time. When we’d finish working and were sweating, we’d all gather around a big water tank and drink water from its faucet. One day, the foreman told me I had to wash out that tank. “You can wash it in two or three hours,” he said, “then you’re done for the day.” You can imagine my surprise when I uncovered it; the tank had about half a meter of mud, and it was filled with small insects that we called “little needles.” I washed it out, but I never drank from that faucet again. The railroad sends out announcements so the extras can apply to fill vacant posts. In time, some of those announcements arrived; there were posts for an assistant to the undercarriage workers, who fix the trains’ undercarriages. I got one of those posts, in Matías Romero, in Oaxaca. Other workers from Tierra Blanca also received posts there. So I found a lot of my countrymen from Tierra Blanca. I rented a small room with one of them, Ernesto Torrealba, in order to save money. Meanwhile, I worked to procure a transfer from Matías Romero to Tierra Blanca. But since Matías Romero is another division, the southeast division, I couldn’t transfer to Tierra Blanca so easily. I had to exchange posts with someone, and no one was willing to do that. I really wanted to be back in Tierra Blanca, to continue listening to harpists, because over in Matías Romero all you heard was guitar and marimba. What could I learn there? I had to collect signatures from the Tierra Blanca workers so that the change could be made. But that took a lot of work. There I was among them like a beggar, asking them for their signatures. Ernesto Torrealba helped me a lot since he was one of the directors in Tierra Blanca. “Don’t worry,” he told me. “We’re going to get everybody here to sign so you can come to Tierra Blanca.” In the end I was only missing one signature. When I told my mother, she said, “What’s the name of the one that doesn’t want to sign?” “His name is Vidal Flores,” I said. “Vidal is my godson. Tell him to sign it right away, or I’ll go see him myself.” So, I went and told him, “Hey, Vidal. My mother says for you to sign here.” “Your mother is my godmother? I’ll sign it right, right now.” With that signature I was able to return to Tierra Blanca and work there on the railroad. I worked in all the positions. I was a stonemason, building the fire vaults from which streams of tar flow out. I was a fireman, the one who lights the boilers. I was the messenger, who calls the workers whose shifts are ending. I was also a road assistant, a machinist, and a blacksmith. The place where

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

I never liked to work was the foundry. In the foundry, if some molten steel squirts on you, it will burn through to the other side of you. Whenever they told me to go to the foundry, I preferred to lose that day’s work. My Early Years in Music I was eleven or so when I started playing the harp. My father would listen to me play, come over, and say, “Do it like this, because that’s the way it is. Do it like this, look.” That’s the only thing he would say. I do the same with my students. Even if I am not nearby, if I hear something that is not right, I soon return to correct them and tell them, “Please don’t keep doing that.” That is very important, in order to keep the student from getting cocky and believing in their mistakes. You have to get their attention right away and tell them “stop it.” When you make an error, start over, and try until you get it right. When I was older, I would go outside at five o’clock in the afternoon, and I would practice under a lemon tree. I would put away the harp at ten-thirty, when the train whistle blew, because I knew my father would soon return from work. When he arrived, I would already be asleep. I wasn’t supposed to play at the first dance I played at. My father was supposed to play. A railroader from Tierra Blanca organized the dance. He was nicknamed La Coneja [The Rabbit] because he had a lot of children. La Coneja would fatten pigs, butcher them, and sell the meat during the day. In the evenings, he’d organize private salon dances for profit, and all the railroad workers would show up. He did this biweekly, on the workers’ paydays. My father charged fifteen pesos to play for a whole night. Once, he was chosen to play for La Coneja’s dance. My father’s jaranero [jarana player] arrived at our house around five in the afternoon, and he rehearsed with my father. Then we went to the dance, which was about three hundred meters away. They played, and around eleven at night my father told me, “Well, play a song.” I told him no, but he made me do it. I started playing “El manicero.” After “El manicero” I played the next one, and then the next. I would make the songs longer so as to take up more time. It was three in the morning, and my father hadn’t shown up to take over on the harp. By six o’clock, only the older people remained, but I was focused and playing sones. After a while another harpist, Gonzalo Amador, who was coming from another dance, passed by and said, “Tell that man to pay you. Tell him that’s it.” So, I went and told La Coneja, “I’m finished.” “I’m going to give you three more pesos because you stayed for a longer time.”

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He gave me eighteen pesos! I gave the jaranero three pesos, like my father had told me to do, and the jaranero left very happy. The dance was over and I went home, where I found my father sleeping soundly. The next day my fingers were really hurting. When my father woke up, I told him, “Here’s the money from the dance.” But he said, “Keep it.” Making gut strings for musical instruments is a beautiful process. I know because I would accompany my father when he made gut strings. He would look for gut during the quarter waning lunar phase. If you don’t harvest the gut during that phase of the moon, the strings will break. It’s the same when you cut wood from a tree. If you don’t cut it when the moon is in its crescent waning phase, the wood will rot. My father used to say, “There’s a good moon right now, so I’m going to buy some gut.” He would buy the gut and take it away in a bucket. The best gut comes from sheep, but cow gut also works. First you take out the little inner thread; you use your fingernail to look for it, and you take it out. Then you scrape off the flesh and wrinkles, cutting from end to end. Sometimes little air bubbles will form, and you must use a needle to pop them. We would start at 7:00 a.m., and by 1:00 p.m. we were already stretching the strings according to the thickness needed for each bass string. If you want thick strings, you gather three, four, even five strands of gut and twist the strands together with a loop. Stretch the strings until they’re tight, and in about three minutes they are loose again. Then you have to retighten them. When the strings begin to stay tight, you sand them so that they come out round. After sanding, the string stretches again, and when the string is more or less ready, you rub beeswax on it with a chamois. Once it starts to squeak, you stretch it again. As soon as it becomes transparent, the string is ready to use. When you play gut strings regularly, your fingertips adapt to the gut, and they stay smooth. That’s why my father told me that at the dances, when someone from a ranch would arrive and would ask to borrow his harp, that person’s fingertips would usually be very rough. It was because that person didn’t play all the time. As a result, that person would fray all the strings; he would destroy them. When that person returned the harp, all the strings would be frayed. That’s what would happen with some harpists from Tlalixcoyan whose surnames were Chaparro. By the way, they weren’t by any means chaparro [short]. They were quite big and tall. When they got their hands on the harp, they would destroy the strings. What my father would do is lend them the harp close to the end of the dance. “You finish playing the dance.” He would say, “I don’t want to play the harp anymore because I don’t like it. It doesn’t sound good anymore.”

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Arpistas de Sones and Arpistas de Sala Around Tierra Blanca there were many harpists in places like Medellín, La Mixtequilla, Joachín, and Piedras Negras; those places were all harp towns. There are arpistas de sones (son harpists) and arpistas de sala (salon harpists). An arpista de sala will play all types of popular dance tunes at a private party. An arpista de sones will play only Son Jarocho, at the foot of the tarima, at a fandango. And in the early morning, that is to say two or three in the morning, he changes his tuning to minor. So be careful if you ask him to play a son in a major scale because you already know what he’s going to say to you. At dawn is when you play what is called la carretilla [the wheelbarrow], a series of sones performed one after another without stopping. One son can last half an hour, so it’s easy for a carretilla to last two or three hours. By the way, Lino Carrillo composed a Son Jarocho that’s called “La carretilla.” When it’s time for “El zapateado,” then the situation changes because it is not part of the carretilla. “El zapateado” is a serious son that is danced by couples. Later, in the early morning, the harpist tunes his instrument to a minor key and plays sones de madrugada [dawn sones]. If he is in, say, C major, he changes to C minor. Then the musicians have to play only sones in minor keys: “La petenera,” “El cupido,” “La morena,” “El cascabel,” “El coco.” All of those are minor. And from that point on, the harpist doesn’t change his harp. When I first started, I played at private social dances as an arpista de sala. I would go to ranches and I would perform boleros, waltzes, and other things, all for dancing. We also would do dedications because when you’re playing at those dances and you know that some cattleman is dancing, you would do a dedication to him: “Stop the music, stop the music. This danzón is dedicated to so and so . . . he’s a tough dude.” And right after that he would invite you for a drink. Around two in the morning, the homeowner or the host of the dance would ask me to play for the elders so they could dance. If you didn’t play something the elders could dance to, they would go home and take the young women of the family with them. So I would hit them with two or three sones, and they would let the young women stay until the dance came to an end. When I went to the ranches to play, they would send someone to pick me up in a horse-drawn cart. They would pick me up at nine in the morning in order to arrive at the ranch around two or three in the afternoon and have time to rest. The dance would start at seven in the evening. First I would play three or four sones. The dance would just be starting and there were no couples there yet. I would play only sones at first, and then the hosts would set off the invitational fireworks that invited all villagers. After that, the musicians got to

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eat dinner. Musicians had to dine very well because they had to last until sunrise. I would eat dinner, and apart from that I would only ask for some sherry with two egg yolks. I already knew that with that I could make it until sunrise. I would sit down with my little harp at seven, seven-thirty at night; I’d get up for a bathroom break around two in the morning. Then I’d brace myself again and play until sunrise. By then there were four or five men already tied up to posts because the police tied up those who got out of line. On one of these occasions a jaranero said to me, “I’m going to bring my wife along.” “Don’t,” I said, “because we’re going to work and you won’t be able to spend time with her.” “No, it’ll be fine; I’ll bring her.” “Fine, then!” I said. We arrived at the venue. His wife sat down next to him and we started to play. After an hour or so, a man asked her to dance. I played many pieces one right after the other. I hardly took a break. I played a set of five or six pieces, and that guy wouldn’t let go of her. “Hey look,” my jaranero told me, “he doesn’t want to let her go.” “I told you not to bring her. We came to work, and you can’t be taking care of her.” I let him suffer a while, and I played one piece after another until I finished the set. “I’m going to rest for a bit,” I said. “Go and tell the man in charge of the dance that she is your wife and that when that guy grabs her he doesn’t want to let her go.” My jaranero told the man in charge of the dance, and he told the police. As soon as the man came back to dance with her—and since he had been drinking heavily and was belligerent—they grabbed him and tied him up. At dawn he was still tied up, and around seven in the morning he was saying, “Let me go now, I’m okay, I won’t do anything.” That’s what would happen at the dances because they drank caña, distilled alcohol made from sugarcane, and also beer. In order to get around in Tierra Blanca, I saved up to buy myself a bicycle. Every biweekly payday I would save fifty pesos, which were blue bills called ojo de gringa [Anglo woman’s eye]. My Hércules bicycle cost me four hundred and fifty pesos, and it transported both Juan Rosales and myself. Juan would steer and pedal since he was bigger and stronger. Meanwhile, I sat on the back fender rack, carrying the harp. When we had to play in town, we charged six or seven pesos an hour. In three hours we had plenty of money because a pair of shoes cost five or six pesos. So in three hours we had enough to buy shoes.

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Requinto Towns and Harp Towns The towns my mother came from were all requinto-player towns, and the towns my father came from were all harp towns. Rodríguez Clara, Villa Azueta, Tres Valles, Ciudad Alemán, Isla, Loma Bonita, Tlacojalpan, El Santuario, Tuxtilla, Medias Aguas, Jáltipan, and Jesús Carranza were all requinto towns and had no harpists. In Tlacotalpan it was all requinto players until Andrés Alfonso [Vergara] came along with his harp. But if you move up closer to the Papaloapan River, Tres Valles and all that area, it was all harpists. That area that includes Tres Valles, Loma de San Juan, La Mixtequilla, Piedras Negras, Mata Espino, Las Charcas, El Jobo, Mata Gallina, the areas neighboring Tierra Blanca, was all harpists, El Jícaro and Estanzuela, too. In some places— Cosamaloapan, Alvarado, and Paso del Toro, for instance—it was mixed. One time, we were going to play for my uncle in Playa Vicente, and my uncle told us, “Listen, I hear a harp over there, but it sounds far. I’m going to investigate.” It was a man named Daniel Campos, who was dark like the people from around Yanga.12 He played beautifully, but he didn’t play for money. He just had his harp and played for his own enjoyment. My father introduced himself to him, and they became friends. You wouldn’t expect to find a harpist in Playa Vicente, but there were harpists spread out like that. Tierra Blanca and Son Jarocho Family Dynasties Tierra Blanca had Son Jarocho dances, also called fandangos,13 in each of the four zones of the city. In El Viejo zone, Juan Domínguez put on Son Jarocho dances even though he and his sons played marimba. There were also carnival rides and the like. Las Lomas de Jazmín had Son Jarocho dances, too. There were no carnival rides, but they did have all-night dances on Saturdays. On the other side of Tierra Blanca there was El Negro Tian, a Black man. There it was fandango, Son Jarocho dance, all Son Jarocho. Not a single bolero or anything else was played, only Son Jarocho. And over by El Ejidal, next to Cojinillo, they also had Son Jarocho dances. So, in Tierra Blanca in those days there were Son Jarocho dances in all four zones on Saturdays, with only harp and jarana. There were hardly any requintos, mostly just harp and jarana. The marimbol was used a lot in Tierra Blanca, but I never heard it used in Sones Jarochos. Those marimboles had four or five pitches, not the seven of the scale.14 The bass notes sound good on the marimbol, as if it were a harp. The Barcelata family that moved to Tierra Blanca was from Tlalixcoyan. Among them were Mocho, Indalecio, and Manuel. Eight or ten Barcelatas came to work on the railroad because Tierra Blanca was the railroad hub. Some

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of the Barcelatas were railway stokers; others were machinists. Chico Barcelata’s father, Rafael Barcelata, was Lorenzo’s brother,15 and they say he had a very good voice like the rest of them. Chico’s uncle, who was Lorenzo’s cousin, put him on the tracks, but Chico was on the frail side, very skinny. He couldn’t take it. In fact he caught malaria and decided he’d better go to the port city of Veracruz and dance zapateado. The Sosas were a family of musicians that lived near two railroad stations, Moreno Norte and Moreno Sur. They survived by playing on trains. They used harp, jarana, violin, and even a female dancer. Sometimes they had a requinto player, but those were difficult to find. They had to bring one from Tlacojalpan, El Santuario, or Tuxtilla. There were also Son Jarocho dances at El Yale,16 not far from Tierra Blanca. Indian women would arrive at those dances, carrying their children in cotton shawls. Upon arrival they would hang the children in the shawls from beams that had six-inch nails in them. And then it was time to dance! Once, I played there and I asked myself what if there is a fight or something, and those women have to run away? How will they be able to tell which child is theirs? At least ten or fifteen small children were suspended there. If people had to run out in a hurry, they might grab the wrong one. Another time, when I went to play at El Yale with Juan Rosales, we were promised forty pesos. But since the dance promoter’s profits were kind of bad, he told Juan he could only give us thirty-five pesos. Juan didn’t like that and had words with the man. When the dance was over, the man paid us the thirtyfive pesos, but he didn’t take us back across the river. So that quarrel cost us a wait of over three hours until someone from Tierra Blanca took us back across the river in their canoe. By 1935 there was a trio called El Trío Medellín that was playing the old sones. El Trío Medellín was one of the first groups to play on the radio station XEW. They played on it even before Andrés Huesca did. They weren’t even a trio but rather a duo comprised of Santana Vergara and his son Miguelito Vergara from Cosamaloapan, Veracruz. When I was nine, my family would listen to El Trío Medellín on XEW. It was in ’35 and I would hear the sones viejos played with requinto and jarana, without harp. That means that Son Viejo had come to Mexico City by 1935. There should be recordings at XEW. When we wanted to call our group Conjunto Medellín in 1948,17 we first went to see the Vergaras in the Santa Julia neighborhood in Mexico City. Señor Vergara told us, “You can do what you want with the name Medellín. I don’t think I’m going to play anymore.” Mr. Vergara was already elderly. His son was still young, but they didn’t want to continue with El Trío Medellín, which, like I said, wasn’t even a trio. It was a duo.

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In 1938 my father took us to see the movie Huapango in Matías Romero. There I recognized Galo Barcelata Chaparro, who was Chico Barcelata’s uncle, and also Lalo Montané, who was from a place called La Palmilla, where I believe Lino Carrillo came from. Lino also appeared in the movie. Lalo Montané had gone to Mexico City and was the main vocalist for the Arturo Núñez Orchestra. He sang duets with Beny Moré, but he also played harp, requinto jarocho, and jarana. Huapango was his first movie. Tachín Córdoba Uscanga also appeared in the film; he was the one who would carry the harp on his shoulder. That was his act. He would throw the harp on his shoulder while dancing traditional zapateado, playing and dancing. Work Outside of Tierra Blanca The first invitation I got to work outside of Tierra Blanca came from Bernardo Jiménez, who was from Tierra Blanca and has since passed away. Bernardo invited me to play in Boca del Río during Holy Week. He asked my father for permission. It was in Boca del Río that I met Ponciano Castro, a harpist; Andrés Alfonso, who hadn’t started playing harp yet; and another harpist called Carreón. Lalo Montané was also in the area, playing requinto. Also around that time, Andrés Huesca arrived at the Port of Veracruz with Paco Miller’s artistic caravan. Paco was a ventriloquist who had formed a touring caravan. In the Port of Veracruz, they performed in El Teatro Variedades on their way to Havana, Cuba. Andrés Huesca y Sus Costeños was just starting out, and I paid two pesos to see them at the theater. But I didn’t have the courage to go to the dressing room and say hello, so I only saw them from my seat. They left for Cuba and stayed there for a time. When they returned, one of the Huesca brothers died. His name was Juan. One day in 1943, I was in Matías Romero. Ernesto Torrealba, a friend from Tierra Blanca, was with me. He was just a boy at that time. I had my harp, and I was practicing. A Zapotec man passed by while I was playing, and I heard him say, “Ay, how beautifully that man plays!” He was from the other side of the river. I told him, “Do you think I’m going to stay in Matías Romero or Tierra Blanca forever? No! I’m going to go to Mexico City, to play on the radio, and to live over there.” And then he said, “Do you think Mexico City is a ranch?” “I don’t know if it’s a rancho, or what Mexico City is,” I told him, “but I’m going to Mexico City, and I’m going there to play.” I asked myself, “Why did I say that? Why did I tell him I would go to Mexico City?” That happened in ’43, when I was seventeen. By 1946 I was already at the Lírico Theater in Mexico City, playing with permission from the railroad. Ernesto Torrealba came to see me, and he said, “Well, are you a

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 19

prophet? You said that you were going to Mexico City, and look at you, you’re performing at the Lírico Theater!” But why and how could I have known that I would go to Mexico City to perform? What is that? Does one prognosticate or what? In Tierra Blanca, I played for very few pesos an hour. Hosts sometimes gave me one, two, or three drinks and then wanted me to stay all night. And if I didn’t, they’d get mad. A harpist by the name of Gonzalo Amador used to say that his countrymen would say, “Gonzalo, tomorrow I’m going to have a little party, and I’d like to invite you to come and eat, and bring the harp.” And Gonzalo would answer, “Are you inviting me or the harp?” They didn’t see the music for what it is. It was as if the musician had no value. That’s why I opted to get out of Tierra Blanca and come to Mexico City. I knew it would be different. The culture was different. From the Countryside to the City After playing in Boca del Río, Andrés Alfonso asked me for my address. He wanted to form a little group, which he called Conjunto Tlacotalpan. About twenty days after returning from Boca del Río, Andrés asked my father’s permission for me to go to Mexico City. We went, and one of the first performances we had was at the Lírico Theater. When Ernesto Torrealba came to visit me from Tierra Blanca, I entered the Lírico Theater with him through the artists’ entrance. Agustín Lara was behind us, and I told Ernesto, “Let me introduce you to Agustín Lara.” Agustín Lara was a big personality in those days, in 1946, and I greeted him, but he said to me, “Only the artists are to enter through here. Let the guests in over there.” After that, Ernesto didn’t care for Agustín Lara anymore because Lara said that. So it was 1946 when I was in Mexico City for the first time, with Andrés Alfonso Vergara. He hadn’t started playing harp yet; he played jarana and he danced. He would make the moño.18 He danced beautifully and even improvised verses and everything. Our little group was called Tlacotalpan and included Antonio Mata on the requinto, Filo Filovilarao on violin, Bernardo Jiménez on jarana de concha,19 myself on harp, and Andrés Alfonso as the jarana player and dancer. We started at the Lírico Theater with that group earning ten pesos a day. But it seemed to me—I don’t know if it was true or not—but it seemed to me that Andrés always had four hundred or five hundred pesos in his pocket, and we never had more than fifty. I decided that since I had work with the railroad and was close to securing a permanent position, it was better to return to Tierra Blanca. I went back that same year to work on the railroad. After three months or so, I secured a po-

20

Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

sition as a passenger car cleaner in Mexico City. But I wanted to work a little longer in Tierra Blanca, at least six months, to obtain the right to receive a two-year leave of absence without losing my worker’s rights. So I declined the position of passenger car cleaner and stayed in Tierra Blanca. In Tierra Blanca, they had the fiesta for Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12. The pastor would hire Gonzalo Amador, a sones harpist, and his jaranero, Juan Peña, who they used to call “La Zorra.” Amador played nothing but sones: “El siquisirí,” “El balajú,” “El pájaro cú,” and others. Then, a man from Chacaltianguis who worked as an express train loader would pass by around 11 or 12 at night and dance only two or three sones, “El toro abajeño,” “El buscapiés,” and “La bamba.” He only danced those three sones, but he would go home soaked in sweat. When I visited Tierra Blanca to see the sights, sometimes I stayed a month. There were times that I didn’t want to leave, but I had to return to Mexico City. After six months or so, Lino Carrillo came to Tierra Blanca wanting me to join Conjunto Tierra Blanca, which had been formed in Mexico City and had already booked steady performance work. So I decided to return to Mexico City once again. It was then that we recorded “Solo Veracruz es bello.” And we started to work the cabarets. We worked in practically all the cabarets that existed at the time: El Waikiki, Las Mil y Una Noches, El Montparnasse, El Víctor, El Astoria, El Pigalle, El Cartier—so many of them. After finishing a contract with one cabaret, we would get another contract, earning thirty-eight and a half pesos. In two years I became an active member of the National Actors Association, ANDA. To this day I retain my ID number 168, one of the first issued. We worked at El Waikiki, a cabaret that resembled a circus. It was a big tent on an empty lot, on the corner where the famous statue of El Caballito had been. Trío Los Panchos also worked there. There were Spanish dancers and also Chepilla y Su Conjunto Cubano for dancing. There were two variety shows, one at 1:20 and another at 3:30 in the morning, with two or so hours of dance music in between them. We would stay for three or four months in one venue, and since these cabarets often had the same owner, he would have another one ready for us. That was the nightlife of Mexico City. There wasn’t any television yet. But then along came a city manager named Ernesto Uruchurtu, and he took away Mexico City’s nightlife, shutting down cabarets and theaters, because he considered them immoral. Before those prohibitions took effect, Lino Carrillo had taken me to work in my first movie, La mujer de todos, starring María Félix, in March of 1946. We recorded “El fandanguito” with verses by Lino. They paid me seventy-five pesos, which was a great amount. Imagine: a complete dinner special used to

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 21

cost fifty centavos. Our first movie appearance as Conjunto Tierra Blanca was in Pasión jarocha, featuring Víctor Manuel Mendoza, and it was filmed in Alvarado in 1949. They took us there by train. When we went to collect our pay, it turned out there was no more money, and they didn’t pay us. In fact, when they screened the movie in Alvarado the people wanted to burn down the theater because the script was problematic. But nothing happened. The movie plot had the city of Alvarado asking Tlacotalpan for help during a flood. In reality it was the other way around. Whenever there is a flood, Tlacotalpan gets flooded and they come running to Alvarado. I hadn’t known Lino Carrillo in Veracruz. The person who knew his family well was my father. My father had met one of Lino’s aunts, who was named Daría, when he was hired to take some cattle to the area around El Santuario, near La Mixtequilla. Daría Carrillo gave my father coffee and food. Lino Carrillo was born in Tlalixcoyan, but he had family in Tierra Blanca. They were from the rancho, the rural part around the area of El Jícaro. I met Lino Carrillo when I first arrived in Mexico City. Lino played with Conjunto Tierra Blanca de Nicolás Sosa. He played violin, and later he started playing harp. Lino was the one who composed “El tilingo lingo.” That was the first son that he composed. After that it was “El jarocho,” “El huateque,” “La huastequita,” and “La yerbabuena.” He also composed a ranchera called “Mi prieta” along with many more.20 “El jarocho” also was a very good son. Lino composed new sones, but some were based on old sones, like “El huateque,” which resembles “La rama” or “El jarocho,” which is similar to “El siquisirí.” He would also compose sones and name them after sayings that were common here and there. For example, some would say to the young women, “Are you going to the huateque [party]?” So he composed “El huateque.” Some folks would say to him, “You’re really into that tilingo lingo stuff, no?” So he wrote “El tilingo lingo.” He also wrote one that was called “La longaniza.” He was inspired by the saying “Back then you could tie up dogs with sausage and they wouldn’t eat it.” Lino Carrillo was older than Lino Chávez and me, and he was a member of Los Hermanos Huesca until that group dissolved. When one of the Huesca brothers died, Lino Carrillo was passed off as a brother. There is a record of Huesca’s where you hear a high voice. That’s the voice of Lino Carrillo, in “María Chuchena.” Conjunto Tierra Blanca Conjunto Tierra Blanca dates from ’44 or ’45. Álvaro Hernández named the first group. He was from the port of Alvarado; he played guitar and was

22

Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

a fisherman. They called him pata de lija [sandpaper foot] because he walked barefoot and didn’t even wear leather sandals, so his feet were very rough. Later, the group advertised itself as Conjunto Tierra Blanca de Nicolás Sosa. I listened to that group with Nicolás Sosa when I lived in Tierra Blanca in the ’40s on radio station XEQ. In those days Julián Cruz Figueroa was the pregón [lead vocalist]. Nicolás Sosa was on harp, Pedro Hernández and Chico Barcelata played jaranas, and Lino Chávez hadn’t yet started playing the requinto. When I arrived in Mexico City and met Nicolás Sosa, they were already working in a cabaret earning twenty pesos a night. Later, I became the harpist for Conjunto Tierra Blanca and performed with them. Those cabaret shows always had an announcer. There was only one microphone, and that was the one used by the announcer. When the orchestra finished playing, he would say, “Next we have the variety show!” Then you knew your turn was coming. We would start with “El siquisirí,”21 and then we’d play no more than two sones without dancers. We would then play a warm-up son for the dancers. After that, we performed sones with zapateado. The strong ones were “El zapateado” and “La bamba.” We played “La bamba” first, and then we closed with “El zapateado.” We worked daily. There was no day off. For almost seven years we worked that way, the radio station in the morning and the cabaret at night. It is clear to me that Lino Chávez learned to play requinto in Mexico City. When I arrived for the second time, he was already learning. He played guitar very well, but he learned to play requinto in Mexico City because Conjunto Tierra Blanca only had jaranas. Lino’s compadre, Nicolás Sosa, told the group, “There’s nothing we can do but have my compadre learn requinto because we really need one.” Lino Chávez forged his own style, a truly beautiful and very precise style, even though he was missing the tangueo.22 He never used tangueo. He didn’t use the tangueo like, for example, Rutilo Parroquín. Even though Lino Chávez really liked playing the requinto, he told me he should have played the harp. But Lino couldn’t play harp, since he had crippled his left index finger. He had cut himself with a machete. The injured finger remained straight, and when he was in a good mood he would say it was an antenna. Lino Chávez returned to Veracruz. He opened a store, which prospered. We sent him letters because we really missed his requinto in our conjunto, but he didn’t want to come back to Mexico City for a long while. At one point, Lino came back from Japan, and he got sick from a bug he had picked up over there. They had to wash out his system several times. I told him, “I’m at La Casa de la Música Mexicana. If you want, I can talk to the director and get you a job teaching requinto classes.” “No,” he said. He decided to go to Xalapa because the mayor there was offering him work. “I’m going

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 23

to try it out there and see how it is.” And he left. I never went to visit him in Xalapa. He remained sick, and he died there in 1993. They then took him to Alvarado. That’s where the tomb of Lino Chávez is located. Survival Struggles in Mexico City In 1948, after our initial success, we started to struggle. We had a radio program on radio station XEX with Conjunto Tierra Blanca, but Conjunto Medellín still didn’t exist. They paid us seven and a half pesos per program, and it wasn’t enough to live on. When times were rough, we would hit the bars and restaurants and play songs on request. I didn’t care that folks saw me playing for money, song by song, doing what we call talonear. I needed money to eat and pay the rent because there was so little work. There was a man with a jarana who would come looking for me on Thursdays and Fridays. He would ask, “You don’t have anything to do?” Then he would say, “Let’s go, let’s go.” We would start at La Merced and wouldn’t stop until we reached La Villa.23 We would return by taxi because by then we were carrying a load. On another occasion I asked Lino Chávez to accompany me on jarana at a bar on Iturbide Street, behind the Chinese Palace Theater. I had met a man who owned an enormous bar, and he told me that I could play there any time I wanted. One time we earned forty pesos, and a breaded cutlet with potatoes used to cost seventy-five centavos. I told Lino, “Look, if we play here once or twice a week we’ll have enough to eat. We can buy a stick of butter, a saltshaker. When we earn enough, we can buy an avocado and some bread from the Chinese bakery around the corner. They sell it nice and warm! We’ll have what we need to make ourselves a buttered avocado roll. Lino only went once. But later I took Bernadino González, whom they called “El Venado” [The Deer]. But I couldn’t rely on him, either. I would go anyway, even alone, because I had to earn enough to eat. Lino Chávez and I lived in the Hotel Uruguay, which no longer exists. It was on Ayuntamiento and Bucareli Streets, and we paid four pesos a day. We were constantly in debt to the hotel, but God always helps. Benjamín Lagunes was from Paso de Ovejas, Veracruz. He would invite us to play at his home every month or every month and half. Miguel Alemán, president of Mexico at the time, would dine at that man’s house ever since he had been a presidential candidate. Señor Lagunes would come for us at the Hotel Uruguay in a brand-new Buick. We would be ready, dressed in our traditional guayabera shirts, everything nice and clean. He would ask the owner of the hotel how much we owed, and then he would tell us, “Everything is paid up; you don’t owe anything. Let’s go.” His house was in the Anzures neighborhood. We would arrive and play

24

Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

for the bosses who were there: President Alemán or the chief of police, whose name was Othón León Lobato. We ate well, and Lagunes would give us each fifty pesos at the end. After a month and a half, he would call us again. By then we would again be in debt for our rooms, he would again pay the bill. That same man took us to play in San Andrés in ’49.24 We left Mexico City around five in the morning in his Buick; we traveled in luxury. We arrived in Alvarado and had breakfast at a place where a man sold delicious stuffed crabs for one peso. Each one of us ate four or five crabs. When we finished breakfast, we had to cross the river. At that time, in order to cross the Papaloapan River you had to ride a panga, a large raft that took cars from one side of the river to the other. We got out and watched while the boatmen placed the car on the panga. As we reached the other side, one of our group members couldn’t talk; his throat closed up. I think he was breathing wrong. He was breathing through his mouth and the river water got him sick. He couldn’t sing for eight days. We arrived at San Andrés for a big wedding, and he just couldn’t sing. We suffered a lot at that time in Mexico City because Son Jarocho wasn’t popular at all. The only popular son was “La bamba” because Miguel Alemán had popularized “La bamba” by using it as his campaign song. When Alemán won and became president, he helped us out. Furthermore, among his staff, everyone was a countryman; they were people from Veracruz. One of the first things they gave us was a place to live at Bucareli 113, right next to the Secretariat of the Interior. It was a house where they held foreign prisoners, but it had empty rooms where inspectors lived. They helped us out by providing a small room, rent-free. Later, we started to record, and we had enough to eat. But in the beginning the situation was very difficult. Later on, Miguel Alemán provided all the members of Conjunto Tierra Blanca with a place to stay at police headquarters. We were designated as police officers, with the rank of lieutenant. We had identification cards and everything. That way we had a fixed salary, and we could play for the bosses. Every Saturday, we ate breakfast with Miguel Alemán at El Rancho del Charro, on the corner of Avenida Ejército Nacional and Schiller. We would eat and take breaks to play two or three sones. We socialized with Alemán because his right-hand man was Vinicio Ramón, our countryman from the town of Alvarado. How I Met Andrés Huesca When I arrived in Mexico City, Los Costeños had already been formed. The first time I saw Andrés Huesca was at a party in 1949. I asked him if I could play his harp. I wanted him to hear me play. I looked for his harp, and I told my fellow musicians Lino Chávez, Fernando Pérez, Andrés Alfonso, and the

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 25

others, “Let’s play. Andrés Huesca is here.” I started to play, and the audience started to whistle in protest.25 Then Andrés Huesca raised his hands to hush them. Once they were quiet, he composed a verse about me that I remember. At the end it said, “Aquí tienen a mi hermano / para lo que gusten mandar” [Here you have my brother / to do your bidding]. And with that, I played as much as I pleased until we left around midnight. Around 1950, I was playing with Conjunto Tierra Blanca. We were working across from Alameda Park, between Doctor Mora Street and Avenida Juárez. We were playing a variety show for Salinas y Rocha Company, a large furniture store. Later, during our lunch break, Andrés Huesca visited us. It was around two in the afternoon. Since it was lunchtime Andrés invited us to El Templo de Diana, a pulquería on Nezahualcóyotl Street. The owner was Andrés’s compadre, who provided snacks and pulque, lots of pulque. When it was time to work, we were so drunk that I could not play. Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to play very well, I told Andrés Huesca, “Now you play the variety show.” And Huesca played the variety show, right there at Salinas y Rocha. When Andrés Huesca first wanted to learn to play harp, his father was against it. I don’t know why. Huesca’s father was a merchant sailor. One day, Huesca’s father set sail and was gone for six months or so. When he returned, Andrés Huesca knew how to play the harp. That’s how Andrés Huesca learned harp. His brothers and sisters told me. He went on to become the most famous Jarocho harpist of my time. Andrés Huesca died on September 12, 1957. Since he died in Los Angeles, California, they had to bring the body all the way back from there. We waited for three days because they would say that he was arriving that day by air, that he was arriving the next day by train or the next day, and so on. Finally, he arrived. Conjunto Tierra Blanca went to the Panteón Jardín, in the Actors Union section, and we played “El siquisirí” when they lowered the coffin. Antonio Rosas Prieto, whom we called “El Gordo,” from Los Costeños just couldn’t sing. He tried but his throat closed up. The one who sang was another one of our friends, Eduardo Hernández Ruiz. He sang the call and we sang the response. The Formation of Conjunto Medellín Chico Barcelata and Lino Chávez were both members of Conjunto Tierra Blanca, and both wanted to be in charge. They were related. Their names were Chico Barcelata Zamudio and Lino Chávez Zamudio; they were cousins and compadres. When they married [their wives], they decided to live together in a

26

Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

larger apartment close to the XEW radio station. The idea was to save money, but it didn’t last. One day, we played for the bosses, and when we returned, Lino Chávez’s wife and Chico Barcelata’s wife had gotten into a fight. Chico Barcelata’s wife danced with the conjunto. It was Chico’s wife who told us we had to choose whom we would work with, either Chico or Lino. Four members decided to go with Lino. There were five of us in the conjunto, including Chico. So that is how Conjunto Medellín was formed from Conjunto Tierra Blanca. As soon as Conjunto Tierra Blanca was disbanded, Conjunto Medellín was formed, complete with the four elements: harp, requinto, jarana, and guitar. We registered our name with Actores, the actors union nicknamed ANDA. We signed up and the signatures are there to this day. Our group was called Conjunto Medellín, but later I believe the record company told Lino that there had to be a leader when they recorded. So they called it Conjunto Medellín de Lino Chávez. That was in 1949. Since Chico Barcelata and his wife were on their own, they went to Veracruz to look for musicians. No one in Mexico City was responsible enough to work in a conjunto like Tierra Blanca. So the Barcelatas went to Veracruz, and there they recruited the Trío Alvaradeño that played on the radio in Veracruz. Their names were Nacho Cano, Sebastián and Luis Rangel, and Lourdes García, the dancer. After a while, the Trío Alvaradeño returned home. Only one of them stayed. People Really Liked Those Recordings Our first recording as Conjunto Medellín was with the Huesca Sisters, around 1949. When we started our program on radio station XEX, we didn’t know Andrés Huesca’s sisters yet. They heard us and introduced themselves. They told us they were Huesca’s sisters, but because he was so mean and too picky to rehearse with them, they didn’t want to record with him. So we rehearsed with them because they already had an agreement to do the recording at Peerless, where Andrés Huesca recorded. We recorded two 45s, those little records, with “El Ahualulco,” “El cascabel,” and other sones. That was around 1949. We also recorded another song, composed by their brother Víctor, but it wasn’t included on the album. It was a ranchera by Víctor Huesca that said, Voy a navegar, voy a caminar para ver si así te puedo olvidar.26

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 27

After that first recording with the Huesca Sisters, Conjunto Medellín continued to record with the Vik label.27 Later, we recorded a lot for RCA Victor, a lot of numbers. They liked our recordings because we were so tight together. They didn’t give us a chance to hear our recordings, though. We wanted to record a song and hear it played back, to see if there were any mistakes. But the engineer would tell us, “Play the next one.” We’d tell him, “What do you mean play the next one? We want to hear what we just recorded.” He would say, “No, play the next one.” That’s how we recorded the Veracruz hermoso LP. We heard it only after it was finished. It was a great recording because we had a radio program every three days, and so our conjunto was very coordinated. The harp that I used for the first record had been made for me by my father, as a gift. It was a harp with the sound box hollowed out from a single piece of wood. It has a special sound; I also used it to record the second album, Veracruz. There was a period of at least a year between recordings. People really liked them; they copied what we did. Take “El pijul,” for instance; everybody played it the way we played it. They liked how we did “La guacamaya” and everybody wanted to hear it that way. And it’s normal that if a group records in Mexico City, the people who are learning will copy the style. If it seems good they’ll follow it. If not, they won’t. Our recording of “La bruja” [The witch] has its own story. We didn’t like that song because it was from Oaxaca, and it wasn’t a Son Jarocho. Lino knew the whole song. There came a day when we needed one more number and I told Lino, “Well, let’s record ‘La bruja’ and see what happens.” We recorded “La bruja,” and around six months later the album came out. At the Casino Veracruzano, which was where we played on Fridays, they started to ask for Bruja and Bruja and Bruja. It was such a hit that it became “naturalized” as veracruzana. Jesús Torres Díaz, Fernando Pérez, myself, and Lino Chávez played on that recording. The actual Conjunto Medellín consisted of Fernando Pérez, Lino Chávez, myself, and Enrique Márquez Vásquez, whom we called “El Indio Verde.” It was only the four of us. After we recorded Veracruz hermoso with Vik, the musical director, Guillermo Acosta, would send for us so we could take the album cover photo. “We’ll go tomorrow,” we would say. “We’ll go next week.” They got tired of waiting. They released the album, and we saw that there was a photo of some old man on the cover! We finally did have a photo taken, and we appeared on an album cover. Our photo was taken in front of the medical center, where there were many

28

Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

banana plants that don’t bear fruit but look like banana trees. That photo later came out on the two-harp album, which included “El canelo” and “Estampa jarocha.”28 The two harps were played by Jacinto Gatica and yours truly. The album of Conjunto Medellín with Jacinto Gatica—I believe that was the third one—was made when we still lived at the Hotel Uruguay, where we rehearsed and rehearsed. From there, we would go to the radio station. Gatica recorded with us, and I remember that he invented the slow introduction to “El canelo.” Gatica was from Michoacán, but he had traveled in Veracruz and to Tierra Blanca, meeting many people. He learned fast, but his style favored Michoacán. Reymundo Méndez—“El Carácuaro” as he was called—also recorded on the album ¡Que lindo es Veracruz! He was a young man with a high voice. Sadly, Gatica and Méndez were killed in a car accident after a performance in Orizaba. The car had bad tires, and one of them came off. The car veered into oncoming traffic and crashed into a heavy truck. Many Things Changed in Mexico City: Cabarets, Radio, Ballet Folklórico, Movies When we started working at the Casino Veracruzano, we were paid twenty pesos every Friday. They had everything from Veracruz: tamales de masa, tamales de elote, garnachas, and picaditas. It would fill up on Fridays, from nine at night until four in the morning. Both Conjunto Tierra Blanca and Conjunto Medellín would play there on Fridays. We didn’t miss it. Miguel Alemán went a few times when he was president of the republic. It was rare for a president to attend, but he did manage to go. We were the official group that played by the tarima. We would play for thirty or forty minutes and then rest. While we were on break, other groups took advantage and also offered to play their music for the customers. The customers would ask them to play two or three sones, and so they too would make some money. There was enough for everyone. Sometimes casino guests would tell me, “Hey listen, what I want is for you to play here at my table.” I would answer, “If you want us to play at your table, we will. But you’ll have to pay an extra fee.” The old Casino Veracruzano building is still there, but it’s no longer the Veracruz Casino. I believe it is now the archives of the state of Veracruz. The center that they established in place of the Veracruz Casino is now called the Veracruz Cultural Center. It is over on Miguel Ángel de Quevedo Street. On radio station XEX we had a program on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays or alternatively, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. We didn’t just play Son Jarocho. Sometimes we invited a violinist to play a Son Huasteco,29 or we’d

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 29

have a guest who sang rancheras. Every now and then, we had the Huesca Sisters on as guest performers, as well as a man from Michoacán who sang very beautifully. Of course, people in Veracruz wanted more Son Jarocho, but in Mexico City we knew we had to broaden our repertoire. If we didn’t, we would repeat “El siquisirí” every week. So we would do three different styles, which greatly expanded our repertoire, to the point where a month and a half would go by before we would repeat a Son Jarocho. We varied our repertoire because we had to appeal to a broader audience. Our programs were fifteen minutes long. But by the time the announcer was done, some of those minutes were gone and we had only eleven minutes left; that’s two or three minutes, if that, per song. Radio performance was very different from private performance. On the radio, you couldn’t extend your songs because the airtime was measured. This was not the case at private parties, where there was plenty of time. Later, we also played on television when it was just beginning. We played for a program sponsored by the Mexican Petroleum Company that paid fifteen pesos per program. The signal strength of radio station XEX was stronger than XEW. Because of this, there were problems between Emilio Azcárraga and Mr. O’Farrill, the two radio tycoons. Eventually, they agreed to cut the capacity of XEX so that it wouldn’t be stronger than XEW. Son Jarocho changed in Mexico City. I remember that in the movie Flor de sangre [1951] we played at a wake. In that movie, the lead character, played by Esther Fernández, is in a boat. She swims under the boat, is struck by the propeller, and dies. In the movie, we played “El colás,” but they changed the lyrics. Instead of singing “Colás, colás, colás y Nicolás” we sang “Llorar, llorar, venimos a llorar” [Cry, cry, we all came to cry]. In Veracruz, that is not done. My mother taught me some songs that are played when an infant dies; they’re called “los parabienes” [the well wishes], but those are antiquated. You only play them at wakes or at burials when the deceased has asked for that music to be played. Son Jarocho also changed when Ballet Folklórico adopted it. In Ballet Folklórico, they play Son Jarocho much faster. Conjunto Tierra Blanca was the founding group for Amalia Hernández’s ballet, and when at the end of a performance Amalia would say, “El zapateado” was too slow, and “El coco” was too slow, I would say, “Well, there’s no standard speed, so I can’t give you a standard speed. But I can make the son a little faster, more lively.” We started rehearsing with Amalia Hernández at her house on Guadalajara Street when she wasn’t yet at the Palace of Fine Arts. She received a work offer to do a season at Chopin Hall on Puebla Street. They paid us fifty pesos. We did that season with her at Chopin Hall, and after performing at Chopin Hall,

30

Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

President [Adolfo] López Mateos provided sponsorship. The first tours with the Ballet Folklórico began when López Mateos helped Amalia Hernández. He would transport us in Air Force planes. The first tour started in Canada. We played in Montreal, Québec, and Toronto. Then we traveled to New York, but we couldn’t perform because Amalia hadn’t obtained work permits. We spent fifteen days there. We were paid, but we didn’t work. From there we returned home. Later, we went to the Netherlands, where we met the royal family. Also with the help of López Mateos, the ballet became a resident company at the Palace of Fine Arts. Eventually I stopped going on big tours. I was building my house, and I didn’t want to leave it unattended. My brother Carlos went, but I stayed with the resident company. I did go on another tour with Lino Carrillo to Tampa, Florida. We stayed fifteen days in Tampa and then went to another place. We often toured Mexico, and sometimes we would inaugurate radio stations. In 1948, we accompanied Toña la Negra to Córdoba, Veracruz, to inaugurate a radio station. I also traveled with Los Costeños and Lino Chávez to the Million Dollar Theater in Los Angeles, California,30 around ’63, when Kennedy was assassinated. We even entered the Navy in 1956 and stayed for around nine years. We had gone to play at the Military Academy, and Roberto Gómez Maqueo, the secretary of the Navy, was there. President Ruiz Cortines told him to get us into the Ministry of the Navy, but the secretary of the Navy gave us jobs as waiters with very small salaries; I believe it was eight hundred pesos a month. And he ordered us to serve in Nuevo Laredo. The good thing is, there was a general in Nuevo Laredo who was a friend, and when we went to dine with him, he gifted us a little money and helped us transfer back to Mexico City. I lived on Baja California and Cuauhtémoc Streets when we had a live remote broadcast program. One of my cousins had heard I was in Mexico City, and he came to greet me after the show. We had never met before. After we introduced ourselves to each other as cousins, he invited me to Tacubaya, his neighborhood, to meet his mother, who was my aunt. I said, “Let me put away my harp and I’ll go with you.” That was when I met my aunt Carmen Murcia and her branch of my family. I started going to Tacubaya frequently, and it was there that I met my future wife. My future father-in-law really liked the harp, and I would go play for him, but I was really going for the daughter. After a while, we eloped, and I took her to Tierra Blanca. When we returned, we were married in Tacubaya, in the Church of San Miguel. She had turned fifteen and was going on sixteen, and I was already twenty-seven. I told myself that by age forty-five I would have my own house. I used to tell my wife, “Right now I’m

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 31

just starting out, but eventually I’m going to buy some land and I’m going to build a house.” You need to have the will to do things. My father used to say that if there is no initiative, there is nothing, and that is very true. When I got married, my wife didn’t know I was a railroad worker. I knew my railroad job wouldn’t pay me enough to build a house and live well. Fortunately, I was able to do both the railroading and the music. It took a lot of work and a lot of recording and a lot of will, but I did it. I built my own house. It took a great amount of work, and it took a great amount of patience to keep from returning once again to the Veracruz countryside, to my original job. The Art of the Arpero My late father started to build harps when he retired from the railroad. They were harps with a hollowed-out sound box, made of one solid piece of wood. They are special harps that are somewhat heavy, but the sound is very unique. Many of those harps are now in Los Angeles, California, or in Houston, Texas. They’re in many places. I didn’t start making harps until I had my own home, around ’62 or ’63. When I made my first harp, my father visited from Tierra Blanca, tried it out, and then he told me, “Well, you’ve taken off !” He meant that I was off to a good start, that I was making progress. He saw the harp and my craftsmanship, and he liked it. “Keep at it!” he told me. “You’re doing good.” To make a harp, you have to know the length of the first treble string and the last bass string, or bordón, as they say in Veracruz. I already have my harp pattern. The most common harp sound boxes are those with seven sides or panels, as in harps from Veracruz. Those harps tend to have a good head and good decorative façades, and in the old days they often had mirrors, as well.31 Sometimes I would leave the harp for a moment, and young women would approach to comb their hair using the harp mirror. The sound box can’t be too wide or too narrow; it has to resonate. The head, of course, has to be hollowed out because if you leave it as solid wood, the first treble string won’t sound very good. If you hollow around two and a half inches inside, the treble string will sound stronger, and your harp will be more sonorous. The harp bottom, or butt plate, has to be resistant, but it can’t be so thick that it doesn’t pull forward. The wood can be mahogany, cedar, maple, primavera tree, walnut, or bird’s eye. These are all fine woods that give a good resonance. The harp’s top, or soundboard, should be made of the best spruce. Of course, when there’s no money you can’t use German spruce because it’s too expensive. That German spruce sounds very clear, but a top like that costs

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

three thousand pesos. It’s only for personal use; if you try to sell it, nobody will pay what it’s worth. Sometimes folks even use plywood. I had a plywood harp that cost me three hundred pesos because it had been built by an inmate at the penitentiary. But it sounded really good; I even recorded with it. Unfortunately, when I sent it to be varnished, they ruined it. The harp wasn’t good anymore; it was very shiny, but it had lost its sound. It was totally muted because they used a thick sealer. So I sold it. In the old days, the wood from American soapboxes and grape boxes was used to make tops for guitars and even harps. Back then, we varnished instruments with gum lacquer in alcohol. Later, a powdered varnish became available. They said it came from bird droppings. It was very good because those fine powder particles don’t take any sound away. Now, there are other varnishes, but the trick is that they shouldn’t diminish the sound of the instrument. We Would Mix It Up Like That: Musicians Crisscrossed among Various Groups When Andrés Huesca died in 1957, Los Costeños said they didn’t want anything to do with the harp. But since Andrés wasn’t there anymore, they were missing a vocal lead for the Sones Jarochos. So they asked Lino Chávez to join Los Costeños as their lead singer. Lino Chávez accepted, and he sort of abandoned the Medellín group, so it became disorganized. I continued with Conjunto Tierra Blanca, and later Lino Chávez left Los Costeños and reactivated Conjunto Medellín. That happened around 1970. I was with Los Costeños starting in 1966, for about six years. While I was with Los Costeños, “El Gordito” Toño Rosas suddenly had a tour with his duo, Los Dos Reales. He left, and so Juanito “El Tariácuri” Mendoza,32 and sometimes Licho Jiménez from Trío los Gavilanes, substituted for him. They both had high voices, but nothing like El Gordito’s. Los Costeños got smaller. In the end we were only six members, but we sounded good. I worked a short time with Conjunto Lindo Veracruz de Macario “El Negro” Cruz, at the Hotel María Isabel at night, and also at a place called Villa Florencia on Florencia Street. We worked from two to five in the afternoon, doing three forty-five-minute sets. We also played at a bar called El Jorongo, where we alternated with El Trío Calaveras in 1974. During that time, we recorded two LPs with El Negro Cruz. Thereafter, I joined La Defensa [the Army] in ’76 and left Conjunto Lindo Veracruz. In 1976, while I was with Amalia Hernández’s Ballet Folklórico, Chico Barcelata asked me to substitute for Conjunto Tierra Blanca’s harpist. They were working for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. So I decided to leave

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 33

the Ballet Folklórico and I entered La Defensa, with the rank of second lieutenant, as part of Conjunto Tierra Blanca. I stayed there for fourteen years, until Chico died in 1991. Conjunto Tierra Blanca in those days consisted of Chico Barcelata, Eliderio Aguilar, Clemente Zavaleta, Beto Cuate, Beto Moreno, Raúl Rosas, me, and six dancers. There were three pairs of dancers. We were twelve members in total, and Chico Barcelata was the leader. He was already on a pension when he died of cirrhosis of the liver. We had to cover all the events for La Defensa, but we also did private performance work. At night we worked at a cabaret called La Taberna, and in the afternoon mealtime we performed at a restaurant called El Siete Mares, which was owned by Ochoa, a man from Alvarado. Clemente Zavaleta also was with us, and he had his own group called Los Trovadores Xalapeños. I sometimes played with them at La Taberna. We would mix it up like that; musicians crisscrossed among various groups, as needed. When Chico died, I stayed with Conjunto Tierra Blanca. At one point, I returned to work for the railroad for about three years and had an automobile accident in which I fractured my femur. They set the bone and I was alright, but then I was called to a job in San Luis Potosí to give some classes. I rushed the doctor to take off my cast and I went to work. The problem was that the bone started to wear down, and they had to operate on my leg. In order to retire, you had to have thirty years of service. But if you were incapacitated and had at least fifteen years, you were given your complete salary as a pension. I did the math, and I had a consecutive work history of fifteen years, two months, and four days. So I qualified for retirement with two months and four days to spare. I retired in November of 1969, and to this day I still receive full pay. It’s not a very good salary, but I have my pension. Also, I have an Actors and Performers Guild stipend of 750 pesos monthly. In addition, I receive help from an association started by the actress Silvia Pinal that helps people seventy years or older with one thousand pesos. Son Jarocho in Mexico City and Beyond: Continuity and Change Son Jarocho Porteño In Mexico City, we started using the guitar to support the timbre of the jarana. I’ve always said that we lacked a jarana segunda because it’s not tuned to the same pitch; it’s tuned higher, and you don’t have two jaranas in the same pitch range. Sometimes I did have it that way, like I said: the small jarana, the big jarana, the requinto, the harp, and the guitar. It’s a beautiful contrast, and that’s the way it should be done. The basic Son Jarocho instruments are the harp, the requinto, and the jarana. The number of instruments grew for a while,

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

but nowadays it’s reduced because the economy is much worse. Most groups now only use three: harp, jarana, and requinto; or harp, jarana, and guitar; or harp and two jaranas. Clients pay less because they have less. It’s not that they don’t want to pay more; they simply can’t. But Conjunto Tierra Blanca has not eliminated a single element. We’ve always had five musicians and a pair of dancers to this day. In Mexico City, Conjunto Medellín opted to remove the wooden tuning pegs from the jaranas because the wooden pegs swell up and tighten when it’s humid and get loose in the heat. That’s a problem. That is why we decided to use machine tuners. In addition, we adorned our instruments with decorative inlay, which is not done in Veracruz.33 On the ranchos the jaranas are plain, with no adornment. When we started, our jaranero was from Hueyapan de Ocampo, near where President Alemán was from. That jaranero knew his traditional tuning, but he chose the guitarra tuning, which allowed for faster chord changes and was easier to use. For me, the guitarra tuning is better. You can use it in any key. The other tunings were weird; the fingerings worked, only they were strange. The Chinanteco tuning of the jarana, for example, was frequently used; it also is called por cuatro because the tuning is mainly in intervals of fourths. After a while, in order to make the jarana easier to play—and because it was better known—we went to the guitarra tuning. It allowed us to play in other styles, styles different from Sones Jarochos. When you work in a place and you approach a table they’ll ask for “El siquisirí” or “La bamba” if they are Jarochos. But sometimes folks will ask for songs that are not Jarocho: “By any chance, do you know this bolero?” I would say, “If my partners don’t know it, I’ll play it for you.” I knew various boleritos, old boleros that I used to play in bailes de sala, the private dances. I played everything: rancheras, corridas,34 and waltzes, all of it dance music. We also started using vocal harmony here in Mexico City. Since we weren’t working all the time, we’d practice around three times a week. There was always a fellow musician who knew more about music, and he would help us add more voices. I never sang; I just played. But we had to rehearse the vocals so they would sound better. We used to listen to the trios that sang in harmony, and they inspired us to sing in harmony. Lorenzo Barcelata came up with the idea of having a large conjunto, like the one that Andrés Huesca created with Los Costeños. When Huesca formed Los Costeños, he recruited professionals from La Rondalla Mexicana de Tata Nacho. They were all from the music conservatory, and that’s why Huesca was able to teach them how to play huapango.35 They learned very well. Huesca

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 35

would tell them that when they strummed, they had to be coordinated; everyone strummed up or down simultaneously. And it sounded very beautiful. When we started recording the son “El canelo” with Medellín, we weren’t sure how we would play it. Lino Chávez asked, “How are we going to do this?” Gatica suggested that we play it slow, that one harp play the melody, and the other play arpeggios. We also recorded “Estampa jarocha,”36 a medley type of composition by Ricardo Otáñez from Tlalixcoyan. I decided to start the piece with “El pájaro carpintero.” I took off playing “El pájaro carpintero.” We played one complete turn and we stopped, and it fit perfectly. It fit that way, and it was my idea. These are ideas that just happen. Creating Your Own Style and Flavor I liked music since I was a child, when my father played and I would listen to him. From then on, I started to listen to all the musicians. I went to fandangos as well as private dances and listened to the harp players. The parts I liked stayed with me. That’s how you develop a style of your own. Although it comes from many sources, you create it and it’s yours. For example, there was a harpist by the name of Sebastián Rangel who played on the radio with Los Tigres de la Costa. He played melodies in octaves,37 and it sounded beautiful on the radio; it sounded very clear. So I told myself, “I’m going to do what he does, play the sones very clearly.” If you play just a tangle of notes, the listener won’t be able to decipher anything. That was the idea. It wasn’t my idea; it was his. But I copied that little piece, just like I had done with many other harpists. That is how you form your own style. My style of playing has become very well liked although many players can’t duplicate it. First off, there’s the accent consisting of a counter-rhythm in the bass. But not everyone does that. It’s very different. The majority of harpists play straight. I would tell my fellow musicians, “Play it like this, play it like this because that’s how it sounds better.” Some do grasp it, but for the most part they play straight. Contracanto [counter-singing] is also very special. When the singer begins, it seems like he’s out of rhythm, but when he finishes the phrase he’s on the beat. He evens it out. Listeners appreciate that; it sounds beautiful. I see the son in a state of change; it’s evolving a great deal. It’s not like it was before. When I came here to Mexico City, fifty years ago, our Son Viejo had to evolve into something else in our recordings. The future is very promising. It’s good that the younger generation is once again playing those old sones today, the sones that are played slowly. In the end, within Son Jarocho there is room for everyone. But there are limits. For instance, if you are playing Son Jarocho

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

with a guitarrón,38 you will no longer be free to use your harp’s bass strings because the two bass lines will clash. A guitarrón player, no matter how well he guides you or how well he plays, will not blend in. Sones should be played with the bass strings of the harp; the guitarrón belongs in music from the state of Jalisco. The upright bass is even less suited for jarocho. Many players have learned from the music of Venezuela and Paraguay; they have added Paraguayan techniques to Son Jarocho. If you do that, you destroy Son Jarocho. It’s no longer Son Jarocho as it’s supposed to be. It no longer has its own parameters. In and around Tierra Blanca, people are still playing Son Jarocho like it should be played, but most harpists in Veracruz, mainly those in the Port of Veracruz, are already drifting away. Each day they play another little paraguayada.39 That alters the son, and it shouldn’t be that way. It has no flavor. The Uniqueness of Each Son Jarocho Since 1990, I’ve taught classes at La Casa de la Música Mexicana. I tell students, “This is what you’re going to do.” First, there are the exercises for loosening your fingers. I don’t recommend them “just because.” In the early stages, a student has to lose their fear of the instrument and has to familiarize himself or herself with it. Some students find it easy to pluck something with one finger. I tell them, “No way! Nothing with just one finger. You are going to play me the right hand part and the left hand part together. Both hands have to be in position.” Then there are students who already have bad habits from whoever taught them, and whoever taught them didn’t have a clue. Then I have to straighten them out. I accept these students, but it’s very difficult because I prefer to get them at zero than to get them when they already have bad habits. Bad playing styles are forged without rhyme or reason because they have no guide. There are more than a few semi-ignorant ones. “It sounds good that way,” they tell me. “Even though ‘it sounds good that way,’” I answer, “it shouldn’t be played that way. It’s this way, and this is how you are going to do it.” Son Jarocho students have a lot to learn. For example, you can put a tangueo in any son. Tangueo fits in all the sones. You just have to know how to apply it. Also, all the sones have their proper tempo. Sones de a montón are slow.40 You’re not going to play “La morena” at the same speed as a “Cascabel.” “El cascabel” has its beautiful trineo and its beautiful beginning.41 But if someone starts “El cascabel” like “La morena,” it tells you that person doesn’t know what he’s play-

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 37

ing. You can’t play “El cascabel” and “La morena” at the same speed. Every son has its own unique features. “El cascabel” has its own verses. “La morena” has its own verses. And “El pájaro cú” has its own verses. You shouldn’t tangle “El pájaro cú” with “Siquisirí” because that would create a falsehood. “El Cupido” is played at a medium tempo because that’s the way the son is. That’s how it should be played. You’re not going to rush it, like “El cascabel.” If you play “El coco” without the accented rhythmic breaks, it’s not “El coco.” With Amalia Hernández and the Ballet Folklórico, you don’t notice the accented rhythmic breaks because the sones are being played too fast. You can’t hear what is happening musically. They’re dancing fast and playing “El coco,” and if you don’t notice it, it becomes a “Cascabel” and turns into a huge jumble. Nowadays the Ballet Folklórico performs a “Pájaro carpintero” that you can hardly understand. “El pájaro carpintero” has its accents and places where the cuts should be. However, at that velocity those cuts go unnoticed. The music should be more accented so that the variations of the son are even more noticeable. My father would tell me that in “El pájaro carpintero” you have to give it the full descante. What he was saying is that you have to play the full chordal pattern. You need to play all the changes, according to the key you are in. For instance, if you are in the key of la mayor, and you change to the tercera,42 that means you are going to change to Re. Many players at the Casa de la Música Mexicana understand this complexity, and they tell me, “No wonder some people say all the sones sound alike and that they are all the same.” But they aren’t all the same. If we really play them and express what they contain, they are not all the same. All the sones can be played trinado and cantados.43 If you have the capacity and a strong touch or pulse,44 you can play your sones well, starting with “Siquisirí.” When I lived in Tierra Blanca, we would position the harp and the jarana together. I played in a seated position because we were still using the smaller harp. Two or three singers would stand behind us. They would come to an agreement. One would sing a verse, and then the other would sing a verse. That way they would answer each other. When you are playing with jaraneros without rehearsing, however, each one plays the best he can. But in an organized conjunto, you can come to an agreement: “If you are going to play that way, upward, then all should play upward.” That way you get good results. When you are at a fandango, among a flock of musicians, that’s where you can savor all the Jarocho flavors. The spiritual mood of each Jarocho musician is very different. The jarana follows the mood of the harp. If the harp does a jump in the bass pattern or melody, the jaraneros notice; they don’t just hang around passively like a bunch of bananas. Sometimes I see a clueless beginner,

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

and all I can say is, “It’s not like that; you’re asleep and you have to wake up.” You have to follow what the harp establishes. That is what makes each son beautiful. That’s Son Jarocho. Notes 1. The requinto jarocho is one of the guitarras de sones, a family of melodic stringed instruments from Sotavento. It is usually four-stringed and played with a cow-horn pick. 2. A tarima is a wooden platform used for dancing and serves as a percussion instrument when struck by dancers’ feet. 3. The term son is singular; sones is plural. They designate a regional performance structure and lyrical expressivity native to the Gulf of Mexico area known as Sotavento. Son Viejo means “old-style son.” Mario Barradas uses this term to designate the son performance style that was popular when he was a child. 4. The jarana family of stringed instruments is part of the rhythmic-harmonic component of the music of Sotavento. They are strummed and vary in size and pitch. A jaranero is the person who plays the jarana. 5. Sacar la rama (to carry the tree branch) is a Sotavento tradition similar to caroling at Christmas but with Mesoamerican roots. The branch marks the spirit of life and rebirth at winter solstice. Those bringing the rama are rewarded with money, food, or drink by each household or establishment where they stop and sing. 6. Las Posadas is a nine-night Christianized Mexican tradition with Indigenous roots. Originally, it was an Aztec and Mayan festival commemorating the birth of the nine Lords of the Night. In the Christian tradition, Las Posadas commemorates the Holy Family’s search for lodging. 7. La Candelaria (Candlemas) has Catholic elements superimposed upon the much older Indigenous celebrations of that season. For Catholicism it marks the day of the ritual purification of Mary, forty days after giving birth to Jesus, and the presentation of the infant Jesus to God at the temple. In the more ancient Indigenous tradition, the festivity celebrates the powers of water, Chalchiuhtlicue and Tlaloc. Musicians board canoes on that day and play upon the waters. 8. Hojuelas, called buñuelos in the north, are fried flour tortillas, topped with something sweet. 9. The train route from Veracruz to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the VCI, was not only a railroad route; it was also the map of Barradas’s youth and provided him with an opportunity to hear and play many styles of Son Jarocho that he never would have encountered if he had stayed only in Tierra Blanca. 10. Boleritos means little boleros. In modern Mexican usage, the term “bolero” refers to a romantic ballad that evolved from the Cuban style into an urban Mexican and Latin American genre performed by guitar trios and quartets. The Mexican bolero is exemplified by Trío Los Panchos, Los Tres Reyes, and Los Dandys, among other groups. 11. These figures refer to the silver alloy used for coins. 12. Yanga is the name of a settlement founded by formerly enslaved Africans. 13. Barradas frequently mentioned that in Tierra Blanca the term bailes de sones was favored over fandangos.

Mario Barradas’s Life in Music 39

14. The marimbol is a bass instrument consisting of a wooden box with a sound hole and tuneable tongues of metal that are plucked with the fingers. African in origin, it was first used in Cuba and known as a marímbula. 15. Lorenzo Barcelata was one of the first popular singer-songwriters from Veracruz. 16. El Yale is the river that divides the states of Veracruz and Oaxaca. It passes approximately two kilometers from the center of Tierra Blanca. 17. Conjunto means “group,” usually musical in nature. 18. El moño (the bow) is a dance tradition associated with the song “La bamba.” A pair of dancers ties a long ribbon into a bow using only their feet. 19. Jarana de concha (shell jarana) has an animal shell, usually armadillo, as its sound box. 20. Rancheras are a pan-national form, originally based in the Pacific and central regions of Mexico. As the name implies, it is ranch or country music, and the lyrics usually reflect this. 21. “El siquisirí” is a welcoming piece that initiates the fandango. Musicians also often use it as an invocation. The word siquisirí cannot be translated because it is a nonsensical term that refers only to this opening son. 22. Tangueo is a melodic pattern with repeated jumps of up to an octave or more. 23. La Merced is the most famous of Mexico City’s mercados (marketplaces); it is situated in the city’s centro histórico (historic center). La Villa, also referred to as the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, is Mexico’s most important religious shrine. 24. San Andrés is in an area of central Sotavento known as Los Tuxtlas. 25. In Mexico, chiflar (to whistle) at a performance is the equivalent of booing. 26. “I’m going to sail away / I’m going to travel / to see if that way / I can forget you.” 27. Vik was a subsidiary of RCA Victor used for developing artists. Successful artists on Vik would be signed to the main label. 28. The album title is ¡Que lindo es Veracruz! 29. Son Huasteco is a violin-centric music native to the Gulf Coast. 30. The Million Dollar Theater in Los Angeles was the most famous venue for Mexican entertainment outside of Mexico. It was supported by a large population of Mexicans, Chican@s, and Latin@s. 31. On Jarocho instruments, mirrors are for protection. They deflect bad energy away from the player. 32. Juan “El Tariácuri” Mendoza was a member of El Trío Tariácuri. His sister, Amalia, was a singer in her own right. The Mendoza family was from Michoacán and promoted the music of that state. Tariácuri is an Indigenous term from the Purépecha language meaning “Priest of the Wind.” 33. Regarding the section heading, porteño is an urban Son Jarocho style that began in Mexico City, forged by Mario Barradas and his contemporaries of the late 1940s. This style gained its name as it later became associated with the port city of Veracruz. 34. A corrida is a gradually accelerating dance in which the participants lock arms or hold hands. 35. Huapanguear refers to the cross-rhythm patterns in Son Jarocho. The term is also used in the Son Huasteco tradition. Huapangear refers to the rhythmic patterns and strumming techniques used to perform Son Jarocho and Son Huasteco. 36. “Estampa jarocha” is a son that quotes the beginnings of several older traditional sones within the body of the piece.

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

37. The octave technique was employed by Barradas on the Veracruz LP by Conjunto Medellín. 38. The guitarrón is a mariachi bass instrument originally from Jalisco. 39. Paraguayadas is a derisive term used to describe the use and misuse of Paraguayan elements in Son Jarocho. 40. Sones de a montón are female-only group dances. 41. On the jarocho harp, trineo refers to the treble strings, played with the right hand. The bass strings are called bordones and are played by the left hand. In reference to a son, trineo means the melodic broken chord pattern that is specific to each son. 42. It is common practice to refer to the tonic chord as the primera (first), the dominant chord as the segunda (second), and the subdominant as the tercera (third). 43. The term trinado means the act of performing trineo, playing in a specific broken chord structure. Cantado and trineo are two basic techniques for playing a melodic line; most sones are identifiable by their respective cantados and trineos. In cantado, a melody is played using two or more strings in parallel harmony. In trineo, a melodic accompanying line comprises a broken arpeggiated pattern, for example in a threefourths metric, using eighth notes. 44. In this usage, pulso refers to strength of hand or dexterity.

CHAPTER 2

Musical Reflections on Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho francisco González

The Legacy of a Lifetime in Music A few weeks after his eighty-ninth birthday, Mario Barradas spoke with me about our decade of oral history work. He smiled and said, “All the seeds have been collected. All the bags of seeds have been tied and put safely away until they are needed. Ya cumplimos. We have fulfilled our obligation.” Elders’ stories are the seeds of culture. Barradas entrusted us with the stories of his musical roots and migrations. Barradas inspired those who heard his recordings, those who heard him live on mega radio station XEX, and the countless students he taught at the Casa de la Música Mexicana (House of Mexican Music). He was a towering product of Son Jarocho culture. My colleague Rafael Figueroa Hernández asked me which great Son Jarocho musicians I considered to be equal to Mario Barradas. I tried to name a few, but it was a short list. Rafael said, “I think you can count them all on one hand.” Over time, I came to understand that Barradas’s recordings were only a small sample of his musicianship. It was in the one-on-one jam sessions—between, during, and after our interviews—harpist to harpist, that the full extent of his abilities and knowledge were revealed to me. He illustrated his stories by playing the harp. If he was in a good mood, he would ask me to tune a jarana and accompany him. He could perform a Son Jarocho as it would have been played in his father’s time, then another version from his early years, then the version he played in the 1940s. The Son Jarocho harp is unique in its performance style. A good Son Jarocho harpist can play a strong bass line with his left hand and an intricate melodic line with the right. I was astonished by Mario Barradas’s ability to create a third pattern in the mid-range. He was already in his mid-seventies. As he grew older, he often stated that most harpists loved his style but couldn’t re41

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

produce it. To me this sounded like a lamentation rather than a boast. Indeed, Barradas developed a style that was unique in its complexity. It was technically challenging even to the most advanced harpists. Thousands of musicians have studied Mario Barradas’s iconic recordings of the 1940s and ’50s; those recordings have been a staple in my musical journey. As a child in East Los Angeles, California, I discovered Barradas’s music on the album Veracruz, by Conjunto Medellín de Lino Chávez; my sister used to play it in the 1950s on an old record player. My focus was particularly on the sound of the harp, played by Barradas. Again and again, I listened to that album, which touched me in a profoundly joyful way. It helped nourish the early Chican@ music documentary Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles in 1975. I began to play Son Jarocho harp in East Los Angeles when I was twentyone; my first harp was built by Mario Barradas. But I did not meet the man himself until I was forty-three and he was seventy. By 1996 I had founded Guadalupe Custom Strings in Goleta, California, in order to make strings for Mexican instrumentalists who were marginalized by large manufacturers. While traveling to a performance, Barradas found his way to my shop, and he was delighted at the work I was doing. We became friends, in part because of the music we shared and also because of the complementarity of his instrument-building and my string-making. When I visited his home in Mexico City, Maestro Mario shared many tales from his long life as a musician. He had lived through a crucial juncture in Mexican music history and had been an active participant in its shaping. His life in music exemplified factions that would appear to be at odds: the rural Son Viejo, Barradas’s term for the music of the rescate, and the urban porteño style that originated primarily in Mexico City and then became prevalent in the Port of Veracruz and around the world. His stories chronicled the evolution of a professional class of urbanized musicians; he was one of the last surviving major participants in that early evolution. The more I heard, the more I understood the importance of preserving Barradas’s stories, especially in light of the recent resurgent interest in Son Jarocho both in Mexico and in the United States. I approached Mario Barradas with the idea of gathering his oral history. Initially I asked him if he had ever been interviewed. “Oh yes, hundreds of times!” he said. I asked about the duration of the interviews. He said, “Ten minutes, sometimes as much as an hour.” I told him that our interviews would take days, weeks, maybe years. He smiled and said, “Fine.” That was more than fifteen years ago. I asked Barradas about the customs, aesthetics, and performance practices that informed his Son Jarocho artistry. Some of these questions reached deep

Musical Reflections on Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho 43

into the form and were of great interest to my fellow musicians. Some answers were like missing pieces in a long-standing musical puzzle. For instance, I asked Barradas why the early Son Jarocho groups in Mexico City wore all white with a red scarf when this attire would be considered unusual in the Sotavento countryside. He described unsuccessful attempts to wear the traditional white guayabera with black pants; people would attempt to place food orders with the musicians, mistaking them for waiters. He said, “We wear white so we can look like the Jarochos that dance danzón in the Plaza de Armas, in the Port of Veracruz. They wear all white; even their shoes are white. They’re so elegant.” From the Old Is Born the New: From Sotavento to Mexico City, 1946 In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, displaced peasants came to Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, from all over Sotavento, searching for work. Many musicians were among them. Mario Barradas was born into a musical family; his father was a harpist, and his mother was an avid dancer. In 1926, the year of his birth, Tierra Blanca was the perfect environment for a musically gifted child. It became Mario Barradas’s musical nursery. Tierra Blanca entered the 1920s with a growing optimism. The national railroad became a major employer in the area due to the construction of a large maintenance terminal. The railroad provided a steady, if meager, income, and the Railroad Workers Union provided economic security. The railroad allowed Barradas to learn and draw inspiration from other musicians because it gave him the opportunity to travel, observe, and live along the Veracruz al Istmo line, the VCI. By the late 1920s, Mexican regional music had begun to draw national attention through the radio, sound recording, and film industries based in Mexico City. The Mexican film industry, still in its infancy, found that films featuring regional music were profitable. The first commercially successful Son Jarocho recording artists, such as Lorenzo Barcelata and Andrés Huesca, emerged during this time. The young Mario Barradas followed in those footsteps. As a small child, he listened intently to harpists, memorizing his favorite passages. He began to play at age eleven. As a teen, he expanded his repertoire and began to play at bailes de sala, private dances that included the popular dance music of the day in addition to Son Jarocho. One of Barradas’s most notable achievements was sheer survival. He worked as a Son Jarocho musician while also farming sugarcane and corn. As a youth, he became a railroad laborer and union-

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

ist. He eventually survived in the capital city through a combination of film work, recordings, cabaret performances, political patronage, railroad work, and busking. His musical heritage was his prime resource. Barradas first went to Mexico City in 1946 with Andrés Alfonso Vergara, as a member of Conjunto Tlacotalpan. As a nineteen-year-old, Barradas was exposed to a wide range of musical styles and thus was predisposed to musical flexibility and innovation. Adapting to the new social and technical reality of Mexico City was not an easy process, nor was it a smooth one. When Mario Barradas arrived in 1946, social and political tensions were running high. It was a presidential election year. Politics were a matter of life and death; earlier presidential campaigns had involved the use of deadly force. There still was no agreement as to whether the Mexican Revolution had really ended or who exactly had won. Social turmoil continued in new forms as a rising middle class attempted to solidify its grip on power. Thousands of displaced peasants, including Mario Barradas, fought for their lives. Financially, Barradas’s first experience in Mexico City was a disappointment; he returned to Tierra Blanca and the security of the railroad. Six months later, however, the composer-musician Lino Carrillo convinced him to return to the capital and perform with Conjunto Tierra Blanca, which included Lino Chávez on requinto. It was then that Barradas dedicated himself to learning the repertoire of an existing group of musicians he had never met before while contributing his own flavor. The ensemble refined its collective expression, sometimes rehearsing six hours a day. Together they created the hybrid style that bloomed in Conjunto Medellín. Barradas narrates the long-standing Sotavento rural distinction between “requinto towns” and “harp towns.” Traditionally, Son Jarocho was performed either with harp or requinto as the central instrument. That changed in Mexico City. Conjunto Medellín’s addition of requinto player Lino Chávez to a group that was harp-based combined the two major branches of Son Jarocho. Eventually Chávez developed a unique requinto-playing style from the juxtaposition of those two branches. The partnership of requinto and harp was a significant innovation. The requinto was no longer treated as a supporting instrument; rather, it took on a role equal to the harp in importance. Musicians were given opportunities to display their technical virtuosity on both instruments in solo sections. From an entertainment standpoint, the combination allowed the music to be more diverse and gave increased depth and showmanship to performances. This new urban format redefined the Son Jarocho genre. And yet it limited improvisation, which could not unfold within the time constraints imposed by new venues. Also, the urbanized Son Jarocho was not performed as part of an in-

Musical Reflections on Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho 45

clusive community fandango. Instead, it became a planned presentation for an appreciative but passive audience. Barradas’s style reflected the change and development that started before his father’s time. In Sotavento, there existed various harp techniques that gained popularity at different periods; these were combined by the more creative harpists, then widely imitated by others. Barradas said the Son Viejo (Old Son Jarocho) of his father’s time utilized the right-hand harp technique called cantado (singing), in which a melodic line is played in parallel chords. This worked well with the slower tempo used at that time. Another technique that gained popularity during Mario Barradas’s youth was trineo, in which the right hand plays broken chords. The trineo became a feature by which specific sones were recognized, as in “La bamba.” It was Andrés Huesca who created the harp style that integrated both the cantado and the trineo; Huesca was so successful that many harpists could not fathom how he could play a cantado so fast. In the left hand, the bordones (bass strings) offer distinctive techniques. Mario Barradas had an advanced plucking method for drawing out a strong sound from the bordones. Even in his seventies and later, he could make his fellow musicians wide-eyed at the sound he produced. Barradas’s innovations are now widespread and used by today’s Son Jarocho harpists, although most of them do not realize he was the source. Over time, Barradas’s stylistic innovations have come to be seen as traditional; much of what he created is now generalized. Initially, Son Jarocho was a novelty in Mexico City. Mario Barradas survived in part because of Miguel Alemán, who was himself a Jarocho, as people from the Sotavento region are called. Alemán won the Mexican presidency with the help of “La bamba,” the first Son Jarocho to be used on the national political stage. The ascendance of a Veracruzano president gave Son Jarocho musicians a boost in popularity, and they enjoyed some political patronage. For Barradas, that patronage materialized as peculiar appointments in the police force and the Navy. But many Son Jarocho musicians who tried to make their fortunes in the capital returned to Sotavento. As one musician said to Barradas, “I don’t want to be an artist; I want to eat.” Son Jarocho necessarily underwent a process of adaptation. Urban media and entertainment industries put major time restrictions on the length of a son. This was true not only for radio performance and recordings but also in cabarets and restaurants. In the Sotavento homeland, each Son Jarocho could last for hours. Even the eight-string jarana, the most common instrument used in Son Jarocho, was affected; its players began to use the so-called de guitarra tuning because the traditional por cuatro tuning made it difficult to play the

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

range of chords in other genres. Notably, the modified urban de guitarra tuning is the same as that of the Renaissance and Baroque guitar from which the jarana evolved; it is older than rural tunings such as the por cuatro, which are considered more authentic. Urban adaptation also occasioned physical changes to traditional instruments. In an effort to make traditional jaranas and requintos appear flashier, ornamentation was added to their exterior, which might have originated with michoacano luthiers in Mexico City. Also, in time-constrained urban performance environments, wooden tuning pegs on the requinto and jarana became a liability. Wood reacts to changes in temperature and humidity, and the expansion and contraction of tuning pegs made it difficult to play in tune. The solution was the use of machine tuners, which are frowned upon by today’s Jarocho purists. The use of the classical guitar in Son Jarocho porteño style started in Mexico City. Generations later, the classical valenciana guitar is often combined with harp in many porteño-style Jarocho groups. Barradas felt that the guitar added depth to the rhythm section. He also believed that the higher-pitched jarana segunda (second) was needed to fill out the upper register and give it better balance. By contrast, southern llanero requinto-based Son Jarocho groups never use the guitar. Using vocal harmonies in coro (chorus) to answer the pregonero (lead vocalist) was a further innovation of the groups in Mexico City. In Sotavento, it was customary for the first solo voice to be answered by a second solo voice, a practice known as antiphony. The use of two solo voices gives singers room to improvise both the verse and the melodic response. The pregonero still has the ability to improvise melodically. However, the verses and harmonized responses have to be set, except for the beginning and ending verses. Consequently, some improvisational elements have to be sacrificed, including improvised verse and response. Over time, set verses as well as recordings have had the effect of standardizing many Son Jarocho lyrics. Barradas amid the Rescate and Porteño Performance Practices By the 1990s, our Guadalupe Custom Strings shop in Goleta, California, had become a crossroads for Jarocho musicians. I got to hear plenty of stories from both factions of the Son Jarocho tradition. On the one hand were the adherents to the style of living legends such as Barradas and his colleagues. On the other hand were members of a new movement they called the rescate (rescue). Grupo Mono Blanco arose as the leaders of the rescate; in 1989, we welcomed

Musical Reflections on Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho 47

them for an extended visit at our Santa Barbara, California, home, where we hosted Santa Barbara’s first traditional Son Jarocho fandango. Their visit gave us deep insight into the rescate. It was young people reaching deep into the Son Jarocho roots in an effort to rediscover and reestablish the waning rural traditions. Traveling with the young, however, were also the Son Jarocho elders Andrés “El Güero” Vega and Andrés Alfonso, who had participated in the early forays into Mexico City. In fact, it was Andrés Alfonso who had recognized the young Mario Barradas’s prodigious talents and invited him to Mexico City in 1946. As new interest in fandango traditions grew in the 1980s, the original creativity and vitality of the style created by Mario Barradas and his fellow pioneers began to diminish. The urban Son Jarocho was stereotyped by many as “tourist music” and “ballet folklórico,” and its practitioners were later seen as antagonists by some members of the younger rescate generation. But the rescate, in its advocates’ effort to revive the roots of Son Jarocho fandango traditions, misunderstood the history of the urban professional hybrid style. It was far easier for the rescate to take issue with pioneering Son Jarocho master musicians than with the mass media industries that had pushed traditional music into the margins of society. Barradas and his generation were criticized for adapting to the media technology of their time; ironically, the rescate relied on emerging digital technologies that allowed for longer recordings, which were more representative of the fandango style. Also, it was the urbanized Son Jarocho musicians who brought Son Jarocho to Chican@s in the United States. Many rescate advocates disapproved of newer sones written by the earliest Jarocho recording artists such as Lorenzo Barcelata, Lino Carrillo, and Víctor Huesca, whom they labeled as inauthentic. Many of those newer sones were based on very old tunes and were reworked to fit the times. Nonetheless, the newer sones and their creators were virtually banned from the rescate fandango, never mentioned, and never taught. Due to the purist strivings of the rescate, only those compositions with a long legacy of performance, those that belonged to el pueblo (the people), their composers lost in the past, were considered worthy. In truth, the older generation of Son Jarocho never lost their rootedness in the rural Sotavento fandango or their understanding of the Son Viejo. In truth, some of the older musicians revered by the rescate had actually been participants, along with Barradas, in the move to Mexico City. This purist rescate orientation provoked an embarrassing backlash when some of the more creative proponents of the rescate fandango movement began to set old lyrics that lacked documented melodies to new music and wrote their own compositions based on older melodies and chord patterns. This process of creative change is a natural outgrowth of a musical culture in which impro-

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

visation and creativity are highly prized. When confronted with the fact that their methods were identical to those of their urbanized predecessors, the rescatistas asserted that their new works were accepted by the people and therefore justified. Such popular acceptance had been true of the new sones of the past. The greatest honor bestowed upon a composer in Mexico is when a piece of music becomes so much a part of the popular repertoire that it is considered traditional and the composer becomes anonymous. Similarly, recognition was not extended to composers of the era that preceded the rescate. Creative growth and change are a by-product of the cyclical rebirth, flowering, diffusion, and decadence inherent in all great musical traditions. The old gives birth to the new. But the new is not identical to the past; it is a product of its time. This was the case in Mario Barradas’s time, it was true of the rescate, and it will happen again in the future. In musical terms, even those who know their history can only re-create a shadow of what it was, learning and adapting the lessons for a new era. The seeds planted will adapt to the new soil. Throughout the 1990s, both main styles of Son Jarocho—porteño and rescate—seemed to wear blinders. Some porteño advocates contended that the rescate’s version of the past was a myth, a fabrication. Some radical purists disavowed the legitimacy of centuries-old rural subgeneric styles and traditions just because they did not fit within the rescate’s limited musical knowledge. Since the new millennium, however, many Son Jarocho musicians have begun to understand and appreciate the scope of their complex musical culture. Also, many dedicated researchers have uncovered documentation that reaches deep into the music’s past, shedding light on the extent of its history and substance. Currently, Son Jarocho is a transnational movement, and many younger performers are learning from teachers who themselves are new to Son Jarocho. Some outcomes are strange. For example, certain performers degrade Son Jarocho performance by intentionally singing out of tune and playing out of rhythm; they do this because they think it is more authentic. Ironically, many of the early rescate founders who laid the groundwork for the rebirth of the fandango have now been reviled. It would appear that people often dismiss ideas that do not fit a mythical version of the past and an idealized view of the present. Despite the Son Jarocho factions, the music shows promising signs of continued creative growth. The fandango is eminently inclusive. Even beginners are allowed to participate by standing with their instruments at the rear of the group of musicians and watching others play in order to learn. The more skilled musicians are pushed forward until they reach their levels of proficiency. The best musicians will be pushed all the way in front of the tarima, the

Musical Reflections on Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho 49

wooden platform for the dancers, where they play with the other highly skilled musicians. Mario Barradas supported the Son Viejo and shared his knowledge of the past without reservation, even though he was excluded from the official history as taught by many proponents of the rescate movement. Mario Barradas saw that the Son Jarocho his father had played, the innovative changes of his own era, and those of the rescate were all part of a continuum that existed before his birth and would continue after his death. He was a living product of that continuum. In Maestro Barradas’s testimony it is evident that both schools, the harpbased and the requinto-based, are branches of the same tree. It is an ancient tree, with many branches drawing sustenance from the same trunk and the same roots in the same spiritual soil. These branches have coexisted and evolved for more than a century and have never truly separated. And although they might be facing in different directions, they both reach for the sky. Transitioning into the Light The year 1970 brought important changes to the life of Mario Barradas. Several of his life projects reached their conclusion. He retired from the railroad and finished building his Mexico City residence, which was to be his workshop, his classroom, his rehearsal hall, and a gathering place for musicians from all over the world. Barradas became deeply involved in the making of harps, just as his father, Manuel, had been before him. He immersed himself in the craft, learning all he could, researching and experimenting with different materials, shapes, techniques, and woods to refine the sound of his creations, sometimes with great success, sometimes only achieving the confirmation that not all ideas are good ideas. Despite the failures, Mario was not discouraged. He never ceased his efforts to improve his product and find a sound that was his own yet true to the traditional Jarocho aesthetic. Into his eighties and his nineties, Mario Barradas moved with grace and determination into new fields of endeavor. His teaching became one of his most important contributions to the Jarocho tradition. He shared a historical knowledge, Jarocho harp techniques, discipline, and wisdom with private students and in the classroom. Whenever he encountered talented harp students, he would offer them lessons for free. In 1990, La Casa de la Música Mexicana was founded in Mexico City. Mario Barradas became one of its founding instructors. For twenty-five years he taught two or three times a week in a small

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

room filled to capacity with harps and students of all ages, going from one person to another amid a cacophony of harp strings, giving personal attention to each student. Amid that chaos of sound, Barradas could still identify what each student was playing. He enthusiastically shared what he had learned with several generations of musicians. Even after his retirement in 2015, Mario Barradas still had various projects in the works. He called me in January 2017. He wanted to record an album of music he had played as a youth in the bailes de sala. He became concerned that this part of Sotavento’s musical history was virtually unknown to the current generation. The bailes de sala music was a mix of canciones (songs), danzón, polkas, rancheras, boleros, and some Sones Jarochos. Barradas had already decided which pieces he wanted to record. He had been rehearsing them. He even had a title: Lo que se perdió (What was lost). At age ninety-one, Barradas wanted to memorialize those lost songs. His practice room became our recording studio. It was the place where he felt most comfortable. We began on February 27, 2017. After three days, we had recorded more than fifty pieces and a large amount of commentary. Mario did not live to see the project’s completion, but he left a treasure, a piece of history. We hope to release this recording one day. Elegy I last saw Mario Barradas Murcia on January 19, 2018—his ninety-second birthday. He looked and sounded healthy, especially for his age. He was in good spirits, though he mentioned that he had experienced some trouble with his heart. Throughout the day, family and friends dropped by to wish him a happy birthday, among them his two surviving siblings, Plácido and Adolfina. They told me stories about Mario; some were about things even he didn’t remember. His reaction to this was to look at me with an exaggerated expression of surprise, eyes wide. It was nearly sunset when I finally said goodbye. Mario Barradas Murcia passed into spirit on March 5, 2018, at approximately 11 a.m. in Mexico City. His large family came to be at his side during his last hours, traveling from as far away as Chicago, Illinois, and Boca Raton, Florida. The news of his death spread quickly by phone and internet. By that evening, his friends, students, and fellow musicians were in attendance at his wake, an all-night vigil in the Mexican tradition. This was followed by a Mass at nine in the morning. At the conclusion of the Mass, many musicians, including his son Fabián Barradas González, and his nephew Carlos Barradas Reali, a renowned harpist, played traditional sones with verses and décimas (poems of

Musical Reflections on Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho 51

ten-line stanzas) about their late maestro. They were clearly struggling to keep their composure. As his coffin was wheeled out of the chapel, the mourners gave Barradas a standing ovation lasting several minutes. Mario Barradas’s passing marked the end of a chapter in the history of the music we love and carry in our hearts. I am grateful that he shared his life experiences, knowledge, and musical insight with the rest of the world. Among the flowers at his funeral was a wreath that best described the sentiments of so many of us; it bore the words “Thank you for the musical legacy.”

CHAPTER 3

Son Jarocho’s Indigenous Expressivity across Geographies Yolanda BroYles- González

Mario Barradas was a participant in a musical movement broader than himself that grew on a particular land base and later migrated thousands of miles. His life is paradigmatic of several of the most important historical transitions that affected musical performance in the twentieth century. In 1926, the year of Barradas’s birth, most Mexicans lived on ancestral lands, as farmers. Mexico was for the most part rural and without electricity, let alone phones, radios, televisions, or any kind of recorded music. If someone wanted to hear Son Jarocho, they either played it themselves or hired someone to perform it for them. New technologies started to enter Barradas’s life in the 1930s. By the time he was a teenager, he had migrated from Sotavento to Mexico City, where his harp performances were eventually broadcast across the North American continent and the Caribbean. Barradas’s career thus spans traditional live performance in the Mexican Sotavento countryside and the emergent transnational media. Barradas’s musical repertoire includes Son Jarocho and a number of other more recently imported genres. His performance career is embedded in a broader social history encompassing the ancient and contemporary Indigenous civilizations of Tierra Blanca in the Mexican state of Veracruz, Indigenous clashes against exploitative European colonization beginning in the sixteenth century, and the decolonial Mexican Revolution that began in 1910. Barradas saw the formation of a twentieth-century capitalist economy, with its attendant nation formation, forced relocations and government genocide of Native people, broad social and economic polarization, and mass migrations to the United States. In examining the shared Son Jarocho repertoire, I will reference some of the particulars of Mario Barradas yet focus mainly on the broader shared body of Son Jarocho. 53

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

The Meaning of Indigenous I regard Son Jarocho as an Indigenous cultural practice, while recognizing that it has incorporated and modified elements from various cultures. Contrary to widely held views, Indigenous cultures are not frozen in the distant past but evolve across times and circumstances, changing in response to world events. My use of the term “Indigenous,” as a nonracial and non-national category, albeit a land-based one, broadens our focus into the living cultural ecological realm that gives rise to the shared body of music known as Son Jarocho. This concept of Indigeneity departs from the neocolonial machineries and ideologies that have perpetrated Indian erasure; it is neither a governmentally sanctioned identity category nor a blood-quantum category, nor is it a tribal “membership” category. Rather, it is a contemporary identity tied to a relational nature-culture nexus that predates colonization.1 I draw from Daniel R. Wildcat’s concept of a nature-culture nexus, defined as “a symbiotic relationship that recognizes the fundamental connectedness and relatedness of human communities and societies to the natural environment and the other-than-human relatives they interact with daily.”2 Son Jarocho gives sustained expression to that fundamental connectedness among all sectors of the natural environment. Indigenous people often refer to the relational life knowledge system as the Circle of Life. That Circle of Life so audible in Son Jarocho includes everything: people, plants, animals, rivers, wind, rocks, water, sun, moon, and cycles of light and dark. The circle denotes connection, relationality, reciprocity, mutuality, and interdependence. Some Indigenous peoples use the “Arbol de la Vida” (Tree of Life) symbol instead of the Circle of Life symbol to capture this understanding of collaborative relationality that is the hallmark of Indigeneity on every continent where Indigenous peoples live. Daniel R. Wildcat, as part of his profound engagement with Indigeneity, tells us that the term “Indigenous” references a holistic “interactive land-based knowledge system.”3 That intraspecies knowledge system, of which humans are a small part, is also a communication system in which all participants are capable of communicating with and learning from all others: humans with animals, plants with humans, waterways with animals, people with the cosmos, the dead with the living, and more. All life elements carry knowledge, and Indigenous knowledge systems are not human-centric. Son Jarocho strongly expresses a relational connectedness within the natural environment system—directly and indirectly—across generations. The Indigenous nature-culture nexus is exemplified by a statement made in Soneros del Tesechoacán about Son Jarocho emerging from river waters: “Dicen

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que en el río se escucha la música, que sus aguas traen el son” (They say one can hear the music in the river, that its waters bring forth the son).4 Almost all the Son Jarocho documentaries on YouTube take place in the Mexican countryside (el campo, el rancho), on a riverbank, near a cornfield, next to mountains. If we examine the available life stories of distinguished Son Jarocho elders—be it Mario Barradas, Andrés Huesca, Arcadio Hidalgo, Rafael Figueroa Alavés, Popoluca performers such as Los Arizmendi (Aurelio Arizmendi Arias), Nahua performers (Los Arpisteros de la Sierra de Zongolica), Andrés “El Güero” Vega, La Negra Graciana, Elías Meléndez Nuñez, Andrés Alfonso Vergara, and others—they all reference their rural upbringing and credit their land-based cultural origins as well as a multigenerational Son Jarocho family lineage.5 Various regional music traditions from Mexico honor and mark their specific geographic environments through musical forms often called son (singular) and sones (plural) combined with a second term that directly references that geography and its people. These beloved sones function as a collective expressivity that moves across generations and often migrates across geographies. Son Jarocho is a musical and lyrical structure of expressivity that has evolved in the past several centuries, rooted in the southern Mexican Gulf Coast geography called Sotavento and the greater Sotavento area. Many people of Sotavento refer to themselves as Jarocho or Jarocha. The Sotavento land base includes parts of the Mexican coastal states of Veracruz, Tabasco, and Oaxaca. It features a variety of climate zones and vegetation belts, from tropical heat to snowy Citlaltépetl (Pico de Orizaba), the third-highest peak in North America. Veracruz is the ancestral home of tribal nations that have been in place for thousands of years; these include today’s Nahua, Popoluca, Mazatec, Zapotec, Mixe, and Chinantec. The region is also home to de-Indianized Mexicans who preserve Indigenous lifeways but not the identification as Indians, as well as people of African, European, Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Japanese descent, among others. Together, many of them form part of an Indigenous land-based knowledge system. Amid these historical realities and challenges, Son Jarocho responds in many registers, including the hopefulness Cruz expresses in a contemporary Popoluca Son Jarocho: El pájaro va a cantar porque está alegre. Cuando yo canto todo es alegre, y yo voy volando en la montaña. Allí ya está tranquilo, porque tiene su libertad.6

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(The bird will sing because it is joyful. When I sing, all is joyful, and I go flying in the mountains. There it is at peace, because it has its freedom.)

Within this Popoluca son, the relationship to the land base is foundational: a bird sings “joyfully” (alegre) because it has found freedom (libertad) in the mountains after having been caged. What is notable is that the Popoluca singer and the bird become indistinguishable; they both find happiness and freedom when singing and flying in the mountains. The natural environment figures as a safe haven where the caged bird/singer finds freedom. We can imagine the many possible realities symbolized by the freedom that this son references as well as by the “cage” that the bird has somehow left behind. The cage can stand as a metaphor for the myriad damaging effects of Euro-colonization, including the imposition of Indian and Black enslavement on the colonial plantations.7 More recent capitalist impacts on the land include extraction industries such as the petroleum and refinery industries, industrial farming, and then, beginning in 1994, the notorious US-led North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, whose agricultural imports have bankrupted hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers and motivated mass immigration to the United States.8 Barradas’s early childhood involvement with agriculture included both the planting and harvesting of the iconic Indigenous corn, on the one hand, and colonization’s imported sugarcane, on the other. The loss of the Barradas family’s modest farm in the course of the Mexican Revolution is a sad irony, given the Revolution’s decades-long effort to restore farmland to landless farmers. As was the case for millions of others, land loss led to a transition from farming into other forms of labor. For the Barradas family, it was railroad work. Agriculture, hunting, and fishing have historically been the main livelihoods in the Son Jarocho Sotavento homeland. For thousands of years, Indigenous people have produced foods such as the traditional “three sisters”: corn, beans, and squash. The rich Indigenous plant species diversity includes avocados, yams, tomatoes, a broad range of fruits such as papaya, cactus (nopales), chayote, dozens of chili types, and white yucca flowers. The Indigenous land-based system, including the waterways, associated with Son Jarocho currently features Indigenous and Indigenized colonial elements. I paint this broad environmental picture as a context for Son Jarocho, which manifests strong Indigenous rootedness and integration in the historical specificities of this regional cultural ecosystem. Human-nature symbioses pervade the expressivity of the

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lyrics. Rootedness, expressed in song and poetic recitation (décima), also manifests as a denunciation of political and economic power holders who inflict suffering upon the land and its people. Indigeneity here does not imply a search for origins, but rather it focuses on the present and on the contemporary expressivity of Son Jarocho. The relational land-based knowledge system audible today in Son Jarocho is only part of the spheres of Indigenous culture that converge in ceremonial celebrations such as the all-night fandango. The fandango unites the community’s energy and resources. Among its multiple elements are dance, music, poetic improvisation, cuisine, medicine, traditional textile art, and storytelling. Son Jarocho gives musical expression to an Indigenous foundation, nourished by long-standing cultures of Veracruz such as Otomí, Totonac, Huastec, Zapotec, Mixe, Tzotzil, Chinantec, Mazatec, Tepehua, Popoluca, and Zoque as well as by the foundational Olmec civilization. Later arrivals in the region included the Tepehuan and Mexica (Nahuatl-speaking) people. Today, more than nine Indigenous languages are spoken in Veracruz, and its Spanish language is infused with Indigenous vocabulary. Place names throughout Veracruz and Mexico reveal ancient Indigenous heritage. The capital of the state of Veracruz is Xalapa, a Totonac word meaning “place of sand where water flows.” Son Jarocho lyrics are sung in various Native languages as well as Indigenized Spanish in townships such as Soteapan, Hueyapan, and Tatahuicapan. For instance, the Jarocho ensemble Grupo Los Arizmendi from Soteapan Veracruz sing in their Native Popoluca tribal language, combined at times with Spanish.9 A number of Son Jarocho recordings have been made in Native languages including Mixe, Nahuatl, and Zoque-Popoluca.10 Son Jarocho emerged over the course of centuries as a poetic musical expression interacting with successive waves of invasion and colonization. Invaders included the Spanish, French, British, and US Americans. The clash of cultures accelerated in 1521 when the Spaniard Hernán Cortés arrived in Chalchihuecan (today’s Port of Veracruz). The Native Nahua elders expressed hospitality by gifting Cortés a golden sun and silver moon, expressions of Indigenous ties to the divine celestial bodies. The Spaniards set upon a trajectory of destruction, genocide, and enslavement. Yet in spite of generations of exploitation, the resistive Indigenous bedrock remains. Life-Cycle Celebrations: Fandango and Ceremony In Sotavento, Indigenous people express relational ties by marking cosmic transitions such as solstice, equinox, planting, and harvest; they also hold fandangos in order to mark more narrowly human transitions such as birth and

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marriage. The separation of ancient Native ceremony and the more social fandango by scholars tends to create an imagined separation along colonial racial lines. As life-cycle community celebrations, they can well be considered together, especially because in various communities fandango and spiritual ceremony are often intertwined. The term “fandango” is a variant of the Nahuatl term cuahpanco, meaning wooden platform. It is a community celebration in which groups or couples take turns dancing what is called zapateado, surrounded by dozens of musicians who stand and play. The tarima amplifies the sound of the dancers’ feet as they create a rhythmic complement to the instrumental music. In the fandango, musicians participate by taking turns on their favored instruments, be they jarana, harp, requinto, quijada (mule jaw), or tambourine. The musicians perform on one side of the tarima, with the best musicians playing close around the wooden dance platform. Beginners play behind the masters, observing and learning. The fandango was historically organized according to cooperative protocols, sometimes through the ancient Indigenous cargo/mayordomía system, a cooperative public service system that formalizes reciprocal relationships in the community.11 Various sectors of the community take responsibility (cargo) for the fandango’s components, such as food preparation, site preparation, music, and dance. The fandango traditionally happens outdoors in a public space. It begins in the evening and ends with the next day’s sunrise; it also can go on for days. Within the community fiesta context, Son Jarocho and fandango play a central role in bringing Indigenous people into their own powers, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and politically. The fandango sometimes is preceded by a procession in honor of a patron saint; one is the San Juan Bautista procession in Chacalapa, Veracruz, in which African and Spanish elements are integrated with an Indigenous community cargo/mayordomía structure. Townspeople still remember their African cattle-tending ancestors who generations ago assimilated into a Nahuatl-speaking town.12 In some communities, the fandango happens in conjunction with Indigenous sacred rituals. Alfredo Delgado Calderón explains, for example, that fandango dance constitutes a part of Nahua rituals honoring mythical salt creatures known as chaneques.13 In and around Papantla, the ritual voladores (flyers) wear embroidered flowers that honor the Earth’s fertility while dancers petition the universe for rain; the Popoluca jaguar dances are performed in Soteapan at the planting of the corn.14 “El siquisirí” is the traditional Son Jarocho that initiates the fandango community dance gathering. Son Jarocho master musician and poeta popular Kamál González’s version summons the powers of the universe, naming earth, wind, fire, and water. Such an invocation is characteristic within Native cultures;

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earth, wind, fire, and water are the four elements that comprise all creation, and they are symbolized by the cross, an ancient Indigenous power symbol established on this continent thousands of years before Christianity. The sign of the cross that Kamál González performs also symbolizes the divine totality of the four cardinal directions: north, south, east, west. Divino cielo te ruego permiso para cantar Me persigno luego y sigo por saludar agua, viento, tierra y fuego15 (Divine heaven I ask permission to sing I then cross myself and proceed to greet water, wind, earth, and fire)

There are of course many versions of “El siquisirí.” Los Vega begin “El siquisirí” by similarly asking permission of the divine to sing: Voy a cantar una copla con el permiso de Dios (I’m going to sing a couplet with permission from God)

Recently, some Son Jarocho communities have revived the ancient Native blessing ritual known as floreo de tarima (flowering of the tarima). The floreo de tarima petitions the divine powers with improvised verses and through flower offerings placed on the tarima in the four cardinal directions by female dancers. Raquel Paraíso describes how this ritual consecrates the fandango event by petitioning the divine.16 Son Jarocho also maintains an Indigenous earth-centered ritualistic presence in the predominantly Nahuatl-speaking Zongolica region of Sotavento. Los Arpisteros de la Sierra de Zongolica indicate that the first Son Jarocho they play is always dedicated to the earth itself. Another harpist group, the

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Arpisteros de Pajapan, similarly integrate Son Jarocho into life-transition celebrations such as weddings. As part of the extended wedding ritual, the harpists lead the ceremonial procession that delivers a live bull to the home of the bride. One of the most famous fandango celebrations is the annual Encuentro de Jaraneros ( Jarana Players Gathering) in honor of La Candelaria (Virgin Mary) in Tlacotalpan. La Candelaria is the colonial name superimposed upon the much older Indigenous celebration of sacred inland waters known in Nahuatl as the feminine power named Chalchiuhtlicue and the sacred masculine rainwaters known as Tlaloc. Without this Indigenous understanding, the ancient significance of musicians playing on riverboat flotillas might go unperceived. The unique Son Jarocho of Veracruz has been a self-affirming weapon during the colonial violence that extends from the sixteenth century to the present day.17 In response to the cataclysm of colonization, Indigenous people evolved this new music by appropriating newly arrived compatible African and Spanish elements. Appropriation and adaptation of new elements is integral to the evolution and survival of Indigenous musical forms, heritage, and civilization. The syncretism arising from adaptation, however, is not a casual or mechanical blending, but a tactic of Native persistence in the face of endless invasions and eradication efforts.18 The Son Jarocho jaranero and singer Patricio Hidalgo describes the appropriation of foreign elements such as “the structure of Spanish verses” (la estructura de la versada española) and how those become indigenized: “We dress it with our characteristics, with our way of thinking; we locate it within a context.” He says, Claro, que viene de España toda esa estructura, la estructura de la versada española que tenemos acá y claro que a la cuarteta, la quintilla o a la décima nosotros la vestimos con nuestras características, con nuestra manera de pensar, la ubicamos en un contexto. Por ejemplo, yo voy a escribir un verso sobre algo, sobre el campo, pues yo pienso en lo que he vivido, en mi padre campesino, en el maíz que ha sembrado.19 (Sure, all those poetic structures come from Spain; we’ve got the structure of Spanish poetics here, but it’s also the case that we take that quatrain, that five-line or ten-line stanza and we enhance it with our own characteristics, with our own way of thinking; we situate it within a context. For example, when I write a song verse, I write it about something, about the rural environment; I think about what I have lived, about my farmer father, the corn he has planted.)

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The nature-culture nexus in which Son Jarocho is located is the American continent, not the African or European continent. It is telling that Hidalgo references his “farmer father, the corn he has planted.” The land, the people, and the Indigenous corn have a clear presence in the matter of a land-based identity and its Son Jarocho poetics. Patricio Hidalgo’s grandfather, Arcadio Hidalgo (1893–1985), born of an Indian mother and an Afro-Cuban father, was a Son Jarocho icon. Arcadio Hidalgo describes the widespread suffering under the dictator Porfirio Díaz. He recounts plantation owners’ brutal treatment of enslaved Indians as his motivation for joining the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910. Pero el oro y la plata la tenían los terratenientes y sus familias. Nosotros solamente teníamos sufrimientos, por culpa de ese hombre tan ingrato que fue Porfirio Díaz. Fue un hombre que nunca supo apreciar a los mexicanos, a los indios mexicanos nunca los quiso; nos vendía como una partida de ganado. Cuando principió el ingenio de caña, daba tristeza ver en los caminos a la gente botada, muerta. Mató a mucha gente sin tener por qué.20 (The plantation owners had gold and silver. The rest of us only had suffering; all of it was the fault of that incredibly thankless man that was Porfirio Díaz. He was a man who never managed to appreciate Mexicans; he never loved the Mexican Indians; he would sell us like a head of cattle. When he started up those sugarcane plantations, it was terribly sad to see dead people discarded along the roadways. They killed so many people without any good reason.)

Within that context of historical trauma, Son Jarocho and its fandango gatherings have a resistive and restorative power. Arcadio Hidalgo indicates, “During those times when there was so much suffering, the only thing that brought joy to the people was music” (En ese tiempo, en que había tanto sufrimiento, lo único que alegraba a la gente era la música).21 In José Alejandro Huidobro’s thesis, Arcadio Hidalgo’s grandson Patricio Hidalgo describes the fandango poetically as a people’s fortress of freedom and an accessible democratic institution that “challenges the world of repression.” He roots fandango within the earth, using numerous nature metaphors to define the fandango as “dew on the grasslands, and fine highland wood.” El fandango es desafío al mundo de represión, es libertad de expresión, es el agua del rocío

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sobre el zacate del llano; accesible al ciudadano.22 (Fandango is a challenge to the world of repression, it is freedom of expression, it is water from that dew found on the plain’s grasses; accessible to the people.)

In keeping with my decolonial lens, I assign chief agency to the Indigenous within Son Jarocho. The Indigenous knowledge system consistently manifests the symbiotic relations between all elements of a unified cosmic system: plants, rivers, rain, animals, sun, moon. When I refer to Son Jarocho as Indigenous, I recognize that this designation goes counter to a host of scholarly material that has labeled Son Jarocho as a predominantly African (“afromestizo”) or Afro-Andalusian (“afroandaluz”) import or derivative, or as “mestizo.” Partnership with Indigenous Plant Life, the Earth, the Cosmos Son Jarocho lyrics consistently remind us that we dwell in a complex web of life. Often an element of the natural environment stands in as a symbol for humans. Mario Barradas describes how performers in the December ritual known as La Rama (the tree branch) visit homes in the community and sing traditional songs. Upon departing, the performers sing their thanks as though they are a speaking tree branch: “This branch is leaving now very pleased, because it was well-received in this home” (Ya se va la rama muy agradecida, porque en esta casa fue bien recibida). The very names of so many traditional Son Jarocho pieces display kinship with aspects of the ecosystem. Examples include sones that center animals, such as “La iguana” (The iguana), “La guacamaya” (The macaw), “La tuza” (The gopher), “El gavilancito” (The little hawk), “El pájaro cú” (The cú bird), “El coconito” (The little turkey), “Los juiles” (The catfish), “El conejo” (The rabbit), “El pájaro carpintero” (The woodpecker), “Gallo” (Rooster), and “El curripití” (The curripití bird). Other Jarocho sones name and celebrate plant life and the foods that typify the physical environment. Such is the theme in the traditional “El camotal” (The yam field); its main focus is the process of planting and tending to yams, which have a multimillennial history in the Americas. The full version of this

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son incorporates not only the connection to lunar phases but also the seasonal rains, while naming various other edible plants. Yo tenía mi camotal sembrado en ciclo de luna Camotes y más camotes, calabacitas, chilacayotes, naranja dulce, limón partido, dame un abrazo, y me voy contigo23 (I had my yam field planted with the lunar cycle Yams and more yams, little squash and gourds, sweet orange, sliced lemon, just give me a hug and I’ll go off with you)

Two juxtaposed themes run parallel: yam-tending and the love story. In a structure characteristic of Son Jarocho poetics, “El camotal” includes the love theme only in the refrain. Son de Madera’s interpretation of “Los juiles” similarly displays the symbiotic relation of connectedness between humans and natural powers. “Los juiles” performs the nature-culture nexus, combining a fisherman’s prayer, the cosmos (moon and stars), and Indians’ decolonial longing for past eras of love and beauty. Cuando el pescador le reza, a la luna del verano Salen los indios diciendo, vuelvan los tiempos lejanos, El viejo anciano con su violín de la barba blanca me dijo así24 (When the fisherman prays to the summer moon

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The Indians come out saying, may the far-gone era return! The ancient old man with his violin and white beard told me this)

Son Jarocho characteristically contains an assemblage of Indigenous poetic patterns that tie the musician, poet, dancer, and community to the Circle of Life. “La guacamaya” traditionally enumerates specific elements of the native macaw’s habitat and diet, such as the Indigenous tunas (cactus fruit), while juxtaposing elements of a failed human love experience. The human-bird kinship is represented by dancers who imitate bird flight during the refrain “Vuela, vuela, vuela” (Fly, fly, fly). En los cerros se dan tunas y en las barrancas pitayas. En los huecos de los palos se anidan las guacamayas. Vuela, vuela, vuela como yo volé (The prickly pear fruit grows on mountains and pitayas grow in canyons. Macaws build their nests in the hollow parts of wood. Fly, fly, fly just like I flew)

While the older versions of “La guacamaya” feature a relatively intact living ecosystem, a contemporary version by the group Chuchumbé decries environmental degradation and ecocide. It affirms Indigenous consciousness by connecting with the inordinate beauty of the natural environment, but it also laments, “Earth is a paradise that folks don’t know how to care for.” The singer asks the bird, “Why have the forests where you grew up lost their color?” This son ends with an alarming vision of Earth’s total destruction: “after the earth is gone, nothing” (después de la tierra nada). This version of “La guacamaya”

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by the group Chuchumbé also expresses a central feature of the nature-culture nexus, that of humans receiving lessons from animals. The poetic voice urges the macaw to impart a lesson to the hunters: “Guacamaya, tell the hunters not to do so much damage!” The beauty of the macaw is compared to that of a flower, and we hear an admonition against destructive “traitors of the earth.” Guacamaya sal al campo y dile a los tiradores Guacamaya sal al campo y dile a los tiradores Que no te lastimen tanto tú eres reina de amores. Que no te lastimen tanto tú eres reina de amores. Vuela, vuela, vuela por el cielo del cariño mientras que yo estoy llorando por tu amor igual que un niño. Va volando sin escalas un pájaro en el ciprés y todos piensan que es un arcoiris con alas. Vuela, vuela, vuela vuela sin parar la tierra es un paraíso que nadie sabe cuidar. Por el aire va una flor destellando sus colores no la maten por favor se lo digo a los traidores de la tierra y del amor. Vuela, vuela, vuela para que la vida cante

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después del amor la tierra después de la tierra nada. ¿Por qué están solos y tristes y también descoloridos y también descoloridos los montes donde creciste? Vuela, vuela, vuela vuelve que yo te lo pido a pintar con tus colores mi cielo descolorido.25 (Macaw, fly into the countryside and tell the hunters Macaw, fly into the countryside and tell the hunters Tell them not to hurt you you are the queen of love. Tell them not to hurt you you are the queen of love. Fly, fly, fly through the affectionate sky while I cry for your love just like a child A bird goes flying without stopping in the cypress and everyone thinks it is a rainbow with wings Fly, fly, fly Fly without pause Earth is a paradise that no one knows how to care for Through the air goes a flower flashing its colors please don’t kill it

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is what I tell the traitors of this earth and of love Fly, fly, fly so that life can sing If we destroy love, then the earth, after the earth there is nothing. Why does it look so abandoned and sad? And even discolored and even discolored the land where you grew up Fly, fly, fly I beg you to return And paint with your colors my discolored sky.)

Many Son Jarocho dances demonstrate the human-animal kinship by imitating the movements of animals; “La iguana” is a prominent example. Typically, the male dancer follows the iguana’s moves, described by singers. The Indigenous embrace of the natural environment is also visible in “La tuza” and “El palomo” (The male dove). “La tuza” connects the gopher and human by anthropomorphizing the gopher, creating a humorous storyline. La tuza (she-gopher) sews undergarments, goes dancing, and is even arrested. The son indicates, “The she-gopher was sewing some underpants for the he-gopher” (Estaba la tuza haciendo, para el tuzo unos calzones). The anthropomorphizing of gophers in “La tuza” leads to even further she-gopher adventures, moving into the realm of sexual humor and satire referred to as picardía. Picardía is omnipresent in Indigenous cultures across the continent, ranging from the sacred clowns and jokesters present in most Native ceremonial activities to the jokes and joke cycles performed during many social gatherings. Estaba la tuza haciendo para el tuzo unos calzones la tuza que se descuida el tuzo que se los pone26 (The she-gopher was making some underpants for the he-gopher

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the she-gopher got distracted the he-gopher dons the underpants)

Another recurring feature in Son Jarocho involves the Indigenous spiritual knowledge and practice of nahualismo, the integration of human and other animal energy through the practice of shape-changing, from human to animal and vice versa. In Mesoamerican and Mayan tradition, each person’s nahual is that person’s innate animal spirit, which bonds the individual to the sacred cosmic. Son de Madera’s “Lloren poblanas” (Cry, village women) proclaims the love of liberty while also featuring village women as nahuales who transform into animals at nightfall. Y cuando la noche cierra, la que no es culebra es liebre las poblanas en mi tierra visten de azul y verde27 (And when night falls, they turn into snakes or rabbits the village women where I’m from dress in blue and green)

In various sones, humans become birds and fly, echoing Humberto Aguirre Tinoco’s concept “Cuando los hombres fueron pájaros” (When humans were birds) in his book Sones de la tierra.28 “Sones de la tierra” (earth sones) was the term used by the colonial ruling class to designate a song group original to the Native people of the land and not the colonizers. Grupo Mono Blanco’s version of “El siquisirí” features various human-animal integrations: a humanleopard, “as if I were a leopard” (como si fuera leopardo), and a human expressing its hawk identity: “I’m a lake hawk” (soy gavilán de laguna).29 What is also notable is that the term son or canto at times becomes metaphorized as an animal, such as when Arcadio Hidalgo proclaims, “That’s why my singing is a fine horse that I ride upon” (Por eso es mi canto fino potro sobre el que cabalgo).30 Human singers—or song itself—assuming the identities of animals is not merely a matter of aesthetic pleasure but an expression of long-term Indigenous relations with ecological systems. There is an abundance of sones in which human and animal relatives become interchangeable or assume one identity. In “El pájaro carpintero,” “La guacamaya,” “El pájaro viejo” (The old bird), “El palomo,” and “El gavilancito,” the human and bird at times become almost indistinguishable, since the met-

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aphors encompass bird and human. In “El pijul” (The groove-billed ani), the human erotic experience is metaphorized as a double entendre centered on “my little bird” (mi pajarito). Preso me llevan a mí preso por ningún delito por una pitaya verde por una pitaya verde que picó mi pajarito31 (They are taking me prisoner prisoner without a crime because of an unripe cactus fruit because of an unripe cactus fruit that my little bird got into)

“El gavilancito” features the juxtaposition of a love theme and the natural environment in a different mode. Recurring verses referencing the little hawk alternate with an evolving human love commentary. The changing love lines alternate with the refrain “Fly, fly, little hawk” (gavilancito volar volar). Dicen que gavilancito volando viene, volando va se pasa la mar de un vuelo Yo también me la pasara gavilancito volar, volar en los brazos de mi cielo32 (They say little hawk arrives flying, departs flying can cross the ocean in one flight I would also pass the time little hawk, fly, fly! In the arms of my loved one)

Son Jarocho’s Indigenous matrix also manifests through the naming of geographic features in the homeland. The Son Jarocho “El Ahualulco” identifies the name of a region; “El alvaradeño” praises people from the port city of Al-

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varado. Other sones highlight rivers, as in “A orillas del Papaloapan” (On the banks of the Papaloapan River). It is also common for Son Jarocho ensembles to name themselves after specific geographic locations or aspects of specific places, thus expressing human connection to the land base; examples are Conjunto Tierra Blanca, Conjunto Medellín, Los Costeños, Conjunto Tlalixcoyan, Los Trovaderos Xalapeños, Parientes de Playa Vicente, Conjunto Chalchihuecan, Conjunto Cosamaloapan, Camperos del Valle, and Soneros de La Cuenca. Or a group might name itself after a totem animal; Los Cojolites carry the name of an Indigenous bird (coxolitli in Nahuatl); Grupo Mono Blanco took the name of an Indigenous music spirit. At times, Indigenous people are specifically named, as in “La Indita” (The Indian woman), which Mario Barradas included in his first recording with Conjunto Medellín. “La indita” features an Indian woman and an Indian man, referencing their love relationship on a chinampa, an ancient Indigenous agricultural method sometimes referred to as a “floating garden.” The fixed verses that traditionally lead into the improvisational segments of “La indita” are as follows: Una indita en su chinampa estaba cortando flores Y el indito le decía regálame tus amores33 (An Indian woman at her floating garden was harvesting flowers And the Indian man would say to her gift me your love)

In one performance of “La indita,” the group Los Cojolites introduced their song with a land acknowledgement; they refer to the Indian woman as “La india que es la dueña de estas tierras” (The Indian woman whose lands these are). In addition to affirming who the rightful holders of this Indigenous land are, Los Cojolites’ “La indita” lyrics connect the Indian woman to one of Mesoamerica’s most ancient cultural practices, the making of corn tortillas by hand. Las indias de mi región hechan tortillas a mano.

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Le ponen el corazón desde que muelen el grano y hasta llegar al fogón.34 (The Indian women of my region make tortillas by hand. They put their hearts into it from the moment they grind the grain and all the way to the fire.

Thus, Son Jarocho expresses in multiple ways what Guillermo Bonfil Batalla describes as the “unitary reality” of Indigenous connectivity with the natural world in today’s Mexico. Batalla highlights various dimensions of that cosmic land-based Indigenous integration within the cosmic order. It is difficult to comprehend the many characteristics of Mesoamerican civilization if one does not consider one of its most profound dimensions: the civilization’s understanding of the natural world and human beings’ place within the cosmos. Within Mesoamerican civilization—as opposed to that of the West—nature is not regarded as an enemy. Mesoamerican civilization does not assume that humankind’s full realization can only be attained through a separation from nature. To the contrary, Mesoamerican civilization recognizes the human condition as part of the cosmic order; and humans aspire to integrate themselves within that order. That integration can only be attained through a harmonious relationship with the rest of the natural world. It is only by obeying principles that govern the universe that humankind can become whole and fulfill its transcendent destiny.35

Origin stories that lay out principles that govern the universe are a common feature of Indigenous people around the world. Those stories function as primordial cultural paradigms, interweaving many elements of the natural cosmic environment. The woodpecker (pájaro carpintero) is an important figure within ancient Sotavento origin stories, and Son Jarocho manifests a special attachment to the woodpecker. Myriad versions of “El pájaro carpintero” figure prominently in the Son Jarocho repertoire, as documented by Delgado Calderón.36 To this day, “El pájaro carpintero” is among the most performed sones. Arcadio Hidalgo’s carpintero verses speak to the supernatural powers associated with the bird, powers a human can summon to find freedom from incarceration, for example. Numerous Son Jarocho groups sing the following

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verse that narrates how the woodpecker teaches a prisoner a powerful liberational prayer: Metido en una prisión donde no valía el dinero, puedo salir cuando quiera porque aprendí la oración oye bien lo que te digo del pájaro carpintero.37 (I’m stuck in a prison where money is worthless but I can leave whenever I want because I learned the prayer listen well to what I say of the woodpecker.)

Woodpecker stories with endless variants form part of ancient Indigenous mythologies. In one story, the woodpecker helps Homshuk—New Buds Energy or Corn Divinity in Popoluca, called Cinteopiltzin in Nahuatl—in combat against Lightning. Corn Divinity and Lightning compete to see who can throw a rock to the center of the ocean. Son Jarocho furthermore references the woodpecker’s medicinal properties; its blood is a traditional medicine, and other parts of this bird are also associated with healing and love potions.38 The woodpecker is said to have curative abilities and can also be called upon to cast various kinds of spells. He visto que en un madero allá por los cafetales sale quitando los males de embrujos y de hechiceros. Con cantos muy naturales del pájaro carpintero.39 (I’ve seen in a tree by the coffee plantations something that removes evil spells and sorcerers. It’s the very natural songs of the woodpecker.)

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The woodpecker is also an ally in the struggle against all forms of suffering. It is a medical healer, an assistant to higher powers, and an agent in love relationships; it also has the power to help those engaged in political struggles. We need to keep in mind that Son Jarocho has historically been an important discursive tool for the poorest and most disenfranchised sectors of Mexican society. It is significant that Son Jarocho affirms the powers of the natural environment, symbolized by the noble woodpecker, as a tool against multiple oppressions and against the tyranny of governments. There have also been extended periods in Veracruz history when the woodpecker has been threatened with extinction, given the advanced ecocide. The damage to the Circle of Life affects all planetary life. Many political lyrics exist for this woodpecker son, such as these, which summon the medicinal bird’s powers to help end political tyranny and nourish the hope of freedom. Here the woodpecker is cast as a powerful instrument maker who can make “a cedar jarana with freedom strings.” Pajarito carpintero si eres laudero en verdad constrúyeme por piedad una jarana de cedro con cuerdas de libertad40 (Little woodpecker if you are truly a luthier have mercy and make me a cedar jarana with freedom strings)

In another version of the son, the woodpecker is cast as an ally whose liberational philosophy can assist in overthrowing the tyranny that governs the world. Pajarito carpintero dame tu filosofía porque quiero con esmero enfrentar la tiranía que gobierna al mundo entero.41 (Woodpecker, imbue me with your philosophical strength because I zealously want to confront the tyranny that governs the entire world.)

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Son Jarocho in Defense of Homelands Son Jarocho’s Indigenous expressivity manifests not only as poeticized ties to the homeland ecosystem but also as politicized ties in defense of the homeland. The people of Veracruz and Sotavento have had to contend with multiple waves of colonial interventions, almost all of which entered through the Port of Veracruz. That city was also the port of entry for the slave trade. The first invading European colonizers arrived there in the early sixteenth century. The nineteenth century saw invasions by British, French, Spanish, and Austrian colonizers. The United States also invaded Veracruz, in 1847 and again in 1914, when the United States occupied the territory for seven months. The Indigenous critique of colonialism, of its ideologies, of its violence is very much alive in verses by the musician Ehekatl Arizmendi. In his improvisation of “Las poblanas” in 2018, he critiqued the sexual violence of a Christianizing colonialism: “They raped our women, in the name of Mary.” Arizmendi also highlights the racist colonial view of Indigenous peoples as in need of being saved from primitivism: “They claim to have saved us from a primitive life.” Thus Son Jarocho can serve as a repository of decolonial history by contradicting official racist histories. It opens a space for remembering and for envisioning a different social order. Dicen que nos salvaron de una vida primitiva. Nuestras mujeres violaron en el nombre de María y a los hombres los quemaron con la señal de la Biblia. (They claim they saved us from a primitive life. They raped our women in the name of Mary while they burned the men with the sign of the Bible.)

The turbulent historical context from which Son Jarocho emerges thus necessarily makes it more than a means of entertainment. It explores current issues in society, be they political, environmental, economic, sexual, or cultural. A humorous thrust is also present, as in the following carpenter son stanza sung by Son de Madera highlighting a satirical interaction with Roman Catholicism:

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Yo conocí un carpintero que se llamaba Gonzalo. Se quitaba la camisa y la ponía en el altar. A los santos les pedía madera pa trabajar.42 (I met a carpenter whose name was Gonzalo. He would remove his shirt and place it upon the altar. He’d petition the saints for wood to work with.)

The ruling colonial elites repeatedly sought to ban such music, its lyrics, and its dances. In Veracruz, Son Jarocho became a prime target of the colonizing Spanish Inquisition. The Catholic Church’s “Holy Inquisition” repressive censorship machine persisted from the time the Spaniards arrived in the early sixteenth century until 1821, when the Mexican War of Independence forced Spain out. Inquisition documents from 1766 testify not only to the Inquisition’s torture methods but also to the continued performance and prohibition of various sones whose provocative sexual and political content offended Spanish colonizers. Delgado Calderón reports on the many sones that the repressive colonial governing apparatus targeted with prohibition: “Junto con El Chuchumbé fueron prohibidos otros sones y jarabes, como ‘El pan de manteca,’ ‘El toro,’ ‘Los aguinaldos,’ ‘El jarabe Gatuno,’ ‘Los panaderos,’ ‘La tirana,’ y varios más”43 (Along with El Chuchumbé, other sones and folk dances were outlawed, such as “Lard bread,” “The bull,” “Christmas songs,” “The cat dance,” “The bakers,” “The woman tyrant,” and several more). However, Son Jarocho does not conform to colonists’ efforts to control Indigenous people with Catholic morality. Rather, it has historically affirmed sexual humor and eroticism. Son Jarocho featuring erotic physicality and critiques of power holders has remained a staple to this day. Many sones about fruit describe it in highly erotic language. “La guanábana” (The soursop) is but one example of eroticism expressed indirectly: “Solo la lengua sabe / la dicha que ha de encontrar / la ternura que le cabe” (Only the tongue knows / the ecstasy it will find / the tenderness within). The lyrics in a contemporary son de a montón (a son danced only by women) entitled “El trompito” (The little spinning top) similarly employ erotically charged language, symbolized by the encounter of two animals.

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Señora, por su animal anda el mío que se tropieza. Si se llegan a encontrar qué ternura, qué belleza44 (Madam, my animal is going crazy trying to meet up with yours. If they should happen to meet up what tenderness and beauty)

On one level the singer seems to be talking about two animals encountering one another. On the symbolic or metaphorical level, a joyous human sexual encounter is implied. Listeners of different ages can extract different meanings. A hypothetical erotic scenario unfolds between “your animal” and “my animal” in this son. The two animals become one: “If they should find one another they would certainly enter into a state of joy, from head to foot.” The son becomes, among other things, a decolonial tool for affirming a happy sexuality and a joyous life. In its effort to regulate morality, control Indigenous bodies, and eradicate oppositional social critique, the Spanish Inquisition kept a massive archive in Mexico. Inquisition records provide insight into the resistive powers of sones. In 1766 an Order of Mercy priest named Nicolás Montero formally denounced the wildly popular son “El chuchumbé” as sumamente deshonesto (utterly obscene). The dancing and singing of “El chuchumbé” was outlawed because of its erotic physicality, which involved dancers rubbing various body parts with fellow dancers. This son’s refrain celebrates the unstoppable sexual urge referred to humorously as “El chuchumbé,” and its messaging defies colonial power holders and their Catholic ideologies of repressed sexuality. Que te vaya bien, que te vaya mal el chuchumbé te ha de alcanzar. Que te vaya bien, que te vaya mal el chuchumbé te ha de alcanzar.45 Fare you well, or fare you poorly, the chuchumbé will catch up with you. Fare you well, or fare you poorly, the chuchumbé will catch up with you.

As testimony to the resilience of Son Jarocho and its love of the erotic, multiple Son Jarocho groups still perform “El chuchumbé” 240 years after the

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Spanish Inquisition sought to prohibit it. This son, in a contemporary reconstruction by Grupo Mono Blanco, features a mocking reference to the very priest who went after Son Jarocho in 1766. In the contemporary version, the priest stands on a street corner, lifting his priestly robes, and showing off his “chuchumbé,” strongly implying the sexual hypocrisy of church officials.46 En la esquina está parado un fraile de la Merced con los hábitos alzados enseñando el chuchumbé. Con los hábitos alzados enseñando el chuchumbé. (On the corner stands a priest from the Order of Mercy with his robes lifted showing off his chuchumbé. With his robes lifted, showing off his chuchumbé.)

Even Son Jarocho’s central instrument, the eight-string jarana, came under suspicion of being an instrument of the Devil. Today’s inhabitants of Sotavento recall prohibitions against the jarana enacted by Spanish Catholic dogma. Cirilo Morales Reyes explains, “There is a belief in some places that to play the jarana is something bad, like it’s the Devil’s poetry. Many Catholic people prohibit the playing of jaranas. In the past it was unlawful to let children play that instrument” (Existe la creencia en algunos lugares que tocar la jarana es como algo malo, como que es la poesía del Diablo. Mucha gente que es Católica prohibe eso. A los niños antes se les tenía prohibido tocar ese instrumento).47 “Las poblanas” has in recent years become a favored song for embedding social justice strivings along with love commentary. Like all other sones, “Las poblanas” has an open structure that allows for individual messaging. The fixed refrain exhorts the village women to weep, as the other verses articulate harsh political realities and social struggles. The exhortation of feminine emotive powers is expressed in the one traditional verse: “Por eso lloren, poblanas” (So now cry, village women). Los Cojolites notably use “Las poblanas” to denounce the 2014 murders (“disappearances”) of forty-three Indigenous youths from Ayotzinapa at the hands of Mexican police authorities. The forty-three students were training to be bilingual teachers based in their respective Indigenous languages: Nahuatl, Chontal, Mixteco, and Tlapaneco. They were mur-

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dered on their way to a rally in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, where they planned to protest the state’s failure to maintain their school in working condition. Los Cojolites sing in solidarity and remembrance of them. Ahora sí lloren, poblanas que la vida se me escapa que me van a dar la muerte como aquellos de Ayotzinapa48 (Now cry, village women, because my life is waning and they are going to kill me like they did those from Ayotzinapa)

The Son Jarocho group Hijos del Chuchumbé, by contrast, summon “Las poblanas” to cry as they remember the death spiral that arrived with Columbus in 1492. Colonization is symbolized by the “three ships” (of Columbus) that announce death, and Christianity is referred to as “five hundred years of crucifixion.” Tres barcos vienen llegando a la costa de Veracruz. Muerte vienen anunciando quinientos años de cruz. Cabezas vienen tumbando en el numbre de Jesús.49 (Three ships are arriving at the coast of Veracruz. Their message is death five hundred years of crucifixion. Heads are rolling in the name of Jesus.)

Another traditional insurrectional Son Jarocho is “Señor Presidente” (Mr. President). This son directly addresses the nation’s supreme power holder, enumerating social injustices such as poverty and election fraud, while announcing the onset of a social revolution. “Señor Presidente” always features improvisational lyrics citing the people’s specific grievances, yet all singers of this son include the refrain “Me gusta la leche, me gusta el café” (I like milk, I like coffee), which tends to include even more specifics about sheer survival in an unjust so-

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ciety. Los Cojolites initiate their appeal to the president with an ironic statement indicating that they have come to thank the president for the lack of democracy. In subsequent verses they boldly announce the forthcoming social revolution: Señor presidente le vengo a dar gracias porque en nuestro pueblo ya no hay democracia. Me gusta la leche me gusta el café pero mi salario no da pa’ comer.50 (Mr. President I’ve come to thank you because in our society we have no more democracy. I like milk I like coffee but with my salary I can’t afford to eat.)

An untitled décima commemorates the 1994 Zapatista Indigenous uprising against the Mexican nation’s “mal gobierno” (bad government, federal and state) and describes the uprising by “hombres de maíz” (people of the corn) seeking “justicia y dignidad” (justice and dignity). The concept of “mal gobierno” is widely used in protest to denote existing federal and state governments that do not serve the interests of the people. The concept of mal gobierno stands in contrast to the Indigenous concept of buen gobierno, which references governance forms based on cooperative principles that have been cherished among Native populations for many centuries. Al sureste del país hay un pueblo levantado, que exige ser respetado en honor a su raíz. Son los hombres de maíz que nos cantan su verdad51

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(In the Southwest of this country the people are rising up they demand respect in honor of their roots. These are the people of the corn who sing to us their truths)

Ricardo Pérez Montfort has examined the rich body of politically engaged décimas from Veracruz and the sociohistorical contexts that have triggered these poetic responses across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Décimas are an integral part of Son Jarocho performatives; they are interwoven among song and dance at fandangos or wherever the opportunity arises. Notably, Arcadio Hidalgo describes composing verses “out in the fields, while also working with the hoe” (en el campo, a la vez que le daba al azadón) and affirms that the nation’s future rests with being close to the land.52 Son Jarocho also addresses the Mexican racism so prevalent against citizens who display cultural ties to the Indigenous civilizations of the Americas. The group El Cayuco (meaning dugout canoe) performs a son, “La voz de María” (The voice of María), featuring the powerful voice of an Indigenous woman named María singing in Spanish. She sings “full of pain,” using her voice to expose anti-Indian discrimination from other Mexicans. She reminds her fellow Mexicans that they “are fruit from the same seed,” and she makes social justice demands. María is introduced by another singer as “a voice no one listens to” and “a voice that suffers dispossession, racism, and discrimination.” Una voz que nadie escucha una voz que grita su lucha una voz que ha sido engañada, robada, por tanta ambición Una voz que pide derechos una voz que no tiene techo una voz que sufre despojo, racismo y discriminación

María then sings, asking questions in regard to her Indian phenotype and Indigenous language, as she references historical freedom struggles. Her questions directly confront the shame and humiliation that some Mexicans feel when facing other Mexicans who are visibly Indian, even though both are “fruit from the same seed.”

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¿Por qué mi piel te avergüenza? ¿Por qué mi lengua te humilla si somos el fruto de una misma semilla? ¿Por qué al mirarte me ignoras? ¿Por qué al hablarte no escuchas si tu libertad, también fue nuestra lucha?53 (Why does my skin shame you? Why does my language humiliate you if we are fruit from the same seed? Why do you ignore me when I look at you? Why do you not listen to me when I speak with you if your freedom also was our struggle?)

This son is an example of the contemporary evolution of Son Jarocho in terms of its subject matter and its musicality. The subject matter expands the Indigenous expressivity of Son Jarocho, featuring an Indian’s woman’s truth about racist Mexican social relations. In terms of musicality it uses traditional Son Jarocho instruments, the jarana and requinto, with rhythmic patterns that have evolved in the recent era. Son Jarocho can quickly denounce oppression as it emerges. In 2017 Veracruz state Governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa emptied the treasury and fled the country amid allegations of organized crime and money laundering. The governor’s corruption left state employees and services without essential funds. This state of affairs was editorialized by singers on the streets, in parks, at festivities, and wherever the human voice is present. On New Year’s Eve 2017, I witnessed the widespread El Viejo (Old Man) ritual on the streets of Xalapa, Veracruz, involving musicians dressed as elderly people representing the outgoing year and others in diapers representing, in turn, the new year. Kamál González’s “El Viejo” lyrics featured a humorous critique of power. He referenced Governor Duarte’s theft of billions and conveyed the popularly held view that politicians are inherently corrupt, while also addressing the sadness caused by skyrocketing gasoline prices: Una limosna para este pobre viejo, una limosna para este pobre viejo, que ha dejado hijos, que ha dejado hijos para el año nuevo, para el año nuevo. Dicen que Duarte nos robó como loco, dicen que Duarte nos robó como loco,

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pero Miguel Yunes, pero Miguel Yunes robará otro poco, robará otro poco. Muy triste el viejo se fue pa’ la cantina, muy triste el viejo se fue pa’ la cantina, porque en año nuevo, porque en año nuevo, sube la gasolina, sube la gasolina.54 (Some alms for this poor old man, some alms for this poor old man, he’s left behind some children, left behind some children for the new year, for the new year. They say Duarte robbed the hell out of us they say Duarte robbed the hell out of us, but Miguel Yunes, but Miguel Yunes will also steal some, will also steal some The old man left sadly for the bar, the old man left sadly for the bar because in the new year, because in the new year gasoline prices rise, gasoline prices rise)

The ritual of El Viejo typically features the fixed first line above (“una limosna para este pobre Viejo”) to solicit monetary or other donations. In addition, each group or singer creates their own humorous or social critique stanza, such as “Dicen que Duarte nos robó como loco” (They say Duarte robbed the hell out of us). Such verses are sung in the streets for many hours. These poetic improvisations by numerous participating groups form part of the El Viejo community ritual. Kamál González at times sings about the tender love of homeland: “La magia de la niebla abraza los cafetales” (The magic of the fog hugs the coffee plantations); at other times his improvisational gifts are directed at critiquing power holders. González affirms his relational ties to “the deep roots of the people” as the place where his improvisational powers are born. In his words, “We have improvisation that is born from the base, from the deep roots of the people themselves, from what we see, from what we feel, from what is happening in the world today” (Tenemos la improvisación que nace desde la base, desde la raíz del pueblo mismo, de lo que vemos, de lo que sentimos, de lo que

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está pasando en el mundo actualmente).55 In addressing what is happening in the world today, Son Jarocho has for many decades circumvented journalistic censorship in Mexico and talked back to power. Son Jarocho’s open structure allows for combining traditional set lyrics and a singer’s own lyrical creations within each son. Singers or poetic orators present sets of spontaneous verses. Oftentimes, declamadores (oral poets) recite décimas while musicians play a son, usually “El jarabe loco” or “El zapateado,” in the background. There are many names for the orators and poetic improvisers, including versador popular, poeta popular, improvisador, coplero, and decimero. Sometimes declamadores improvise and exchange competing verses. This poetic exchange can be friendly or adversarial (controversia). Instrumental improvisation is also carried out within the parameters of each Son Jarocho’s unique rhythmic and harmonic structure. At fandangos one can hear old sones recycled into new ones; no two groups play a Son Jarocho the same way. Thus, Son Jarocho serves as a poetic, musical, and political Indigenous arsenal. Oral Tradition: Indigenous Memory Arts What we present in this volume—Mario Barradas’s life telling—represents a prime genre from the Mexican Indigenous memory arts of the oral tradition: historia (oral historical discourse or testimonio). Print culture has produced thousands of history books, yet many of our enduring histories come from elders. These are histories performed in our neighborhoods and homes. Historia provides life guidance and the people’s unofficial history. It is a prime example of ancestral knowledge. Mi historia means my history, my story, my life, and my telling of it. Barradas shares paradigms and theories of practice for everyday life and for survival as a musician. Unlike so much of mainstream Western print culture, Barradas’s oral historia does not erase women; rather, it foregrounds their experiences in a patriarchal society. In narrating his early life, he tells stories of the hardships and sexual assault faced by women. Barradas’s account of the Mexican Revolution centers neither troop movements nor the rise and fall of politicians. Instead, he describes his aunt’s rape at the hands of a soldier and the justice she found. Son Jarocho is largely transmitted across generations by memory and through apprenticeship with elders such as Barradas, who is among an army of lírico (heart and ear) performers. The performative heart and ear complexities of the oral musical universe are sustained by a richly open improvisational

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musical system. Poetic structures carry the musical compás (beat). The pregón (caller) improvises, and the second caller, the coro (chorus) responds, improvising upon the patterns the pregón initiates. The universe of Indigenous memory arts is comprised of mutually sustaining cultural forms and genres. Thus sones at times interact with and sustain the broader storytelling tradition. This is evident in the lyrics of “El toro Zacamandú,” which often echo, cite, or sample the popular life story of José Julián Rivera. Rivera’s often-retold life story conveys popular Indigenous knowledge about nahualismo and interactions between the dead and the living, a hallmark of Indigenous cultures. Different Son Jarocho singers highlight different aspects of Rivera’s life story; often they feature his wife, who possesses supernatural powers. This example from “El toro Zacamandú” conveys the traditional story in which Rivera’s wife turns into a cow: En la Hacienda del Horcón hay una vaca ligera que dice que la regalan de un José Julián Rivera56 (At the Horcón Plantation runs a swift cow that is said to be given away by a man named José Julián Rivera)

Son Jarocho’s multiple registers can include humor, nonsense, and more. “El jarabe loco,” “Colás,” and “El tilingo lingo” tend to feature hilarity that uplifts. Barradas describes how Lino Carrillo composed “El tilingo lingo” based on some gibberish directed at him. Carrillo’s son refrain features nonsensical sounds and words: Ay tilín, tilín, tilín ay tolón, tolón, tolón qué bonitas, qué bonitas, las hijas de Don Simón57 (Oh tilín, tilín, tilín oh tolón, tolón, tolón how pretty, how pretty Mr. Simon’s daughters)

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Musicians improvise some of their own verses to “El jarabe loco” (The crazy song), yet all tend to include a version of the following, in which the deceased leave their graves dancing. This seemingly playful traditional verse encapsulates an Indigenous relation to life and death. Life does not end with death, and the dead can communicate with the living. Este es el jarabe loco que a los muertos resucita. Salen de la sepultura meneando la cabecita. (This is the crazy song that revives the dead. They leave their burial sites shaking their little heads.)

Bonfil Batalla reminds us that “a millennial interrelationship of man [humans] with nature can be seen in all the diverse ways in which the people of Mexico relate to the natural world, use it, and transform it daily.”58 The unitary reality at work in Son Jarocho also manifests in the making of the string instruments, a process that requires the close collaboration of humans, plants, and animals from Sotavento and neighboring regions. The land provides the quijada (jaw of donkey, mule, or horse), which is rasped with a deer horn; it provides the requinto pick (espiga), which is made of cow horn.59 When Mario Barradas describes making gut strings for the Son Jarocho harp, he explains that the process requires humans harvesting animal gut in accordance with the lunar cycles, and he connects to this ancestral knowledge as something he learned from his father. In Barradas’s telling, his father collected animal gut for strings and wood for instruments during the quarter waning moon. We can see how the Indigenous knowledge system—in this instance the connection between people, strings for musical instuments, and the movement of celestial bodies—combines within the particulars of Son Jarocho culture. Similar principles of Circle of Life connectivity apply to the harvesting of wood to make musical instruments; the harvest needs to happen during the appropriate lunar phase, amid prayer and song. Within the Indigenous system of intercommunicative knowledge, the killing of anything—tree, animal, flower—requires communication with the life force that inhabits it. The Son Jarocho group Los Vega provides a broad integrative nature-culture nexus vision in their performance of “Vientos del mar” (Ocean winds). Their

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superb visual inventory of the natural environment and their lyrics show the integration of numerous life spheres. This son prominently names the four elements that comprise the entire Universe: water, earth, wind, and sun or fire (“viento, agua, tierra y sol”). Indigenous peoples regard these four powers as the building blocks of all life. “Vientos del mar” directly addresses the four powers and ties these powers of life poetically to the cultivation of hope: “esperanza nunca mueras” (hope, don’t ever die). It is significant that the four powers, not humans, serve as the main agents of all movement in this evocative son. The wind (“viento”) serves as the main protagonist, acting as messenger to a loved one and as a carrier of song. Significantly, song (“el canto”) emerges not from humans but “from the mountain and the river” (de la montaña y el río). Viento que llevas el canto de la montaña y el río de la montaña y el río, viento que llevas el canto de la montaña y el río, viento que llevas el canto Dile que la extraño tanto, llévale un suspiro mío viento que llevas el canto de la montaña y el río dile que la extraño tanto, llévale un suspiro mío Agua, tierra, viento y sol, esperanza nunca mueras esperanza nunca mueras viento agua tierra y sol esperanza nunca mueras, esperanza nunca mueras Viento, agua, tierra y sol, esperanza nunca mueras el cielo en el horizonte está encendido de hoguera el cielo en el horizonte está encendido de hoguera El viento sopla a favor, juntando tu alma y la mía la tarde tiene un color, que pinta la lejanía que pinta la lejanía, la tarde tiene un color El viento sopla a favor, juntando tu alma y la mía juntando tu alma y la mía, el viento sopla a favor juntando tu alma y la mía, juntando tu alma y la mía Vientos del este vientos del mar vientos que invitan a navegar60

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¿De donde viene este son, tan vestidito de nuevo, tan vestidito de nuevo? ¿de donde viene este son, tan vestidito de nuevo, tan vestidito de nuevo? Vengo de todos los mares, voy hacia todos los vientos ¿De donde viene este son, tan vestidito de nuevo? Vengo de todos los mares, voy hacia todos los vientos61 (Wind, you carry the song of the mountain and the river of the mountain and the river, wind you carry the song of the mountain and the river, wind you carry the song Tell her that I miss her so much, bring her a sigh from me wind, you carry the song of the mountain and the river tell her that I miss her so much, bring her a sigh from me Water, earth, wind, and sun, hope don’t ever die hope don’t ever die, water, earth, wind, sun hope don’t ever die, hope don’t ever die Wind, water, earth, and sun, hope don’t ever die the sky at the horizon is ablaze as a bonfire the sky at the horizon is ablaze as a bonfire The wind blows favorably, uniting your soul and mine the evening has a color that paints the distance that paints the distance, the evening has a color The wind blows favorably, uniting your soul and mine uniting your soul and mine, the wind blows favorably uniting your soul and mine, uniting your soul and mine East winds ocean winds winds that invite us to sail Where does this son come from, dressed nicely as something new, dressed nicely as something new? Where does this son come from, dressed nicely as something new, dressed nicely as something new?

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I come from all the seas, and I’m heading toward all the winds Where does this son come from, dressed nicely as something new? I come from all the seas, and I’m heading toward all the winds

The singing voice asks, “Where does this son come from?” The son replies, “I come from all the seas, and I’m heading toward all the winds.” The son affirms that its powers of expressivity are derived from the natural elements of water and wind. “Vientos del mar” thus powerfully expresses the nature-culture nexus, the symbiotic relations between all aspects of the natural world. That nexus is not merely an aesthetic manifestation. Son Jarocho’s Indigenous poetic matrix strongly orients community consciousness toward a cooperative relationship with the planetary web of life. Where Does This Son Come From? When Los Vega ask, “Where does this son come from?” (¿De donde viene este son?) the response connects people and land to the powers operative within the Cycle of Life, not to racial labels. When scholars ask that question, the answer tends to be human-centric, looking less at what the body of sones expresses and more at what predominant racial or national labels they might apply to that music. Colonial race terminologies, race labels, and even ideologies of the colonial project not only have been applied to characterize Son Jarocho but also have shaped the goals of the research enterprise. Racial and national labels have guided researchers’ thinking as they seek to answer the question “Where does the son come from?” A plethora of race and national labels characterizes the research. Is Son Jarocho Spanish? African? Indian? Mestizo? Afro-Jarocho? Indo-Jarocho? Afro-mestizo? Afro-Andaluz? Indo-mestizo? Hispano-Americano? Afro-Hispano? Indo-mulatto? These race terms populate Son Jarocho research. Race labels—the term “mestizo” in particular—tend to highlight one racial element and eclipse others, blurring more than they reveal. The Indigeneity manifest in contemporary Son Jarocho performance navigates a complex social process, participating in both the integrative nature-culture nexus and disintegrative colonizing and neocolonizing capitalist social processes. The lack of sustained engagement with the Indigenous when researching Son Jarocho might be due in part to how various sectors of Mexican society imagine the Indigenous knowledge system as extinct. Partly, also, there is widespread reluctance to perceive the unitary reality of Indigenous communities, who for the most part now speak Spanish. Unlike the colonial racial divides and their labels, people from Indigenous cultures have historically referred to all humans as “the people.” Almost all so-

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called tribal names designate the human as a species, the people, and not as a race or nationality. Often, “the people” is a term connected to a feature of land, sea, or sky. Tribal names include the Yoeme (people), Havasupai (people of the blue-green water), Gwich’in (the people), Tohono O’odham (desert people), Absaroke (children of the big-beaked bird), Dine’e (the people), Hualapai (people of the pine trees), Lenape (the people), Yavapai (people of the sun), and Ndee (the people). The process of colonization initiated the practice of separating the human species into races, with the European as the standard and considered superior. The rise of racialism divided the human species into categories within a hierarchical caste system that continues to this day. Scholars readily apply racial terms to music in the questionable assumption that music is in alignment with the racial terms applied to people. For decades the Mexican government officially sponsored all manner of activity, including research, to promulgate public consciousness of what it called “la tercera raíz” (the third root): African heritage in Mexico. The problem with so much of the third-root scholarship is that it usually ignores the first root, the original people of the land; it looks to Africa while also looking away from Native America. Son Jarocho researchers have conducted intense investigation into centuries past and even a search in other continents for the roots of Son Jarocho but not beyond the beginnings of colonization. Academic blinders—specializations—thus foster a distortive myopia. There is a notable absence of sustained research into how precolonial civilizations processed the arrivant colonial cultures. Implicit is that the millions of Indigenous people of this continent were a tabula rasa that unthinkingly received arrivant colonial culture. The anthropologist Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán laid a portion of the foundation for how scholars approach Son Jarocho. His groundbreaking 1942 study La población negra en México: Estudio etnohistórico inaugurated the study of Black migration to Mexico. His later work, especially “Bailes de negros” in 1970, offers a perspective on Veracruz race relations that has been widely and selectively quoted and has even served as a starting point for subsequent researchers. The most often quoted passage claims that during colonial times, when there were millions of Indians present, Blacks interacted primarily with their Spanish masters and not with the Indian population. Aguirre Beltrán claims that Son Jarocho emerged from that interaction, and thus he attributes the new so-called mestizo musical forms that emerged in what is now Mexico to the interaction of Spaniards with Blacks. La mutua influencia de una cultura sobre otra, tuvo lugar especialmente entre la negra y la blanca. El contacto más frequente del negro fue sin duda el que tuvo con el amo blanco.62

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(Mutual influence between cultures took place, especially between the Black and the white. The most frequent contact for Blacks was without a doubt the contact that Blacks had with their white masters.)

Yet in the same article, Aguirre Beltrán warns, “It is not always possible to demonstrate the origin of traits and cultural complexes . . . that form part of Mexicans.” He adds, “There is no certainty at all when trying to ascertain cultural origins.”63 He also indicates that for Afro-Mexicanists it would be “impossible” to offer “incontrovertible evidence” when trying to “designate any trait as African.”64 Caveats notwithstanding, many subsequent researchers have ascertained what they assert to be African cultural features of origin for Son Jarocho. Based on Aguirre Beltrán’s speculative theory that Blacks interacted only with Spaniards—implying that Blacks had no significant interaction with Indians—subsequent scholars have looked to Africa for origins. Although in “Bailes de negros” Aguirre Beltrán asserts that mutual influence of cultures happened especially between enslaved Blacks and white masters, he also provides contrary evidence. Aguirre Beltrán draws from Spanish Inquisition records to describe how Blacks and Indians enjoyed frequent interaction, particularly at Indigenous ceremonial dance celebrations. The well-documented African-Indian ceremonial interaction was of great concern to the Spanish ecclesiastic and civil authorities, who unsuccessfully sought to outlaw the attendance of enslaved Africans at Indian dance celebrations. Aguirre Beltrán draws from multiple Spanish Inquisition records to show how scandalized Spanish power holders were regarding the African-Indian interactions. El escándalo que provocaron los bailes de negros no se limitó a los amos. Se extendió a los gobernantes encargados del poder civil y a los eclesiásticos que dominaban las conciencias, al comprobar la intromisión de los esclavos en los bailes, y celebraciones de los indios. Los comisarios y familiares del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición, en las denuncias que elevaron a sus superiores dejaron constancia de esta penetración y de la de opuesto sentido. Los negros, informan, bailan con los indios el nonteleche, representación de un sacrificio humano, los patoles en las ceremonias de imposición del nombre y los areitos destinados a los dioses indios.65 (The outrage provoked by the Blacks’ dances was not limited to their slave masters. It extended to all the leaders in charge of civil life and to those ecclesiastic authorities in charge of consciences, upon receiving proof of how the [Black] slaves were meddling in the dances and celebrations of the Indians. The commissioners and related family members of the Holy Office of the

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Inquisition brought complaints to their superiors, providing proof of these excursions as well as of those in the opposite direction. The Blacks, we are informed, dance the nonteleche with the Indians, representing a human sacrifice; they dance the patoles during naming ceremonies and they dance at the areitos offered to the Indian gods.)

Blacks were regularly attending Indian ritual dance ceremonies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and later. These ceremonial Indian gatherings, especially those called areitos, can be regarded as precursors of the Son Jarocho fandango. Aguirre Beltrán further tempers his claim regarding exclusive Spaniard-Black slave interaction by pointing to the alliance between Indians and escaped Blacks (“cimarrones”) who found refuge in Indigenous communities known as “Indian republics” (repúblicas de indios). Los cimarrones vivían en palenques sujetos a un orden social cuya cohesión les permitía rechazar con éxito los ataques de los colonos esclavistas; pero este orden era una reinterpretación de formas occidentales o americanas. La economía se basaba en la producción de formas occidentales o americanas. La economía se basaba en la producción del maíz conforme a la técnica indígena, y la organización política se configuraba de acuerdo con las normas que los españoles dieron a la república de indios.66 (Escaped Blacks lived in communities subject to a social order whose cohesion allowed them to successfully fight off the attacks by slaveholding colonizers; but that order was an applied form of Western or American [Indigenous] social forms. The economy was based on Western or American forms of production. The economy was based on the production of corn in accordance with Indigenous techniques, and the political organization was based on the norms that Spaniards applied to the Indian republic.)

Given the strong evidence of intense intercultural relations, mutuality, and even alliance between Africans and Indians, we can assume that some Africans adopted Native American cultural elements, while some Native Americans also appropriated some African elements, and together they found common ground. Despite the evidence, most researchers have tended to overlook the evidence of strong Indian-Black relations, and they proceed to exclude the Native Indians from consideration when discussing Son Jarocho’s origins. Many researchers claim that Indians entirely disappeared early on due to epidemics, enslavement, and relocations, leaving only Africans and Spaniards. Although it cannot be denied that those occurrences killed millions of Native people,

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hundreds of thousands survived and populations recovered, particularly by the time Son Jarocho was taking shape in the eighteenth century. Demographic data indicate that when compared to Africans, very few Spaniards came to the Americas. Africans and their descendants far outnumbered the Spaniards, and Native Americans outnumbered them both. In his 1942 book Aguirre Beltrán indicates, “The native population, the Indigenous, the mestizo, or both have been, during all epochs, the overwhelming majority of the nation” (La población nativa, la indígena, la mestiza o ambas fueron, en todas las épocas, la abrumadora mayoría de la nación).67 It is ironic that Aguirre Beltrán, who brought the Black presence to national consciousness, then erases Blacks by claiming that Africans somehow vanished into the general population. He has been praised for initiating the study of Blacks in Mexico and faulted, accused of Black erasure and of “a whitening ideology” (ideología blanqueadora).68 My own reading of Aguirre Beltrán’s demographic figures leads me to surmise that although Mexico has officially largely wanted to imagine its populace as a mestizo nation of mixed Spaniard and Indian, the evidence of a predominantly Indian-African kinship is far more compelling. I have even come to suspect that many Native American communities first began to appropriate the Spanish language through conviviality with African allies and not from the Spanish slave plantation masters.69 When I refer to Son Jarocho as Indigenous, I recognize that this designation runs counter to a host of scholarly material that applies colonial race labels or national origin labels to Son Jarocho. The music is often labeled “afromestizo” (predominantly African) or Afro-Spanish or as an Afro-Andalusian (“afroandaluz”) cultural entity or derivative.70 Various published sources seek to credit exclusively the African identity within Son Jarocho rhythms. Rolando Pérez Fernández in “El son jarocho como expresión musical afromestiza” attempts to corroborate Aguirre Beltrán’s 1970 claim: “Aguirre Beltrán posited that the so-called Mexican mestizo music is fundamentally the result of the cultural symbiosis between Spaniards and Africans” (Aguirre Beltrán planteó que la llamada música mestiza mexicana es fundamentalmente el resultado de la simbiosis cultural entre españoles y africanos).71 Pérez Fernández thus relies on Aguirre Beltrán’s questionable thesis and expands upon it. In a strangely twisted argument, he echoes Aguirre Beltrán, claiming that the Indians (“los indígenas”) would not have interacted with Africans because “their [Indians’] language, clothing, housing, foods, economic system, and vision of the world were radically different from those of the Spanish, with whom the Africans and their descendants identified” (Su lengua, indumentaria, vivienda, alimentación, economía y visión del mundo eran radicalmente diferentes de

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las del español, con el cual se identificaban el africano y sus decendientes).72 Pérez Fernández then locates the contemporary rhythmic conventions of Son Jarocho—such as cross-rhythms, polyrhythms, syncopation, hemiola, the percussive character of the jarana’s strumming patterns, and call and response—in West Africa. He also elaborates upon the African concept of nsála (life force), unaware that it corresponds to the Indigenous “vision of the world” (visión del mundo) expressed through the Indigenous Nahuatl concept tonalli (life force). Pérez Fernández thus bases his hypothesis regarding the West African origins of Son Jarocho on questionable historical assumptions regarding an imagined lack of contact between Indigenous communities and arrivant Africans. If he had looked into Native American musical cultures, he would have found those same elements he ascribes exclusively to West Africa, that is, cross-rhythms, polyrhythms, syncopation, and more. As a Chicano musician and Son Jarocho performer, our collaborator Francisco González has explained the existence of similar musical devices across cultures, using cross-rhythm as an example: Cross-rhythms are a prime musical device that is common to many cultures. You can hear cross-rhythms—a musical rhythm with alternating measures of 3/4 and 6/8 time—in many music traditions, and you can decide who did it first or who gave it to whom. That’s largely guesswork. The truth is that crossrhythms can be found in Africa, but they are also native to the Americas: in Son Jaliciense music, Son Huasteco, Son Guerrerense, Son Jarocho, and more. There is cross-rhythm in jazz.73

Indigenous peoples of the Americas employed polyrhythm and antiphony prior to colonization; these techniques are not the exclusive property of any one culture or continent. Over time, however, the hypothesis that Son Jarocho has primarily African roots, rhythm, and heritage has hardened into fact. Researchers and some performers widely repeat it as fact, disregarding the Indigenous civilizations that preceded Spanish and African arrival and that continue to this day. The realm of zapateado, the percussive dance forms that are an integral part of Son Jarocho, has also been assigned the “Afro-Mexican” label by Anita González. It is a curious label, given that the author states, “Jarocho dancing is based upon African, Native American, and Creole performance forms.”74 She contends, “Jarocho music and dance . . . developed from unique syncretic performance styles that were common to field workers of Indian and African ancestry.”75 González, similar to Aguirre Beltrán, also asserts, “Analyzing

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ethnic influences that generate expressive culture is at best an indeterminate process.”76 Nonetheless, the author then proceeds to make claims regarding “ethnic influences.” She summarily eliminates Indian heritage based on the questionable claim that polyrhythms and syncopation “are rooted in Spanish and African practices” and not found in “other Mexican regions.”77 They are in fact found in other Mexican regions and among numerous tribal cultures across the continent but not examined in her study. González’s generalizations about zapateado being of African origin extend to naming improvisation, the absence of closed couple dancing, and “bent body posture” as African features.78 Dance features that might be understood as cultural common ground of Indian and African dance heritage are labeled African. Thus González labels zapateado as “Afro-Mexican dance.” The Indian roots of Son Jarocho are once again set aside. What remains to be explored by Son Jarocho scholars are the elements of Indigenous civilization that constitute the common ground of Native American and African musical compatibilities, those shared elements of musical heritage that made the emergence of a new Indigenous music such as Son Jarocho possible over the centuries. Pérez Fernández’s and other researchers’ effort to isolate “the African contribution to Mexico’s musical culture” (el aporte africano a la cultura musical de Mexico)79 must include the receiving end, the Indigenous civilization, if the confluence is to be understood. The connectivity of Native American and Black cultures is audible in other musical traditions from the Gulf of Mexico region. Louisiana jazz can be regarded as a Gulf Coast first cousin of Son Jarocho, and jazz research offers valuable insight. With regard to jazz origins Morgen Stiegler indicates, “This [Black-Indian] cultural contact and amalgamation, which occurred throughout the Southeast and most of the United States, also happened in New Orleans.”80 Historically, in many places, Indian-Black connectivity consisted not only of common cultural elements such as the vision of shared Indigenous cooperation among all life systems but also was fostered by shared historical oppression: enslavement, displacement, impoverishment, racism, and the reality of a common historical enemy. Stiegler indicates that an engagement with Native American music is necessary to understanding jazz: “Discussing culture sharing and potential Native American retentions in jazz is impossible without discussing characteristics of Native American music. Being aware of some very general characteristics of Native American music may provide clues as to why these two cultures could have adopted each other’s practices, and why the two cultures were musically compatible to begin with.”81 The general shared characteristics of Native American dance and performance practice Stiegler brings forward include monophonics, trickster expressions, improvisation, poly-

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rhythmic forms such as syncopation, hemiola, call and response (antiphony), varied dance elements, and an improvisational openness. It is time to write the Native homeland people and cultures back into Son Jarocho history, just as Black Indian connectivity has been written into jazz studies, without the need for creating new ethnic or race labels. If we identify some origin features within ethnic musical categories and apply the origins labels, then norteño accordion music, also called conjunto tejano in Spanish and Tex-Mex in English, could be called German-mestizo or German Mexican music instead of what its practitioners call it because the accordion and polka rhythm comes from Germany. Jazz would be called English Indian music because the instruments originated in Europe and it was originally sung in the English language by Blacks and Indians. What Tiya Miles and Sharon P. Holland write about Indian Territory in the United States has some bearing with regard to Veracruz and Blacks finding refuge in Indigenous communities: “By the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, many African Americans had come to see the Western lands called Indian Territory as a refuge in America, and more, as a potential black space that would function metaphorically and emotionally as a substitute for the longed-for homeland.”82 A similar dynamic was established in Mexico, where in earlier times many Blacks who escaped enslavement were taken in by long-standing Indigenous communities. The 2015 Mexican census affirms that Indigenous communities served as refuges and free spaces for escaped Blacks across history; within Mexico’s communities that designate themselves as Afro-descended, 65 percent of those Afro-descended also self-designate as Indian.83 Miles and Holland describe a process of Indian and Black cultural sharing that was likely also at work in the Son Jarocho homeland: “Indeed, the idea of and desire for connectivity with Indians and Indian spaces has found expression in a variety of African American cultural forms, including song, story, and visual art.”84 Among the most prolific scholars of fandango and Son Jarocho is Antonio García de León. Together with Liza Rumazo, he authored the widely cited Fandango: El ritual del mundo jarocho a través de los siglos (2006), which examines fandango history, provides a Son Jarocho songbook, and collects predominantly European eyewitness documents. Like Aguirre Beltrán and Pérez Fernández, García de León and Rumazo build their views regarding Son Jarocho based on a race-segregated premise that in great measure guides the research optics. They claim that the fandango “gave an identity to the world of the whites, mestizos, blacks, and mulattos who shared the local culture without identifying themselves either with the Spanish or with the Indians, who were developing their own culture.”85 This racialized premise concerning the

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“local culture” of fandango thus excludes “the Indians.” However, the Spanish (“peninsulares”) do find their way back into García León and Rumazo’s research optics. The racially segregated ternary they set up is as follows: 1. Whites, mestizos, blacks, and mulattos, who participate in “local culture” of fandango 2. Spaniards (“peninsulares”), who do not participate in “local culture” of fandango 3. Indians, who do not participate in “local culture” of fandango

Does it make sense that Blacks “shared the local culture” and yet did not identify with or interact with “the Indigenous population”? Aguirre Beltrán, through plentiful Spanish Inquisition sources, gives ample evidence that Blacks in Mexico did indeed interact with Indigenous communities and their dance celebrations such as the areito. And where did the “mestizos” whom García de León and Rumazo reference come from if not from the interaction of Spanish and Indian? And who are the “whites” that occupy a separate category than the Spaniards? The use of race labels in order to segregate occludes more than it clarifies here, given that these groups overlap by definition: “mulattos” and “mestizos” are designations for people born of various combinations of Indigenous, Spanish, or Black parents. How is it that they would not identify or interact with those populations of their parents, grandparents, and ancestral communities? The authors conclude their premise of race segregation by introducing the term “formación social mestiza” (mestizo social formation) to describe the first group they name (whites, mestizos, Blacks, and mulattos), and they thus label Son Jarocho “mestiza,” meaning, for them, non-Indian and non-Spanish. Significantly, García de León and Rumazo’s segregated race ternary sidelines Indigenous people; Indians are frozen in the past and then erased as agents of the cultural transformations happening on their own continent, including Son Jarocho. It comes as a curious surprise that the Son Jarocho scholars García de León and Rumazo’s introduction to the volume then names “the Iberian Peninsula” as the place of origin for “the cultural molds which created all the musical and lyrical variants of the Hispano-American world.”86 This towering Eurocentric generalization that names Iberia as the place of origin for Son Jarocho “and all the musical and lyrical variants of the HispanoAmerican world” is more than problematic.87 García de León and Rumazo refer to Son Jarocho as “a current of remnants, confluences of ancient peninsular [Spanish] songbooks, ripped from their original contexts, re-created, and reinserted into other dynamics.”88 What

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were those “other dynamics”? There is no discussion of the colonizing process, the genocide, the enslavement, or the ecocide. Nor is there any discussion of the unnamed civilization and people who supposedly “re-created” Spanish songbooks. How were those Spanish peninsular songbook shreds “reinserted”? What unnamed people did the supposed reinserting? Where is Native American agency? García de León and Rumazo seem to imply that Native people of the Americas were reading or somehow absorbing Spanish songbooks from the varied named regions of Spain they name: murcianos, asturianos, gallegos, or castellanos. These are specific regions of Spain named as antecedents of Son Jarocho, yet no poetry samples from those regions are offered as proof. Instead of providing sustained poetic evidence from the Spanish fifteenth century and thereafter, García de León and Rumazo continually reference isolated evidentiary “shreds” of Spanish “survivals” (supervivencias), “fragments” (fragmentos), “reminiscences” (reminiscencias), “disconnected segments” (segmentos inconexos), and even “clear leftovers of fragments” (restos muy evidentes de fragmentos), all part of “the Hispano-American tradition of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries” (la tradición hispanoamericana de los siglos XV, XVI, y XVII).89 When analyzing Son Jarocho, published sources such as this one tend to recede to a discussion of vague distant origins, hundreds of years ago, and they give major cultural credit to actors from faraway lands. Not surprisingly, scholars reduce Indigeneity at best to an unspecified “influence,” imagining it replaced by the new, mostly European “mestizo” identity. García de León also erases the Indigenous when he uses the term “El Caribe afroandaluz” in 1992. Although he refers to the Caribbean (and Jarochos) as a “mixture of three ethnic origins: Spaniards (mainly Andalusians), Blacks, and Indians” (mezcla de tres orígenes étnicos: españoles [principalmente andaluces], negros e indios) his naming of the entire Caribbean as “afroandaluz” effectively erases the Indian.90 Ricardo Pérez Montfort slyly inserts Indigenous civilizations when he quotes García de León’s term as “Caribe (Indo) afroandaluz.”91 García de León and Rumazo never engage with the profound Indigenous poetic traditions established long before Europeans arrived. Centuries-old Indigenous songs, composed in innumerable Native languages, bear an existential resemblance to the Indigenous land-based connectivity of today’s Son Jarocho. Yet for García de León and Rumazo, Native people simply do not fit into the mestizo colonial ideology and theory they put forth. Their understanding of “mestizo” is distinct and separate from “Indian,” and therefore mestizos are not Indian. The label “mestizo” is in need of some examination. It is part and parcel of

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the twentieth-century Mexican effort to erase Indigeneity in Mexico. Beginning in the 1920s, José Vasconcelos, secretary of public education, made his racist views of Indians known and insisted that Indians needed to abandon their traditional cultures as part of the nation-building effort: “Indians have no door to the future but the door of modern culture.”92 The term “mestizo” was part of Vasconcelos’s postrevolutionary raza cósmica ideology (codified in his La raza cósmica publication of 1925), and “mestizo” was propagandized as the ideal mixed race label for Mexico’s true emergent nationalist identity. It was an extension of colonial domination into the ideological level. Agustín Palacios indicates, “Vasconcelos did not seek to include the indigenous or Afro-mestizo cultures in the school curriculum.” He explains, “His ideology of mestizaje never envisioned a place for indigenous people living in the Mexican nation, but coded them as stepping-stones to a more ‘evolved’ mestizo body.”93 An anecdote regarding the noted Son Jarocho performer Gilberto Gutiérrez of Grupo Mono Blanco speaks volumes. This is a California story from 1989 narrated later by Francisco González: Gilberto Gutiérrez was in San Jose, California, working, and Artemio Posadas interviewed him. I read the article and saw that Gilberto was talking about a lot of things pertaining to Son Jarocho: about the Spanish and the African, saying that’s where the music comes from. When he came to our house in Santa Barbara after that and stayed with us for a while, he asked me if I’d seen the article, and I said, “Yes, but why didn’t you say anything about the Indigenous?” He answered, “Todos saben eso ya. No se tiene que decir” [Everybody knows that already. You don’t have to say it].

The tendency to not have to say it, not talk about Indian heritage, is part of the mestizaje ideology that has made being Indian in Mexico an embarrassment. Richard Rodríguez wrote an opinion piece, published in the San Francisco Independent in April 1994, entitled “The Hardest Thing for a Mexican to Say: ‘Soy Indio.’” The silence concerning Indian identity and heritage was promulgated in Mexico both before and after the Mexican Revolution. Jack Forbes discusses the Mexican term “mestizo” as a tool of deIndianization and a means for affirming racial superiority over the indígena. What is truly remarkable, and a testimony to the effectiveness of Spanish racial propaganda, is the fact that many Latin American states have today,

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as their national ideology, the idea of being “mestizo” or at least that becoming “mestizo” is a national cultural ideal and that all indigenous groups must eventually give way. The Native people, it is said, must give up their languages and traditional identities in favor of becoming ladinos, cholos, or (more properly speaking) mestizos. The Mexican elite, for example, asserts the superiority of the mestizo over the indígena and as the very essence of the post-1821 Mexican society. This is, of course, a shocking testimony to the effectiveness of Spanish colonial indoctrination.94

What escapes the imaginary of those who apply the term “mestizo” is that there never was a culture on earth that was not mixed. Mixture is the essence of all cultural evolution. Yet the term “mestizo” is reserved exclusively for colonized people. European nations rarely, if ever, identify their homeland cultures as “mixed.” Ireland was colonized by Norse and English invaders. Greece was colonized by Ottoman Turks, among others. Even so, the Greeks and the Irish do not refer to themselves as “mixed.” Forbes comments, It is as if the French must always be considered as metis because of their Gallo-Roman-Frankish mixture, or the English must be considered as mulattoes because of their British-Anglo-Saxon-Norman-French mixture. The Spaniards, of course, are far more mestizo than are the Mexicans since the Mexicans of today are perhaps as much as 80% indigenous genetically and their culture and language includes a vast native element. The Spaniards, on the other hand, possess Iberian Carthaginian-Greek-Roman-GermanicArab-Berber-Jewish-African and other ancestry and a culture and language almost wholly borrowed (except for the Basques). Who then are the real mestizos? Why must Mexicans, Costa Ricans, Venezuelans, Colombians, Peruvians, etcetera, eternally deny their indigenous continuity in favor of mixture while Spaniards, Turks, Italians, Britons and other very, very mixed people possess a unified sense of themselves?95

Bonfil Batalla takes issue with racial categories that form part of the “México imaginario” ideology (unreal dominant Mexico). He describes the ideology of the ruling “imaginary Mexico” as one that constructs Indianness in the most reductive terms possible: “In this case one must suppose that the only true Indian is one who is illiterate and miserably poor, and who does not speak Spanish or employ Western rationality. Anyone who does these things ceases to be Indian. Can there be a clearer example of the persistence of colonial ideology?”96 In other words, Bonfil Batalla is telling us that Indigeneity

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has evolved over time, to different degrees in different communities, and it has of course absorbed elements from colonizers, other arrivants, and modernity. Son Jarocho is an Indigenous music that is adaptive to social history, having appropriated new elements. Sones de la Tierra: Earth Songs Son Jarocho is sung in Spanish and a number of Indigenous languages, yet scholars have not researched the relevant Indigenous-language Son Jarocho in any sustained way. I am not aware, for instance, of anyone learning Indigenous languages in order to study the Son Jarocho culture in Popoluca or Nahuatl. I am hoping that scholars will further examine the continuity between ancient and modern Indigenous poetic expression and Son Jarocho. Research into Son Jarocho’s origins needs to be paired with an examination of Indigenous poetic sensibility (and metrics) across centuries and its transference into Nahuatlized Jarocho “Spanish,” for example. In “Las coplas indígenas de México,” Victoria R. Bricker and Munro Edmonson demonstrate that Indigenous poetic artistry has been highly developed since well before colonization and into the present. Algunos elementos literarios de las lenguas indígenas modernas de México, tales como el paralelismo poético, son poco visibles si no se confrontan con los textos mismos. A continuación, ofrecemos una muestra de textos relevantes, que indicarán lo generalizado que ha sido el uso del paralelismo de coplas semánticas en todo el México indígena, tanto en el período clásico como en el actual.97 (Some elements found in Indigenous-language literature of modern Mexico, such as poetic parallelism, are hardly visible if the texts themselves are not examined. In what follows, we offer a sample of relevant texts that illustrate how generalized the use of parallelism with semantic couplets has been within all of Indigenous Mexico, both during the classic period and in contemporary times.)

A rich body of precolonial poetic expression exists in which to find kinship with today’s Son Jarocho. Cantares mexicanos, gathered in the sixteenth century and translated from Nahuatl to Spanish to English, manifest an Indigenous integrative outlook. As an example, I cite a small segment whose strong resemblance to the nature-culture nexus of Son Jarocho is unmistakable.

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Truly they live in this place, I hear their flowery song, it is as if the mountain could respond to them. In truth the precious water flows beside the fountain of the xiutototl the cenzontle, bird of four hundred voices.98

There is ample evidence that Natives have sung in Indigenous languages and rhymed poetically before and since the arrival of colonizers. Ruben M. Campos delivers one such example (in abridged form here) from the precolonial “edad precortesiana.” Nonantzin ihquac nimiquix motlequilpan nechtlatoca, huan cuac tiaz titlaxcalchihuaz ompa nepampa xonchoca Madre mía, cuando muera sepúltame en el hogar, y al hacer el pan espera y por mí ponte a llorar99 (My mother, when I die bury me at home, when making bread stop, and cry for me

Some elements of today’s Native American music are surely postcolonial appropriations. Although some instruments—the Jarocho harp, for instance— have Spanish origins, Native people have Indigenized string instruments within their own repertoires and based on a different nature-culture nexus. The same is true of Catholic rites and images adapted by Native people or even of the Indigenous Spanish language. Appropriations from other cultures do not make the Indigenous cultures less Native American or more Spanish. Michel de Certeau describes these Indigenous appropriations as subversive because the absorbed cultural elements are used “to ends and references foreign to the system they had no choice but to accept.” [T]he ambiguity that subverted from within the Spanish colonizers’ “success” in imposing their own culture on the indigenous Indians is well known.

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Submissive, and even consenting to their subjection, the Indians nevertheless often made of the rituals, representations, and laws imposed on them something quite different from what their conquerors had in mind; they subverted them not by rejecting or altering them, but by using them with respect to ends and references foreign to the system they had no choice but to accept.100

Fragments of Spanish legacy such as references to Cupid can lead to generalizations and inferences concerning the Spanish fifteenth-century Siglo de Oro (Golden Age) characteristics in Son Jarocho. However, the scholarly work that ascribes Siglo de Oro provenance to Son Jarocho needs to be paired with a discussion of the historical violences used to implant Spanish elements as well as a discussion of Native refunctionalization of Spanish and other foreign elements. Shakespeare’s Caliban, the Native enslaved on his own island, philosophically expresses linguistic refunctionalization when addressing the colonizing master Prospero in the master’s English language: You taught me language, and my profit on ’t Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language!101

The Native Caliban’s English-language proficiency, however, does not make him an Englishman. Nor does Son Jarocho’s Spanish-language proficiency make it Spanish. A sustained reevaluation of Son Jarocho’s Indigenous expressivity and roots is necessary. Son Jarocho researcher Ricardo Pérez Montfort examines how those Indigenous roots were excluded in the development of a Jarocho stereotype. En la consolidación del estereotipo jarocho las raíces indígenas, que en el siglo XIX formaron parte central de la descripción del mismo, vivieron cierto ninguneo de parte de los “folcloristas” o estudio de costumbres. Aun cuando el indigenismo adquirió un inusitado vigor durante los años posrevolucionarios, la vertiente indígena fue practicamente excluida a la hora de la reivindicación del jarocho. No así la vertiente negra.102 (In the consolidation of the Jarocho stereotype, the Indigenous roots that formed such a central part of the description of that entity during the nineteenth century, went through a certain process of exclusion by the “folklorists” or in studies of customs. And although Indigenism had acquired a surprising vigor during the post-revolutionary years, the Indigenous roots were practi-

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cally excluded when the Jarocho reclamation occurred. Black roots did not experience that.)

The historian Álvaro Alcántara López is among the small group of scholars who give primacy to the Indigenous matrix. Alcántara points out that enslaved Africans partnered with Indigenous women, and the offspring had Indigenous mothers (“sus madres eran mujeres indias”). He indicates that “afromestizos” in Mexico “acculturated into the Indigenous cosmovision.” In Alcántara’s words, [L]o cierto es que no sabemos demasiado al respecto de la cultura de los pueblos africanos de aquel entonces ni de la procedencia de los negros (no muchos) que llegaron a trabajar a las haciendas ganaderas del sur de Veracruz como esclavos. Cuando hablamos de los “afromestizos” tendemos a creer que estos mulatos y pardos poseen una cultura africana y esa es una idea totalmente equivocada. Hablar de “afromestizos” en el territorio mexicano y, particularmente, en el sur de Veracruz implica hablar de naciones criollas, aculturadas en el cosmovisión indígena. Sus madres eran mujeres indias y fue con ellas con quienes crecieron los pardos y mulatos de la region. Los “afromestizos” conservaron elementos de la cultura africana de sus ancestros—sin tener demasiada conciencia de tal legado—pero sus habitus, su manera de entender el mundo son predominante de matriz india.103 (What’s true is that we don’t know a lot about the culture of the African people of that era, nor of the place of origin of the Blacks [not many] who arrived to work on the cattle plantations as slaves in southern Veracruz. When we speak of “afromestizos” on these Mexican lands we tend to think that these mixed-blood “mulatos” and “pardos” carry African culture; that is an entirely mistaken idea. When we use the term “afromestizo” on Mexican land, and particularly in southern Veracruz, it implies that we are talking about mixed-blood people acculturated into the Indigenous cosmovision. Their mothers were Indian women, and those referred to as “mulatos” or “pardos” in this region were raised by Indian women. The “afromestizos” might have preserved elements of African culture from some ancestors—without having much consciousness of that legacy—but their cultural characteristics and their manner of understanding the world are predominantly from the Indian matrix.)

In contrast to so many Son Jarocho scholars, Alcántara gives insight into the survival of Indigenous land-based knowledge ways within the context of colonial cattle plantations. He does not subscribe to the well-established but

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poorly documented assumption that Africans only interacted with Spaniards. Alcántara also discusses the common ground of cooperative ritualistic activity shared by Indians and Africans. Por eso cuando uno acerca la mirada a la vida social generada en torno a la hacienda, observa como la parte ritual, mágica o sobrenatural de la vida permea el que hacer ganadero. Se ve así a aparecer a vaqueros que invocan al pájaro carpintero para encontrar al ganado; a mulatos que en compañía de indígenas participan de un ritual de iniciación de un recién nacido, quemando copal y ofrendándolo en los cuatro puntos cardinales de un corral, o la creencia de vaqueros que tienen pacto con el demonio para poder capturar mayor número de reses. Y es que el trato con lo sobrenatural o con lo muy terrenal estuvo presente en toda la historia colonial de Veracruz, y las prácticas sagradas de los africanos y de los indios fueron muy socorridas y no perdieron vigencia ni efectividad, a pesar del celo de las políticas virreinales.104 (That’s why when we examine the social life generated by the hacienda, we observe how rituals, magic, and supernatural aspects of life permeate ranch life. You find cowboys who invoke the woodpecker to help find the cattle; you find mulattos who together with Indians participate in rituals of initiation for a newborn; they burn copal and offer the incense to the four cardinal directions; or you find a belief among cowboys who have made a pact with the devil in order to round up the greatest number of cows. All of this is because an interaction with the supernatural or with earthly powers was present during the entire colonial history of Veracruz, and the sacred practices of the Africans and the Indians were sought out and never lost validity or effectiveness, in spite of the jealous viceregal political efforts.)

Unlike scholars who label Son Jarocho “afromestizo,” Andrés Barahona Londoño calls it “Indígena mestiza,” while explicitly adding, “It is neither Spanish music nor Afro-American music” (No es música española ni afroamericana).105 Barahona Londoño designates Son Jarocho as an Indigenous music “seasoned with many other things.” In an interview he explains, ¿De dónde viene esta música? Todo mundo nos dirá que tiene una supuesta confluencia de visiones interculturales, que en efecto las hay. . . . Esta música suena a México: a partir de eso, tenemos que entender entonces que se trata de música mexicana; no música española ni afroamericana. México es un país cuyo simiente histórico es la vertiente indígena; de esta manera, concluyo que más que tener una confluencia de tres sangres, entre ellas la sangre negra, es música básicamente indígena mestiza, salpimentada de muchas otras cosas.106

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(Where does this music come from? The whole world says it supposedly consists of the confluence of intercultural visions, which of course do exist. . . . This music sounds like Mexico: given that reality, we have to understand that this is in fact Mexican music; not Spanish or Afro-American music. Mexico is a country whose historical seed is its Indigenous roots. I would conclude that far from being something at the confluence of three bloods, among them the Black, this music is fundamentally Indigenous mestiza with some things mixed in; it is spiced up with many other things.)

One would do well to focus on the “fundamentally Indigenous” aspects while by no means denying the confluence or selective appropriation of elements from other cultures. Son Jarocho Migrations: From Veracruz to the Rural Metropolis to Aztlán In the 1930s and ’40s Son Jarocho music, so deeply rooted in Sotavento riverbanks, mountain ranges, cornfields, animals, and human celebration at community fandangos, began to travel with musicians into urban centers, most notably Mexico City. From there it traveled by radio and recordings across continents. Son Jarocho’s relations with the living environment and with multiple dimensions of the land-based cosmic knowledge system changed when it migrated from Sotavento to Mexico City and far beyond. Mario Barradas’s life provides a case study of musical migration. Son Jarocho migrations, which caused a partial uprooting of the form, have been tied to new media industries and technologies. In the 1930s radio programming began to be transmitted from Mexico City into provincial cities. As provincial musicians made their way into the city, their performances were broadcast back to the Veracruz homeland on those radio waves. Barradas describes in this volume how he, as a child, heard the old sones of his Jarocho homeland performed by El Trío Medellín on an XEW broadcast in 1935: “When I was nine, my family would listen to El Trío Medellín on XEW. It was in ’35 and I would hear the sones viejos played with requinto and jarana, without harp. That means that Son Viejo had come to Mexico City by 1935. There should be recordings at XEW.” The Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico (Mexican National Railroad) was in service by 1873, and it linked Barradas’s native Veracruz to Mexico City. That railroad system was considered by many to be a modern marvel. Barradas’s family life revolved around it, as did the lives of practically everybody who lived in Tierra Blanca. Interestingly, the Veracruz al Istmo route,

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from Veracruz to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, is not only a physical route but also marks a series of guideposts to Mario Barradas’s early days and his musical apprenticeship. Barradas frequented the towns along that train route. He thus had opportunities to interact with Son Jarocho musicians from varied styles. Tierra Blanca produced many skilled harpists and attracted a great many more who came to work for the railroad; their presence created an ideal training ground for a young apprentice such as Barradas. Like his father before him, Mario Barradas worked in music and on the railroad throughout his life. At the age of nineteen, in 1946, he tried his luck in Mexico City as a musician while also pursuing his railroad career. Mexico City was the stronghold of colonizing ideologies that affected the reception of rural music. Barradas and his fellow Jarocho musicians found themselves in a new context where their music was not readily understood and was to some degree exoticized. The cultural ideologies of Mexican nation formation, before and after the 1910 Revolution, featured numerous political, cultural, and economic measures aimed at eradicating the Indigenous presence. They ranged from bizarre state efforts to prohibit the eating of Indian staples such as corn and amaranth to the continued genocide of Indian populations in order to appropriate resources. Mexico City’s tenuous media courtship with regional music including Son Jarocho was a postrevolutionary effort to cement nationhood by means of tokenizing its constituent fragments. In hindsight we see how a multitude of sovereign regional cultures were transmitted haphazardly on the radio waves and in some movies. The Mexican upper classes have tended to look down on traditional Indigenous musicians from the countryside.107 This widespread neocolonial mentality tends to regard either the United States or Europe as bastions of sophistication. Since the Mexican Revolution, the term “indio” or “india” has continued in popular usage as a racial slur. Strong prejudice against the Indigenous oral tradition’s memory arts still exists and at times manifests in almost comical ways; for example, traditionally dressed mariachis perform on television with music stands placed in front of them as props of legitimacy, presenting them as suited, score-reading de nota musicians. Once an Indigenous regional music moves into the city, rural and urban enter into a state of uneasy interaction and conversation, a state of clash and mutuality called “urbanization.” The arriving musical currents affect the emergent aural ecosystem, and vice versa. Not all urbanized rural musicians hold onto their root music. Agustín Lara claimed to be from Veracruz while manifesting a radically different inclination. He featured many songs in praise of Spain, cultivated a Europeanized and upper-middle-class image, dressed in a suit, and utilized cosmopolitan, sanitized lyrics and instrumentation.

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After leaving for Mexico City as a teenager, Mario Barradas returned only sporadically to the Sotavento countryside. His presence in Mexico City helped foster the survival of Son Jarocho in multiple ways. He was a pioneer of live Son Jarocho radio broadcasts in the 1940s. His performances with fellow musicians were broadcast by XEX, one of the most powerful radio stations in the Americas. XEX, along with stations XEW and XEQ, reached millions of listeners in Latin America, the United States, and the Caribbean. Barradas continued to perform as a member of Conjunto Tierra Blanca from 1949 until the 1970s, and he subsequently worked for decades as a Son Jarocho harp teacher at the Casa de la Música Mexicana in Mexico City. He was also a top-notch luthier for more than four decades. The very song titles that Barradas includes in his first Mexico City recordings indicate a profound connection to the Jarocho Veracruz land base, even at a time when his surroundings had changed radically. Conjunto Tierra Blanca’s 1953 LP record Veracruz assembles several tracks with Jarocho and Veracruz titles: “Estampa jarocha,” “Fandango jarocho,” “Canto a Veracruz,” and “El Ahualulco.” These selections speak to an enduring connection to the Sotavento land base. Mario Barradas and his contemporaries consciously included the sound of zapateado in their recordings as an important and inseparable dance component. The percussive feet figure prominently in his recording of “El huateque,” which is a musical celebration of a dance by the same name. The dance form zapateado is referenced within many Jarocho sones. Barradas’s survival struggles in Mexico City took a dramatic turn for the better in the late 1940s when he secured the patronage of Miguel Alemán, a Veracruzano who would win the Mexican presidency (1946–1952). Alemán’s campaign popularized “La bamba” as its theme song, and the Alemán administration helped Conjunto Medellín survive into the early 1950s. Through the president’s patronage, Barradas secured a free living space and later a steady income. Sound recordings created new oral tradition archives, but they also separated regional music from the musicians and their communities of origin. Recordings also eliminated any sense of the improvisational dynamics that are so characteristic of Son Jarocho’s performance praxis. Sound recordings froze the music; instead of change and improvisation, recordings brought about musical repetition. Barradas has commented on how his Son Jarocho recordings such as “El pijul” and “La guacamaya” were copied by numerous performers. By the 1960s the corporate media had seen to it that the traditional music of Mexico was fully marginalized by a proliferation of new foreign genres marketed by the new mass media industries.108 Son Jarocho was rarely aired on the radio, even in the Sotavento homeland. New commercial musical genres

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and media saturated the Mexican countryside, ranging from música moderna such as baladas to Caribbean-derived música tropical to rock and roll. The varied forms of music broadcast into the Jarocho homeland tended to influence youths there away from their own Indigenous music traditions. Radio technology illustrates the centrality of media in the government’s attempts to create a new homogenized populace, deregionalized and oriented toward a central government and its capitalist economy. David Kenneth Stigberg provides an in-depth portrait of 1970s Veracruz musical tastes and declares Son Jarocho a defunct genre. He illustrates how the media in Veracruz focused on promoting foreign corporate interests: “The commercial media in Veracruz, to a very large extent, operate as the local branches of an international communications enterprise; the vast majority of the materials these media disseminate are extra-local in origin, often stylistically distinct from, and carrying associations opposed to, the traditions they confront.”109 The noted music historian Juan S. Garrido describes the decade leading into the 1974 publication of his landmark history of traditional music in Mexico as one of “disdain for tradition and a marked inclination toward foreign models” (desdén hacia la tradición y marcada inclinación a los modelos extranjeros).110 It comes as no surprise that by the early 1970s Son Jarocho was shrinking into a state of nostalgic memory in its own homeland. At the same time that Son Jarocho was being displaced and marginalized in its own land base by emergent sound technologies, those same technologies had sown the seeds of Son Jarocho far and wide into new lands. Musical traditions germinated and evolved among musicians in new communities, sometimes in ways unimagined in their original contexts. Black music such as jazz and blues could suddenly be heard in Liverpool, England, and helped create the Beatles. Son Jarocho could be heard in East Los Angeles and inspire Chican@ musicians such as Ritchie Valens and Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles. Mariachi music became a staple in far-off Bogotá, Colombia, while Colombian cumbias found a new home with Indigenous borderlands people such as Chican@s, Tohono O’odham, and Yaqui. The great Son Jarocho harpist Andrés Huesca toured the United States as early as the 1930s with La Rondalla Mexicana de Tata Nacho; Huesca then took up residence in Los Angeles and spent the rest of his life there. The virtuoso Son Jarocho requinto player Lino Chávez also toured in the United States and interacted musically with Chican@s in the 1960s. A generation later, Mario Barradas González Jr. migrated to Chicago and carried the music with him. Mario Barradas Sr. would visit him and perform live in

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Chicago while also interacting with Chican@ Son Jarocho musicians across the decades. The early Chican@ music documentary concert film Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles, made in 1975,111 features primarily Son Jarocho and includes a corrido from the Mexican Revolution, a bolero, and Son Huasteco. The film opens with a jolting contrast between urban visuals and rural Son Jarocho lyrics. The camera zooms from the distant smog-filled Los Angeles skyscraper skyline into the funky East Los Angeles barrio streets, where the City of Los Angeles had all trees destroyed to facilitate surveillance by police helicopters. Those are the stark visuals for the soundtrack of Los Lobos founder Francisco González singing “Pájaro cú,” a Son Jarocho that features a beautifully colored bird singing in the lime trees. Pajarito eres bonito, y de bonito color y de bonito color pajarito eres bonito (Little bird, you are pretty and have such pretty color and have such pretty color little bird, you are pretty)

González recalls, I loved “Pájaro cú.” I used to think despite where we live and all the poverty and survival struggles, this song is talking about a reality that once was ours, and is still there, despite the horribleness of East Los Angeles. Despite all the shit that they had done to the living environment, we can still sing about birds being happy and about the beauty of birds. When singing “Pájaro cú” I could remember an East Los Angeles that existed before the environment was destroyed. I remember migratory flocks of geese flying by for hours and hours in the sky. I also wanted to affirm that we are the inheritors of a legacy of music we were shamed out of. We were shamed into not listening to it. You could not hear what was yours because people would turn it off. “Why are you listening to that shit?”112

González’s recollections about singing “Pájaro cú” confirm Juan Flores’s theories about how elements of ancestral culture, an imagined distant home-

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land haven or symbolic better place, often stand in as a promising haven for inner-city youths of color, a haven that can generate political mobilization.113 That promise of a better place, a land base with birds, for example, necessarily emerged from the embrace of an ancestral heritage not found in the East Los Angeles urban barrio schoolbooks. For González and many others, Son Jarocho came to serve as part of the dynamic of self-affirmation and concomitant rejection of the imposed social conditions of racism, poverty, environmental degradation, and other discriminatory practices in the United States. Son Jarocho, along with other Mexican land-based song genres such as norteño and banda, in time provided an important part of the resistive arsenal for the Chican@ civil rights movement that emerged in the 1960s. The fascination with Son Jarocho was connected to a shifting trajectory of Chican@ identity and multifaceted historical demands for social justice. Steve Loza indicates that Son Jarocho in Los Angeles channeled Chican@s’ growing sense of “the Mexican nation and nationalist sentiment, a nostalgic yearning for rurality, a particular sense of Chicano ‘tradition,’ and a united Chicano resistance in Los Angeles to the cultural hegemony of the United States all at once.”114 The story of Son Jarocho’s dissemination among inner-city Chican@s in the 1960s and 1970s has both local and global context. People of color in the United States were witnessing multiple worldwide decolonial revolutions, such as those in Cuba, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Chile, Vietnam, South Africa, and China. As Chican@s we were also inspired by the spirit and stories of the Mexican Revolution, narrated by our participant eyewitness parents and grandparents, and we also were inspired by domestic struggles such as the fieldworkers’ uprising against exploitative agribusiness in California, a struggle led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers of America, with marches and rallies featuring music, usually corridos, cumbias, and rancheras. Many of the urban activists in the Chican@ civil rights movement were initially at a huge distance from their own Mexican roots music, a distance conditioned by the assimilationist anti-Mexican politics of schools, media, and society in general. At urban activist gatherings, Chican@s favored the music of Nueva Trova, Santana, and El Gran Combo. Francisco González indicates that in the 1960s, “the average student activist had a case of cultural deafness when it came to music. Among many, there was even a sense of shame regarding the varied deeply rooted Mexican music traditions.”115 The Chican@ movement became a vehicle for what Bonfil Batalla calls “re-Indianization.” Chican@ youths organized around deep-rooted resistive communitizing practices, symbolized by the ancient Mexica (also known as Aztec) homeland name Aztlán. As a musician who grew up exposed to various forms of Mexican roots

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music, González sought to showcase it; he founded Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles in 1973. He was magnetized by the musical complexity of Mexican music recordings he had heard in his East Los Angeles home as a child; chief among those were Son Jarocho recordings with Mario Barradas. He recounts, “Jarocho was like bebop that I was listening to a lot at the time, a lot of bebop. But the bebop was not mine. Son Jarocho felt like my musical language, the mode of expression, the syntax of that music with an open structure and strong improvisational elements.”116 In the film Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles, González expresses a striving to reclaim Mexican heritage and reconnect with the ancestral culture of “our mothers” while creating a new “truly Chicano music”: Originally, we got together not for any business gain or any money. We got together to learn some songs to play for our mothers, to show them we appreciated the music of our culture. We learned the instruments over the twoyear period on our own and listening to old records. . . . Now we feel it is our obligation to spread our culture to the other people who don’t know about it. We play fifteen different instruments now in the group from regions all over Mexico. We want to make the past part of our music. We want to make a truly Chicano music that draws from our past, that is in line with the past, the present, and hopefully the future.

Son Jarocho has become an avenue to reconnect to heritage, family elders, and the broader community and to “spread our culture.” Music is a key element of community connectivity, and Barradas’s recordings have contributed much to the concept of Indigeneity as interconnection within an Indigenous landbased knowledge system. Son Jarocho in the life of Francisco González in Los Angeles became a means to reconnect parts of the living knowledge system, his cultural and musical roots. In that 1975 Los Lobos film, the group alters the lyrics of the song “El Jarocho” (The Jarocho), which traditionally begins, “I’m Jarocho, folks, and I’ve just arrived.” Los Lobos changed that to “We are Chicanos, folks, and we have come to sing.” The original, traditional lyrics begin, Jarocho yo soy señores y ahora acabo de llegar de la tierra de las flores traigo este alegre cantar. (I am Jarocho, folks, and have just arrived

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from the land of flowers I bring you this happy singing)

Los Lobos “Chicanoized” the song and transposed it into a plural subject: Chicanos somos señores, y venimos a cantar. (We are Chicanos, folks, and we have come to sing.)

The improvisation so characteristic of Son Jarocho also facilitates its application within diverse geographies. Both versions feature a decolonizing selfnaming and a profound affirmation of identity using terms that are neither racial nor national. “El Jarocho” features self-naming as “Jarocho” and a selfaffirmation of ancient ties to an Indigenous land-based identity “from the land of flowers” (de la tierra de las flores) and with a rich poetics that includes the ocean, the moon, birds, the land, love: Jarocho yo soy, señores de la tierra de las flores yo les traigo este cantar con trinos de ruiseñores y con arrullos del mar (I’m Jarocho, folks, from the land of flowers I bring you this singing with the sound of nightingales and with ocean lullabies)

Chican@s were rising up against a past and present defined by longstanding colonial oppressions akin to those faced by Indigenous and African descendants in Mexico. Like the period in which Son Jarocho originated in distant Sotavento, the social and political climate of the years encompassing the Chican@ civil rights movement were anticolonial, and that turbulence opened spaces for a new community-affirming creativity. Chican@s carried Son Jarocho forward in East Los Angeles and surrounding areas, albeit initially without the fandango. Several Chican@ groups with a strong Jarocho

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focus were constituted around the time of the Chican@ movement, including the Herrera family’s Conjunto Hueyapan, Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles, and Conjunto Alma Grande of the Moraza family. Before them, Gary “Goyo” Gutiérrez and Roberto “Bobby” Chagoya of Conjunto Papaloapan performed Son Jarocho. Euro-American Jarocho performers included Tim Harding and Art “Arturo” Gerst. While Chican@ musicians, including the highly visible Los Lobos, were taking up Son Jarocho in the late 1960s and 1970s, most young people in Veracruz had lost touch with it. Part of that move away from Son Jarocho also had to do with urbanization, people moving away from the countryside where Son Jarocho was most at home. Moreno says that this music had been “part of life itself among farmers” (parte de la vida misma del campesino). En el rancho es donde más gente canta y mas gente toca y baila, que en la ciudad, porque es donde la costumbre está más arraigada. Hoy ha ido desapareciendo con el paso del tiempo y el avance de la tecnología: la luz, el radio, el tocadisco—todo eso ha ido desplazando esto. Pero más antes era parte de la vida misma del campesino, [el cual] va haciendo sus versos, los va formando, va expresando su sentir.117 (The countryside is where more people sing and more people play instruments and dance than in the city because that’s where these customs are most rooted. Nowadays it has started to disappear with the passage of time and the advance of technology: electricity, radio, record players—all of that has displaced this [Son Jarocho]. But in former times this was part of life itself for farmers who make verses, who form verses, expressing what they feel.)

In time, increasing numbers of Veracruzanos realized that something beautiful and profound was slipping away from them. By the early 1980s, groups of Sotavento youths were turning to the old Son Jarocho masters in order to learn from them. This reawakening was initially referred to in Veracruz as the rescate, the rescue or reclamation. The extended rescate movement brought about a new proliferation of fandango culture in Veracruz. Youths learned from Mario Barradas, Arcadio Hidalgo, Andrés Alfonso Vergara, Andrés Vega, and the Utrera family, among others. They also developed new means of dissemination including educational demonstrations and instrument-making workshops. One interesting holistic effort beginning in 1995 was to preserve all the culture that surrounds Son Jarocho as part of the “rescate de la cultura de Cosoleacaque” (rescue of the culture of the town of Cosoleacaque); later that project was moved to the municipality of Jáltipan. Rather than isolate Son Ja-

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rocho, this rescate project envisioned the music as part of a broader system of Indigenous knowledge. Hence the project named Centro Cultural Nigan Tonogue (Nahuatl meaning “I’m here!”) features workshops on multiple cultural areas (“Talleres de todo tipo de enseñanza”) including traditional Indigenous medicine ways, the Nahuatl language, pottery, jarana and marimba music, song, zapateado dance, and traditional weaving of textiles with Indigenous backstrap looms. The project also extends to the reacquisition and ecological restoration of lands that once had “an immense forest with monkeys and many other animals that also disappeared. Now it is a young forest that has reached middle age” (un bosque inmenso de changos, y de muchos animales que tambien desaparecieron. Ahora es un bosque joven, de mediana edad).118 The effort has led to collecting video documentaries of fandangos such as the 1995 fandango in Chacalapa.119 The related Centro de Documentación del Son Jarocho has gathered significant Son Jarocho historical information through the visionary leadership of Ricardo Perry Guillén and the ensemble Los Cojolites. In retrospect, we can admire the musicians of Mario Barradas’s generation who adapted to the professional dictates of the city and mass media; these musicians found ways of surviving, and they contributed to the widespread diffusion of Son Jarocho. However, as part of the more recent Son Jarocho rescate movement, some have taken an accusatory stance against the urbanized Son Jarocho, referring to it as a commercialized “son comercial,” in contrast to the rural “son tradicional.” A self-righteous rescate faction has even demarcated the performance aspects they regard as authentic or inauthentic. Purists who consider themselves traditional often diminish city musicians by calling them “marisqueros” or “charoleros” or by claiming that the harp should not even be used in Son Jarocho.120 Such rifts reflect the dynamism of continuity in change in the reproduction of traditional culture. The imagined divide between the urban commercial and the rural traditional is blurry. Several of those who enjoyed commercial success in the city, such as Nicolás Sosa, Julián Cruz, and Andrés Alfonso Vergara, returned to their rural towns and even participated in the rescate in the 1980s. The inclusion of Vergara, a commercially oriented elder, in Grupo Mono Blanco is but one notable example of how the purportedly antithetical rural/urban divide is highly questionable and involves a misplaced enmity. Not surprisingly, many rescate groups in Mexico included at least one musician from the United States. Grupo Mono Blanco had Juan Pascoe; Son de Madera had the Chican@ Juan Pérez and African American Stanley Bullock; Los Cojolites had Jake Hernández. Son Jarocho has continued to grow in the United States in the past fifty years. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to

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follow those fifty years of Son Jarocho dissemination in the United States, a dissemination that has been studied and documented. Relying on extensive oral histories, George Sánchez-Tello’s master’s thesis documents what has become the Son Jarocho social movement in California known as the Jaraner@ movement.121 Hannah Eliza Alexia Balcomb documents the varied meanings of fandangos and Son Jarocho in Los Angeles immigrant and Chican@ groups.122 Son Jarocho dissemination in the United States has also been the subject of various doctoral dissertations, such as those by Rafael Figueroa Hernández (Universidad Veracruzana), Alexandro David Hernández (UCLA), and Emily J. Williamson (City University of New York).123 Transnational Son Jarocho coalitions and exchanges have been established, based on a shared love for the centuries-old Son Jarocho as a tool of collective self-affirmation and resistance to oppressive colonizing systems. The resistance is clearly expressed by youths across the United States. Students at the Freedom School in Atlanta, Georgia, deployed the traditional Jarocho “Señor Presidente” (Mr. President) to address Señor Presidente Trump in 2020. They are not words of praise. The students tell Trump that he is cruel and that the ethnic groups he has denigrated are not criminals. In other stanzas they invite him to pay attention and respect to all peoples: Señor presidente usted es demente póngale importancia a toda su gente Me gusta la leche me gusta el café pero más me gusta la cárcel pa usted.124 (Mr. President you are demented attach importance to all of your people I like milk I like coffee but what I like better is a jail cell for you.)

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Son del Centro, a Son Jarocho youth group in Santa Ana, California, recorded traditional sones in a CD entitled Mi jarana es mi fusil (My jarana is my weapon), signaling how Son Jarocho functions as a weapon of defense. Across decades, Son Jarocho has become a tool for self-defense and joyous affirmation of a hemispheric culture and consciousness without borders. Since 2008 a Fandango at the Wall is held by Son Jarocho musicians who gather on both sides of the US-Mexico border wall in Tijuana and San Diego. Music unites across borders. This book publication speaks to and affirms that cross-border collaborative kinship that shows no signs of waning. Notes 1. The United Nations similarly defines Indigenous peoples from around the globe with reference to “ways of relating to people and the environment” and to a “way of life and their right to traditional lands”: “Indigenous people are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment. They have retained social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live. Despite their cultural differences, indigenous people from around the world share common problems related to the protection of their rights as distinct people. Indigenous people have sought recognition of their identities, way of life and their right to traditional lands, territories and natural resources for years, yet throughout history, their rights have always been violated” (“Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations,” UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, https://www.un.org/development /desa /indigenouspeoples/about-us.html). 2. Daniel  R. Wildcat, Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2009), 20. 3. Wildcat, Red Alert!. 4. Soneros del Tesechoacán (along the Río Tesechoacán), YouTube video, 1:15:59, posted June 29, 2016, by LaMaromaProducciones, https://www.youtube.com /watch ?v=aUmkX _4EVvs. The translation is mine. 5. Popoluca is part of the diverse Mixe-Zoquean family of languages. “Indigeneity” and “Indigenous” can also be applied in a more specific human-centric sense, in reference to any of today’s distinct tribal groups globally or to urbanized colonized groups who reaffirm an Indigenous self-identity. Examples include the Red Power movement, sectors of the Chican@ movement from the 1960s to today, the 1990s Zapatista uprising (EZLN) in Chiapas, and the pan-Indigenous Indians of All Tribes movement, whose 1970 Alcatraz Proclamation significantly sought to restore Indigeneity by restoring (healing) the relational life knowledge system. All Tribes established, the proclamation states, “an Indian Center of Ecology which will train and support our young people in scientific research and practice to restore our lands and waters to their pure and natural state. We will work to depollute the air and water of the Bay Area. We will work to restore fish and animal life to the area and to revitalize sea life which has been threatened by the white man’s way. We will set up facilities to desalt sea water for human benefit” (in Mark A. Nicholas, Native Voices: Sources in the Native American Past [New York: Routledge, 2014], 155).

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6. Amadeo Cruz sings the song on the Mexican public television show La raíz doble (Canal 22, “Al otro lado de la música: Son jarocho, Popoluca,” La raíz doble, YouTube video, 28:02, July 30, 2015, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=r_EDJaCa _0s). Amadeo explains that his father played before him. Amadeo’s son also plays Son Jarocho. 7. Deforestation from 1970 into the 1990s in Mexico was related to the implementation of federal agricultural and livestock programs by the Secretariat of Agriculture (Fabiola López-Barrera, Robert H. Manson, and Rosario Landgrave, “Identifying Deforestation Attractors and Patterns of Fragmentation for Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest in Central Veracruz, Mexico,” Land Use Policy 41 [November 2014]: 274–283). Researchers have documented that a staggering deforestation is occurring in central Veracruz’s forests, resulting in damage to biodiversity of plant and animal species. 8. Jorge Antonio Gomez Diaz et al., “Long-Term Changes in Forest Cover in Central Veracruz, Mexico (1993–2014),” Tropical Conservation Science 11 (2018), https://journals.sagepub.com /doi /10 .1177/1940082918771089. The authors also report on how NAFTA opened the door to competition between Mexican small farmers and US producers, an unsustainable competition that has bankrupted innumerable small farmers in Mexico, resulting in the out-migration of small farmers from Mexico. See David Bacon’s books Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Boston: Beacon, 2008) and The Right to Stay Home (Boston: Beacon 2013). For a condensed version see his article “How U.S. Policies Fueled Mexico’s Great Migration,” The Nation, January 4, 2012, https://www.thenation.com/article/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos-great-migration/. 9. For such a performance see Calmecac Xochipilli, “Fandango Nahua Popoluca,” YouTube video, 24:55, posted December 30, 2014, Museo Nacional de Antropología, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ3Xp88jj0s. Another relevant performance with Grupo Los Arizmendi from Soteapan is “Los Arizmendi: Foro de son jarocho en lengua materna popoluca,” YouTube video, 20:10, posted August 29, 2021, by IVEC Official, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=SnliS-EghCs. 10. Among those recordings in Native languages are Fandango! Fiestas de la Candelaria Minatitlan (Pentagrama, 1991); Jaraneros de Guichicovi (Programa de Desarrollo Cultural del Sotavento, 2007); Sones de muertos y aparecidos (Culturas Populares, 2000); Sones indígenas del Sotavento (Programa de Desarrollo Cultural del Sotavento, 2005); Jaraneros indígenas del sur de Veracruz, Volume 1 (Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas, 2003). 11. The inhabitants of Chacalapa explain their adhesion to the cargo/mayordomía system in Mayordomía de San Juan Bautista, Chacalapa, Veracruz, 2014 (Colectivo Altepee, YouTube video, 17:21, posted November 2, 2015, by Becuana Producciones, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=rluJbG2PFBQ ). 12. Procesión fiestas de San Juan Bautista. Chalapa, Ver. 2013, YouTube video, 10:47, posted July 4, 2013, by ElTipoIdealSierra, https://www.youtube .com /watch?v =11jCVGO-Ap4. This video shows a 2013 Chacalapa procession and all aspects of what one participant describes as the cooperative town spirit, “the unity of working for the benefit of all” (unidad de trabajar para todos). 13. Alfredo Delgado Calderón, Historia, cultura e identidad en el Sotavento (Mexico City: Dirección de Culturas Populares e Indígenas, 2004), 146. 14. See Alan R. Sandstrom and E. Hugo García Valencia, eds., Native Peoples of

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the Gulf of Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005). See also Papantla Flying Men, the Legend of the Bird-Men: https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=Ls 27SUorlM0 . 15. Kamál González, Kamál González (Live Session Complete), June 2017, YouTube video, 36:30, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v= CkvGJQ4yp3I. “El siquisirí” is on the video recorded at Centro Cultural Colipahtli, Villa de Álvarez, Colima. 16. Raquel Paraíso, “Florear la tarima: Un espacio para la poesía, la música y el baile en prácticas resignificadas de son jarocho,” Revista de Literaturas Populares 15, no. 2 (2015): 402–438. 17. For his assessment of that violence see David Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 18. Wide-ranging mestizaje ideologies have been used by power holders across centuries to diminish, obscure, and deny Indigenous presence and heritage. Yet many of those people and cultures that governments and thinkers wish were gone or extinct in fact persist, even if at times camouflaged. What Delgado Calderón writes about the persistence of Mesoamerican death rituals pertains to many other areas of contemporary Mesoamerican culture that have survived in camouflaged form, under Christian veneers: “Pero no todo se perdió, pues muchas creencias fueron disfrazadas y continuaron vigentes, vestidas con los ropajes del cristianismo” (But all has not been lost, since many beliefs were camouflaged and they continue to thrive, even if dressed in the garments of Christianity) (Historia, cultura e identidad en el Sotavento, 219). 19. Quoted in Caterina Camastra, “La poesía popular jarocha: Formas e imaginario” (master’s thesis, Universidad Veracruzana, 2006), 38. 20. Arcadio Hidalgo, La versada de Arcadio Hidalgo (Xalapa, Mexico: Universidad Veracruzana, 2003), 97. 21. A. Hidalgo, La versada de Arcadio Hidalgo, 94. 22. Quoted in José Alejandro Huidobro, “Los fandangos y los sones: La experiencia del son jarocho” (thesis, Universidad Autónoma de México, Iztapalapa, 1995), 82. 23. This version of “El camotal” is performed by Los Cojolites on their album Sembrando flores, 2012. 24. Son de Madera, “Los Juiles,” on Las orquestas del día (2006), YouTube video, 4:53, posted by Los Juiles (Son de Madera), https://www.youtube.com /watch?v= CH gjnEZsVxk& list=PL2eWa9t5hbxWl4Pr2uFiCh0bFyr0NfT7o& index=2. Another impressive version is “Los Juiles—El Cayuco Son Jarocho,” on Tejoco TV (YouTube video, 5:11, posted June 11, 2016, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v= G0nmHlQ3 _O0). 25. Chuchumbé, “La guacamaya,” on ¡Caramba niño!, Producciones Alebrije, 1999, © Patricio Hidalgo y Zenén Zeferino, courtesy of Patricio Hidalgo and Zenén Zeferino. 26. A version of “La tuza” is performed by Conjunto Jarocho Medellín de Lino Chávez on Veracruz, Serie México musical, RCA Victor, 1962. 27. Son de Madera performs this version of “Las poblanas” on Son de mi tierra, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2006. 28. Humberto Aguirre Tinoco, Sones de la tierra y cantares jarochos (Xalapa, Mexico: Conaculta, 2004), 75. 29. Grupo Mono Blanco’s “El siquisirí” is on their album Al primer canto del gallo (Discos Pentagrama, 1989).

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30. A. Hidalgo, La versada de Arcadio Hidalgo, 71. 31. Grupo Tierra Blanca’s “El pijul,” with Mario Barradas on harp, was recorded in 2001 for the TV show Boleros y Algo Más on Canal 11, Conaculta. YouTube video, 3:33, posted January 4, 2011, by Rana Arvizo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brQ jRcLy30A. 32. A version of “El gavilancito” by Los Cojolites is on their album Zapateando, recorded by Greg Landau and Camilo Landau in 2014. 33. A version of this song by Conjunto Jarocho Medellín de Lino Chávez is “La indita,” on Tesoros de colección (RCA Victor, 2007). 34. Los Cojolites’ “La indita” is on Zapateando. 35. “Resulta difícil comprender muchas características fundamentales de las culturas mesoamericanas si no se toma en cuenta una de sus dimensiones más profundas: la concepción de la naturaleza y la ubicación que se le da al hombre en el cosmos. En esta civilización, a diferencia de la occidental, la naturaleza no es vista como enemiga, ni se asume que la realización plena del hombre se alcance a medida que más se separe de la naturaleza. Por el contrario, se reconoce la condición del hombre como parte del orden cósmico y se aspira a una integración permanente, que sólo se logra mediante una relación armónica con el resto de la naturaleza. Es obedeciendo los principios del orden universal como el hombre se realiza y cumple su destino trascendente” (Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, El México Profundo: Una civilización negada [Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1987], 50). Although Bonfil Batalla has been translated into English by Phillip A. Dennis, I offer my own translation here. 36. Delgado Calderón, Historia, cultura e identidad en el Sotavento, 107–117. The Arcadio Hidalgo verse is on page 117. 37. Arcadio Hidalgo y el Grupo Mono Blanco’s rendition of “El pájaro carpintero” is on the album Sones Jarochos (Ediciones Pentagrama, 2008). 38. Antonio García de León and Liza Rumazo, Fandango (Veracruz: Conaculta, 2006), 25n22. 39. These lyrics are available in Versos jarochos, https://jarochance.jimdofree.com /p%C3%A1jaro-carpintero/. 40. Lyrics from Versos jarochos. 41. Lyrics from Versos jarochos. 42. Son de Madera’s “Pájaro carpintero” is on Son de mi tierra (Smithsonian Folkways, 2009). 43. Delgado Calderón, Historia, cultura e identidad en el Sotavento, 39. 44. Grupo Zacamandú’s “El trompito” on Antiguos sones jarochos (Difusora del Folklore, 1999). 45. Grupo Mono Blanco y Stone Lips’ “El chuchumbé” is on El mundo se va a acabar (Urtext, 1997). 46. Montero lodged the complaint before the Inquisition, describing the song as hugely popular: “un canto que se ha extendido por esquinas y calles de esta ciudad, que llaman el Chuchumbé . . . sumamente deshonesto” (a song that has extended through corners and streets of this city that they call the chuchumbé . . . utterly obscene) in Georges Baudot and María Agueda Méndez, “El chuchumbé, un son jacarandoso del México virreinal,” Musiques populaires et identités en Amérique latine, special issue of Cahiers du monde hispanique et luso-brasilien, no. 48 (1987): 165. 47. Cirilo Morales Reyes is a member of the Popoluca community and he comments

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on many things. He speaks the words quoted in Calmecac Xochipilli, “Fandango Nahua Popoluca,” at 14:37. 48. Los Cojolites’ version of “Las poblanas” is on Zapateando. 49. Hijos del Chuchumbé, “Las poblanas,” YouTube video, 5:14, posted July 9, 2017, by Dr. Juan Antonio Pérez Sato—Campus Córdoba, https://www.youtube.com /watch ?v=b03xmZPAXLg. 50. Los Cojolites’ “Señor presidente” is on their album No tiene fin (Round Whirled Records, 2008). 51. The song is credited to El Valedor Zapatista Fernando Guadarrama in Un apoyo de Son Jarocho recopilado de aquí y de allá, compiled by Carlos Ochoa Villegas, 6th ed., 28, https://recursosfandanguerosenglish.files.wordpress.com /2015/01/como-la-brisa -del-viento.pdf. 52. A. Hidalgo, La versada de Arcadio Hidalgo, 105. 53. El Cayuco performs “La voz de María,” posted to YouTube, 6:21, November 17, 2014, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=iBzlYKbji_0, © Abraham Vázquez Alcántara, courtesy of Abraham Vázquez Alcántara. 54. Kamál González performed this son on the streets of Xalapa, Veracruz, December 31, 2017, lyrics © Kamál González, courtesy of Kamál González. 55. Kamál González, Kamál González (Live Session Complete). 56. These lyrics are available at https://jarochance.jimdofree.com /toro-zacamandú. 57. A version of this song can be found on Conjunto Jarocho Medellín’s album Veracruz hermoso (RCA Victor, 1961). 58. Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo (1987), 12. 59. For a detailed description of these instruments see Rafael Figueroa Hernández, Son Jarocho: Guía histórico-musical (Xalapa, Mexico: Conaculta, 2007), 15–27. 60. These verses are in Los Vega’s “Vientos del mar” on their Vientos del mar album (Pino Music, 2018). 61. These last two verses are from the extended piece “Vientos del mar” by Los Vega, YouTube video, 7:21, posted April 19, 2017, https://www.youtube.com /watch ?v=iFYUbqsELpU. 62. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, “Bailes de negros,” Revista de la Universidad de México 25, no. 2 (October 1970): 154, https://www.researchgate.net /publication /317440445 _Bailes _de _negros/fulltext /5a6bdb75aca2722c947bc0ed /Bailes-de-negros.pdf. 63. Aguirre Beltrán, “Bailes de negros,” 151, 152. Aguirre Beltrán begins his piece by indicating, “No siempre es posible demostrar con suficiente evidencia el origen de rasgos y complejos culturales que hoy son parte consustancial de los patrones de comportamiento habituales en los mexicanos o en una porción de ellos” (151). He gives an example of how some elements of cultural similarity between Christian cultural elements and Indigenous cultural elements have long existed and their distinct origins cannot be determined: “No hay seguridad alguna para definir la procedencia cultural. Por ejemplo, la creencia en el susto, tan importante en la medicina popular, bien puede proceder del pensamiento mágico cristiano sobre el espíritu o del concepto nahua del tonalli ” (152). 64. Aguirre Beltrán, “Bailes de negros,” 153. 65. Archivo General de la Nación, Inquisición, 303.357, 304.190, 303.39, cited in Aguirre Beltrán, “Bailes de Negros,” 153–154. 66. Aguirre Beltrán, “Bailes de negros,” 153.

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67. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, La población negra en México: Estudio etnohistórico (Mexico City: Secretaría de la Reforma Agraria, 1981 [1942]), 198. 68. Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas, “La población negra de México: Parte del discurso blanqueador para ‘poner al negro en su lugar,’” Afro-Hispanic Review (Spring 2004): 4. Aguirre Beltrán makes some highly caustic racial judgments about Blacks: “There were some differences between Blacks: even though all of them were bad, some were worse” (“Entre los negros había sus diferencias: aunque todos eran malos, había algunos peores”). La población negra en México, 186. 69. Hard-and-fast generalizations about any group are problematic. We cannot make generalizations concerning Africans who came or were brought to the Americas. Some Africans were empowered, such as those who arrived as officers with Hernán Cortés as colonizers. Other arriving Africans served as semi-empowered labor bosses on colonial cattle ranches. Some Africans were even charged with putting down Indian and enslaved Black rebellions and hunting down escaped Blacks. By contrast, the enslaved tribal Africans who arrived in chains, many of them children, did very likely relate to the Indigenous “vision of the world.” Historical examples are legion of Africans who escaped enslavement making common cause with Native people. 70. Randall Kohl claims there is no “evidence of Indigenous influence” other than perhaps some “animalísticos” (animalistics?), while then stating that “there is a need for more research to prove this hypothesis” (Escritos de un náufrago habitual: Ensayos sobre el son jarocho y otros temas etnomusicológicos [Xalapa, Mexico: Universidad Veracruzana, Dirección General Editorial, 2010]), 39. 71. Rolando Antonio Pérez Fernández, “El son jarocho como expresión musical afromestiza,” Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology 11 (2002): 39. 72. Pérez Fernández, “El son jarocho,” 42. Pérez Fernández does curiously allow for an unspecified “indomestizo” presence. He quotes Aguirre Beltrán to say that the confluence with “indomestizos” was in fact happening, yet it is not at all clear what cultural differences would allow for confluence with “indomestizos” and not with “los indígenas.” 73. Francisco González, interview by Yolanda Broyles-González, June 24, 2017, Xalapa, Mexico. 74. Anita González, Jarocho’s Soul: Cultural Identity and Afro-Mexican Dance (Lanham, MA: University Press of America, 2004), 16. 75. A. González, Jarocho’s Soul, 49. 76. A. González, Jarocho’s Soul, 49. 77. A. González, Jarocho’s Soul, 54. 78. The notion of a rural “bent body posture” was not observable in my own fieldwork in rural Veracruz, nor do any of the rural elders in available dance film material display it. 79. Pérez Fernández, “El son jarocho,” 55. 80. Morgen Stiegler, “The African Experience on American Shores: Influence of Native American Contact on the Development of Jazz,” master’s thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2009, 22. 81. Stiegler, “African Experience on American Shores,” 36. 82. Tiya Miles and Sharon P. Holland, introduction to Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country, ed. Miles and Holland (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 4.

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83. These statistics on Mexicans of African descent (afrodescendientes) were gathered in the intercensus survey (Encuesta intercensal) of 2015 by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI), https://www.inegi.org.mx /contenidos /productos /prod _serv /contenidos /espanol /bvinegi /productos /nueva _estruc /702825090272.pdf, 56. 84. Miles and Holland, introduction, 11. 85. Antonio García de León and Liza Rumazo, Fandango: El ritual del mundo jarocho a través de los siglos (Veracruz, Mexico: Conaculta, 2006), 19. “El fandango fue entonces la fiesta que daba identidad al mundo de los blancos, mestizos, negros y mulatos que compartían la cultura local sin identificarse ni con los peninsulares ni con los indios, que creaban una cultura propia.” 86. García de León and Rumazo, Fandango, 13. García de León and Rumazo’s vision of fandango, significantly, begins with “el mundo colonial español” (1). Extensive evidence of the strong presence of Indigenous civilization within Son Jarocho is oddly relegated to footnotes because it does not support the authors’ thesis concerning origins (25n22, 26n23). 87. In El mar de los deseos: El Caribe hispano musical, first published in 2002, García de León uses the Eurocentric ethnic label “hispano” to refer to the Caribbean. In the 2016 edition (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica) he switches out “hispano” with “afroandaluz” (Afro-Andalusian) to designate the Caribbean, whose contours include many Indigenous geographies which go unreferenced in his naming of the Caribbean. Before García de León, Rafael Salazar uses the term “afroandaluz” in his book Noche venezolana: Música y danzas venezolanas (Caracas: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, 1986). The merchants and religious clergy in Spain’s Andalusia region practiced massive enslavement of Africans from the fourteenth century until it was outlawed in 1886. By then more than 90,000 Africans had been captured, brought through the nearby port cities of Andalusia (Seville, Málaga, Cádiz), and enslaved in Andalusia. Some of them, along with other Africans captured directly in Africa, were shipped to the Caribbean. I question the naming of any colonized region such as the Caribbean after Andalusia, one of the most active enslavement regions of Spain. Eurocentric colonial namings such as “Latin America” and “Hispano America” are also problematic. 88. García de León and Rumazo, Fandango, 61. 89. García de León and Rumazo, Fandango, 46. 90. Antonio García de León, “El Caribe afroandaluz: Permanencias de una civilización popular,” La Jornada Semanal, January 12, 1992, 28. 91. Ricardo Pérez Montfort, “El ‘negro’ y la negritud en la formación del estereotipo del jarocho durante los siglos XIX y XX,” in Expresiones populares y estereotipos culturales en México: Siglos XIX y XX; diez ensayos (Mexico City: CIESAS, 2007), 180. 92. José Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race, trans. Didier T. Jaen (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 [1925]), 16. 93. Agustín Palacios, “Multicultural Vasconcelos: The Optimistic, and at Times Willful, Misreading of La Raza Cósmica,” Latino Studies 15, no. 4 (November 2017): 418, 424. 94. Jack Forbes, “The Use of Racial and Ethnic Terms in America: Management by Manipulation,” Wicazo Sa Review 11, no. 2 (1995): 59. 95. Forbes, “Use of Racial and Ethnic Terms,” 59.

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96. Bonfil Batalla, México Profundo (1987), 147. 97. Victoria R. Bricker and Munro Edmonson, “Las coplas indígenas de México,” in Las literaturas amerindias de México y la literatura en español en el siglo XVI, ed. Beatriz Garza Cuarón and George Baudot (Mexico City: Siglo 21, 1996); the quote is from online introductory material at http://www.elem.mx /estgrp/datos/187. Mark Brill, in “Music of the Ancient Maya,” similarly examines how the use of couplets is not the exclusive domain of Spain; he shows that the contemporary artistry of Mayan poetics such as the use of couplets is connected to precolonial use of couplets. 98. Xiutototl is a turquoise bird (cotinga amabilis). This fragment is from the collection Cantares mexicanos, translated from Nahuatl by Miguel León Portilla, then into English by Earl Shorris and Sylvia Sasson Shorris. I cite the poem from the section “Beginning of the Songs,” published in the October 2005 issue of Words without Borders: The Online Magazine for International Literature, at https://www.wordswithoutborders .org/article/opening-poem-of-the-cantares-mexicanos. 99. Rubén M. Campos, El folklore y la música mexicana: Investigación acerca de la cultura musical en México (1525–1925) (Mexico City: Publicaciones de la Secretaria de Educación Pública, Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1928), 36. 100. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (University of California Press, 1984), xiii. 101. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1.2.437–439. 102. Pérez Montfort, “El ‘negro’ y la negritud,” 150. 103. In Francisco García Ranz, “Cuando el león vivía en la selva: Notas sobre la guitarra de son,” blog post, Centro de Documentación del Son Jarocho, September 30, 2009, https://centrosonjarocho.blogspot.com /search?q=Alc%C3%A1ntara. García Ranz quotes Alcántara’s unpublished manuscript “La invención del jarocho: Una revision a la impronta de los vaqueros afromestizos en la construcción del estereotipo regional.” 104. Álvaro Alcántara, “Motivos del Son: Conjunto sonero mexicano,” Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social Unidad Golfo, Xalapa, México, http://www.herencialatina.com /Sones/Motivos _del _Son.htm. 105. The quotes are from an interview of Barahona Londoño in a government press release entitled “Concluye un ciclo del programa Jueves de libros en la Galería de Arte,” Secretaría de Cultura, 2018, http://www.cultura.gob.mx /estados/saladeprensa _detalle .php?id=34815. 106. Barahona Londoño, in “Concluye un ciclo,” interview. 107. Bonfil Batalla discusses the Mexican upper classes and labels them “imaginary Mexico,” in contradistinction to the land-based Indigenous peoples whom he labels and discusses as “Profound Mexico” in his 1987 book México Profundo: Una civilización negada. 108. David Kenneth Stigberg describes changes to the music cultures in the course of the 1960s and 1970s in Mexico: “With regard to those recordings that have achieved the greatest national prominence and the largest volume of sales, the production of youth music of various origins had tended to displace that of Mexican musicians working in hitherto established musical styles” (“Urban Musical Culture in Mexico: Professional Musicianship and Media in the Musical Life of Contemporary Veracruz,” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1980, 275).

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109. Stigberg, “Urban Musical Culture in Mexico,” 30. 110. Juan S. Garrido, Historia de la música popular en México 1986–1973 (Mexico City: Extemporaneos, 1974), 188. 111. Ed Scott, dir., Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles, film (KCET, 1975). 112. Francisco González, oral history interview by Esmeralda Broyles-González, December 22, 2009, Tucson, AZ. 113. Juan Flores, “Qué assimilated, Brother, Yo soy asimilao,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 13, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 1–16. 114. Steven Loza, “From Veracruz to Los Angeles: The Reinterpretation of Son Jarocho,” Latin American Music Review 13, no. 2 (1992): 190. 115. Francisco González, interview by Esmeralda Broyles-González, December 21, 2009, Tucson, AZ. 116. F. González, interview by E. Broyles-González, December 23, 2009. 117. Andrés Moreno, in José Alejandro Huidobro, Ariles y más ariles (Testimonios del son jarocho), independent video, 1997, posted to YouTube by Ana Zarina Palafox Mendes, 2/2, 9:51, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=3vChEv9Vtko. The 1997 documentary with Son Jarocho musicians was filmed by Huidobro in 1992–1996. 118. Ceunico TV, Luna negra: Preservando el son del sur, YouTube video, 10:07, posted July 11, 2017, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=gKpLpiZoW8s. 119. Fandango en Chapalapa: Ordenación sacerdoatal 1995 was made by Ricardo Perry of the Centro Documental Son Jarocho. 120. The derogatory term marisqueros is used to refer to musicians who play in seafood restaurants, and the term charoleros references those who play for tips. 121. George B. Sánchez-Tello, “Jaraner@: Chicana/o Acculturation Strategy,” master’s thesis, California State University, Northridge, 2012. 122. Hannah Eliza Alexia Balcomb, “Jaraneros and Jarochas: The Meanings of Fandangos and Son Jarocho in Immigrant and Diasporic Performance,” master’s thesis, University of California, Riverside, 2012. 123. Rafael Figueroa Hernández provides encompassing documentation and rich discussion of Son Jarocho’s movement throughout the United States in his 2014 Universidad Veracruzana dissertation “El son jarocho en los Estados Unidos de América: Globalizaciones, migraciones y identidades.” Alexandro David Hernández’s contribution is “The Son Jarocho and Fandango amidst Struggle and Social Movements: Migratory Transformation and Reinterpretation of the Son Jarocho in La Nueva España, México, and the United States” (PhD diss., UCLA, 2014, https://escholarship.org/uc /item /59b695pb). Emily  J. Williamson documents the Son Jarocho movement in New York City in “The Son Jarocho Revival: Reinvention and Community Building in a Mexican Music Scene in New York City” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 2018, https://academicworks.cuny.edu /gc _etds /2673/). 124. Son de Sueños, “Señor Presidente,” May 2020, YouTube video, 6:47, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1K6MbFttgI. Freedom School is an underground school for undocumented students banned from equal access to public universities in Atlanta, Georgia (https://freedom-university.org). The Freedom School Son Jarocho ensemble Son de Sueños is directed by professors Eduardo García and Laura Emiko Solís.

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References Oral Histories Barradas, Mario. Oral history interviews by Francisco González, 2004–2017, various locations. González, Francisco. Oral history interviews by Esmeralda Broyles-González. December 21–23, 2009, Tucson, AZ. ———. Oral history interview by Yolanda Broyles-González. June 24, 2017, Xalapa, Mexico. Vega Delfín, Andrés. La vergüenza me sujeta: Relato de vida de Andrés Vega Delfín. Interviews by Armando Herrera Silva and Román Güemes Jiménez. Ediciones del Programa de Desarrollo del Sotavento. Oaxaca, Mexico: Dirección General de Vinculación Cultural; Instituto Cultural del Estado de Tabasco; Secretaria de Cultura de Oaxaca, 1990, 2008. Secondary Sources Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo. “Bailes de negros.” Revista de la Universidad de México 25, no. 2 (October 1970): 151–156. https://www.researchgate.net /publication /317440445 _Bailes _de _negros/fulltext /5a6bdb75aca2722c947bc0ed /Bailes-de-negros.pdf. ———. La población negra en México: Estudio etnohistórico. Mexico City: Secretaría de la Reforma Agraria, 1981 [1942]. Aguirre Tinoco, Humberto. Sones de la tierra y cantares jarochos. Xalapa, Mexico: Conaculta, 2004. Alcántara, Álvaro. “Motivos del Son: Conjunto sonero mexicano.” Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social Unidad Golfo, Xalapa, Mexico. http://www.herencialatina.com /Sones/Motivos _del _Son.htm. Bacon, David. “How U.S. Policies Fueled Mexico’s Great Migration.” The Nation, January 4, 2012. https://www.thenation.com /article/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos -great-migration/. ———. Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants. Boston: Beacon, 2008. ———. The Right to Stay Home. Boston: Beacon, 2013. Balcomb, Hannah Eliza Alexia. “Jaraneros and Jarochas: The Meanings of Fandangos and Son Jarocho in Immigrant and Diasporic Performance.” Master’s thesis, University of California, Riverside, 2012. Barahona Londoño, Andrés. Las músicas jarochas: ¿De dónde son? Un acercamiento etnomusicológico a la historia del son jarocho. Xalapa, Mexico: Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz, 2013. ———. Por su propia voz: Pláticas con músicos y decimistas jarochos. Colección Culturas Populares. Veracruz: Conaculta, 2012. Baudot, Georges, and María Agueda Méndez. “El chuchumbé, un son jacarandoso del México virreinal.” Cahiers du monde hispanique et luso-brésilien, no. 48, Musiques populaires et identités en Amérique latine (1987): 163–171. Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo. México Profundo: Una civilización negada. Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1987.

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———. Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization. Translation by Phillip A. Dennis. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. Braojos, Ricardo, dir. Fandango: Searching for the White Monkey. DVD. Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy, 2008. Bricker, Victoria R., and Munro Edmonson. “Las coplas indígenas de México.” In Las literaturas amerindias de México y la literatura en español en el siglo XVI, edited by Beatriz Garza Cuarón and George Baudot, 207–239. Mexico City: Siglo 21, 1996. http://www.elem.mx /estgrp/datos/187. ———. “Homage a Georges Baudot.” Caravelle, no. 76/77 (December 2001): 13–26. Brill, Mark. “Music of the Ancient Maya: New Avenues of Research.” Paper presented at the American Musicological Society-Southwest Chapter conference, fall 2012, Texas State University, San Marcos. https://docplayer.net /29640906-Music-of-the -ancient-maya-new-avenues-of-research.html. Broyles-González, Yolanda. Mono Blanco en California. Film. Santa Barbara, CA, 1989. Calmecac Xochipilli. “Fandango Nahua Popoluca.” YouTube video, 24:55, posted December 30, 2014. Museo Nacional de Antropología. https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=zZ3Xp88jj0s. Camastra, Caterina. “La poesía popular jarocha: Formas e imaginario.” Master’s thesis, Universidad Veracruzana, 2006. ———. “Tambien cultivo una flor: Don Arcadio Hidalgo; Semblanza de un trovador jarocho.” La Palabra y el Hombre (Universidad Veracruzana), January–March 2005, 37–59, 2005. https://www.academia.edu /31394517/Tambi%C3%A9n_cultivo_una _flor._Don _Arcadio_Hidalgo_semblanza _de _un _trovador_jarocho. Campos, Rubén M. El folklore y la música mexicana: Investigación acerca de la cultura musical en México (1525–1925). Mexico City: Publicaciones de la Secretaria de Educación Pública, Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1928. Canal 22. “Al otro lado de la música: Son jarocho, Popoluca.” La raíz doble. Posted to YouTube, 28:02, July 30, 2015. https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=r_EDJaCa _0s. Cardona, Ishtar. “Los actores culturales entre la tentación comunitaria y el mercado global: El resurgimiento del son jarocho.” Política y Cultura, no. 26 (Fall 2006): 213–232. Ceunico TV. Luna Negra: Preservando el son del sur. YouTube video, 10:07, posted July 11, 2017. https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=gKpLpiZoW8s. Chicano! A History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. 4 DVDs. Galán Productions, National Latino Communications Center, KCET, 1996. Colectivo Altepee. Mayordomía de San Juan Bautista, Chacalapa, Veracruz, 2014. YouTube video, 17:21, posted November 2, 2015, Becuana Producciones. https:// www.youtube.com /watch?v=rluJbG2PFBQ. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Delgado Calderón, Alfredo. Historia, cultura e identidad en el Sotavento. Mexico City: Dirección de Culturas Populares e Indígenas, 2004. Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel, “Episode Two: Conquest.” PBS, March 2007. http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel /show/episode2.html. Díaz-Sánchez, Micaela. “(In) Between Nation and Diaspora: Performing Indigenous and African Legacies in Chicana/o and Mexican Cultural Production.” PhD diss., Stanford University, 2009.

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———. “The Son Jarocho as Afro-Mexican Resistance Music.” Journal of Pan-African Studies 6, no. 1: 187–210. Don Benigno. “Décimas: ‘El desempleo.’” YouTube video, 6:51, posted January 4, 2010, by chicalpextle. https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=FozmCfLT7N8. Figueroa Hernández, Rafael. “El son jarocho en los Estados Unidos de América: Globalizaciones, migraciones y identidades.” PhD diss., Universidad Veracruzana, 2014. ———. Son jarocho: Guia histórico-musical. With DVD. Xalapa, Mexico: Conaculta, 2007. Flores, Juan. “Qué assimilated, Brother, Yo soy asimilao.” Journal of Ethnic Studies 13, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 1–16. Forbes, Jack. Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black People. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. ———. “The Use of Racial and Ethnic Terms in America: Management by Manipulation.” Wicazo Sa Review 11, no. 2 (Autumn 1995): 53–65. García de León, Antonio. “El Caribe afroandaluz: Permanencias de una civilización popular.” La Jornada Semanal, January 12, 1992, 27–33. ———. Fandango: El ritual del mundo jarocho a través de los siglos. Mexico City: Conaculta; Sotavento Programa de Desarrollo Cultural, 2009. ———. El mar de los deseos: El Caribe afroandaluz, historia y contrapunto. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2002. García de León, Antonio, and Liza Rumazo. Fandango: El ritual del mundo jarocho a través de los siglos. Veracruz, Mexico: Conaculta, 2006. García Díaz, Bernardo. Tlacotalpan y el renacimiento del son jarocho en Sotavento. IIHSUniversidad Veracruzana, 2016. Garrido, Juan S. Historia de la música popular en México 1986–1973. Mexico City: Extemporaneos, 1974. Gómez Díaz, Jorge Antonio, Kristina Brast, Jan Degener, et al. “Long-Term Changes in Forest Cover in Central Veracruz, Mexico (1993–2014).” Tropical Conservation Science 11 (2018). https://journals.sagepub.com /doi /10.1177/1940082918771089. González, Anita. Jarocho’s Soul: Cultural Identity and Afro-Mexican Dance. Lanham, MA: University Press of America, 2004. González, Francisco. The Gift. El Regalo. Mexican Harp. CD. 17th Street Records, 2009. ———. “The Gift—Francisco González.” Interview. YouTube video, 4:39, posted August 24, 2009, by Jazz Video Guy. http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=2w2c9K8BPRY. ———. Viejas canciones para viejos amigos. Old Songs for Old Friends. CD. 1985. González, Kamál. Kamál González (Live Session Complete). June 2017. YouTube video, 36:30, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v= CkvGJQ4yp3I. González, Martha. “Fandango without Borders: TEDxSeattle—Martha González— 04/16/10.” YouTube video, 19:52, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=qPR4GXl Uy-M. ———. “Zapateado Afro-Chicana Fandango Style: Self-Reflective Moments in Zapateado.” In Dancing across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos, edited by Olga Najera Ramírez, Norma E. Cantú, and Brenda M. Romero, 359–378. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Gottfried Hesketh, Jessica Anne. El fandango jarocho actual en Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2005.

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Grupo Mono Blanco. “El siquisirí.” On Al primer canto del gallo. CD. Discos Pentagrama, 1989. Grupo Mono Blanco y Stone Lips. “El chuchumbé.” On El mundo se va a acabar. CD. Worldwide Records, 1997. Grupo Zacamandú. “El trompito.” On Antiguos sones jarochos. CD. Discos Pueblo, 1999. Hernández, Alexandro D. “Hidden Histories of Resistance in Mexico’s Son Jarocho.” In Sounds of Resistance: The Role of Music in Multicultural Activism, edited by Eunice Rojas and Lindsay Michie, 473–490, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013. ———. “The Son Jarocho and Fandango amidst Struggle and Social Movements: Migratory Transformation and Reinterpretation of the Son Jarocho in La Nueva España, México, and the United States.” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2014. https://escholarship.org/uc /item /59b695pb. Hernández Cuevas, Marco Polo. “La población negra de México: Parte del discurso blanqueador para ‘poner al negro en su lugar.’” Afro-Hispanic Review 23, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 3–9. Holm, Tom J., Diane Pearson, and Ben Chavis. “Peoplehood: A Model for the Extension of Sovereignty in American Indian Studies.” Wicazo Sa Review 18, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 7–24. Huidobro, José Alejandro. Ariles y más ariles (Testimonios del son jarocho). Independent video, 1997. Posted to YouTube by Ana Zarina Palafox Mendes, 1/2, 12:41, at https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=8ykPhCbO4Jw; 2/2, 9:51, https://www .youtube.com /watch?v=3vChEv9Vtko. ———. “Los fandangos y los sones: La experiencia del son jarocho.” Thesis, Universidad Autónoma de México, Iztapalapa, 1995. Jarochance. Jarocho lyrics collection. https://jarochance.jimdo.com/. Kohl, Randall. Escritos de un náufrago habitual: ensayos sobre el son jarocho y otros temas etnomusicológicos. Veracruz: Universidad Veracruzana, Dirección General Editorial, 2010. Lipsitz, George. Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. Llerenas, Eduardo, Enrique Ramírez de Arellano, and Baruj Lieberman, eds. Antología del son de México. Book, 3 CDs. 4th edition. Mexico City: Música Tradicional, 1985. Loa, Angélica Natalia. “Performing Cultural Resistance: Chicano Public Art Practices toward Community Cultural-Development.” Master’s thesis, University of Southern California, 2005. López-Barrera, Fabiola, Robert H. Manson, and Rosario Landgrave. “Identifying Deforestation Attractors and Patterns of Fragmentation for Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest in Central Veracruz, Mexico.” Land Use Policy 41 (November 2014): 274–283. Los Vega. Los vientos del mar. Album. Pino Music, 2018. Loza, Steven. “From Veracruz to Los Angeles: The Reinterpretation of Son Jarocho.” Latin American Music Review 13, no. 2 (1992): 179–194. ———. “Origins, Form, and Development of the Son Jarocho: Veracruz, Mexico.” Aztlán 13 (1982): 257–274. Miles, Tiya, and Sharon P. Holland. Introduction to Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country, edited by Miles and Holland. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

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Miranda Nieto, Alejandro. Musical Mobilities. Son Jarocho and the Circulation of Tradition. London: Routledge, 2018. Palacios, Agustín. “Multicultural Vasconcelos: The Optimistic, and at Times Willful, Misreading of La Raza Cósmica.” Latino Studies 15, no. 4 (November 2017): 416–438. Paraíso, Raquel. “Florear la tarima: Un espacio para la poesía, la música y el baile en prácticas resignificadas de son jarocho.” Revista de Literaturas Populares 15, no. 2 (2015): 402–438. Pérez Hernández, Rolando Antonio. “El son jarocho como expresión musical afromestiza.” Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology 11 (2002): 39–56. Pérez Montfort, Ricardo. “La décima comprometida el Sotavento veracruzano: Un recorrido desde la Revolución hasta nuestros días.” Revista de Literaturas Populares 1, no. 1 (2001): 115–154. ———. “El ‘negro’ y la negritud en la formación del estereotipo del jarocho durante los siglos XIX y XX.” In Expresiones populares y estereotipos culturales en México: Siglos XIX y XX; diez ensayos, 175–210. Mexico City: CIESAS, 2007. Rasmussen, Anthony William. “Resistance Resounds: Hearing Power in Mexico City.” University of California at Riverside, PhD diss., 2017. Rodríguez, Richard. “The Hardest Thing for a Mexican to Say: ‘Soy Indio.’” San Francisco Independent, April 1994. Salazar, Rafael. Noche venezolana: Música y danzas venezolanas. Caracas: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, 1986. Sánchez-Tello, George B. “Jaraner@: Chicana/o Acculturation Strategy.” Master’s thesis, California State University, Northridge, 2012. Scott, Ed, dir. Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles. Film. KCET, 1975. Sheehy, Daniel. “The Son Jarocho: The History, Style, and Repertory of a Changing Mexican Musical Tradition.” PhD diss., UCLA, 1979. Son de Madera. Son de mi tierra. CD. SFW CD 40550, Smithsonian Folkways, 2009. Son del Centro. Mi jarana es mi fusil. CD. Producciones Cimarrón, 2006. Stannard, David. American Holocaust. The Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Stevenson, Robert. Music in Aztec and Inca Territory Library Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Stiegler, Morgen. “The African Experience on American Shores: Influence of Native American Contact on the Development of Jazz.” Master’s thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2009. Stigberg, David Kenneth. “Urban Musical Culture in Mexico: Professional Musicianship and Media in the Musical Life of Contemporary Veracruz.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1980. Thomas, Robert K. “Colonialism: Classic and Internal.” New University Thought 1, no. 4 (Winter 1966–1967): 44–53. Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People. London: Zed, 1999. Uribe Cruz, Manuel. “Identidad étnica y mayordomías en zonas de alta concentración industrial: El caso de los nahuas, popolucas y zapotecas del Istmo Veracruzano en el siglo XX.” PhD diss., Universidad Veracruzana, 2002.

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Vasconcelos, José. The Cosmic Race. Translation by Didier T. Jaen. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 [1925]. Wildcat, Daniel R. Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2009. Williamson, Emily J. “The Son Jarocho Revival: Reinvention and Community Building in a Mexican Music Scene in New York City.” PhD diss., City University of New York, 2018. https://academicworks.cuny.edu /gc _etds/2673/.

CHAPTER 4

Mario Barradas and Mexican Cinema rafael fiGueroa Hernández

Mario Barradas arrived in Mexico City in 1946, in an era that came to be known as the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Cinema played a role in efforts to establish a unified center of national power. Barradas played the Jarocho harp in many films over a period of thirty-three years, starting with La mujer de todos in 1946 and ending with México Norte in 1979. Barradas’s music varies considerably from film to film. His presence in the national film industry provides a case study of the myriad ways the film industry instrumentalized traditional music, including Son Jarocho. It is clear that the cinematic industry never cared to produce an ethnographic film or any documentaries focused on the varied genres of Mexican traditional music. Instead, the cinematic industry delivered a wild assemblage of semiregional fictionalizations as part of an imagined national identity; its overarching goal was the creation of commercial productions that could entertain Spanish speakers worldwide. The most realistic representations of anything Jarocho are found in films that take place in a Jarocho region, as in Pasión jarocha (1950), Llévame en tus brazos (1954), Por ti aprendí a querer (1960), and No hay cruces en el mar (1968). Those films integrate Son Jarocho within their plotlines. Son Jarocho is heard because the music is tied into the action, usually in a public celebration. The cinematic version of Jarocho celebration, however, does not correspond to the traditional dynamics of the Jarocho festivity known as fandango. Instead, urban nationalist idealogies guide the ways in which popular regional festivities are imagined. In such instances, the Jarocho dance festivities take on the character of a stylized or sanitized folkloric ballet instead of drawing any elements from a real fandango. For example, many people are shown dancing at the same time, whereas traditional fandango involves couples taking turns. And yet Jarocho culture finds representation and affirms a presence within these films. 131

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The filmic misrepresentation of Son Jarocho is most problematic in plots that have nothing to do with the Jarocho region. Many films use Son Jarocho to add a bit of color to this or that scene, thus trivializing and even exoticizing an entire culture. A notable example of this tokenizing hodgepodge practice is found in the 1953 film Gitana tenías que ser (You had to be a gypsy), which inexplicably combines disparate musical traditions into a perplexing plotline. In one scene, amid an outing to the pyramids of Teotihuacan, the protagonists stop at a restaurant and start to dance to the Son Jarocho “La bamba,” with the closest Sotavento city a few hundred miles away. The film also portrays a curious confrontation between Spanish flamenco and Mexican ranchera music. This musical confrontation is reminiscent of the film Nosotros los rateros (We, the thieves), which features a heated debate by the comedians Manolín y Shilinsky concerning the relative merits of Russian music and Son Jarocho amid an elegant dinner. In México Norte, there is also a scene in rural northern Mexico, far from being Jarocho, that features the son “El palomo y la paloma” (The male dove and female dove) simply because Paloma is the name of the film’s protagonist. Another example of the filmic appropriation of Son Jarocho is in La cobarde (The cowardly woman), which utilizes Son Jarocho to remind spectators that the scene in question takes place along the coast. That seaside location is hard to fathom, given the film’s urban costumes and the lush furnishings resembling those of a European mansion. The characters who are invited to a fiesta wear coats and ties, in direct contradiction to anything we could imagine happening on the coast of Veracruz. It could be said that multiple films feature this juxtaposition of urban modernity with Indigenous tradition, be it music, people, or places. Most Mexican Golden Age films manifest this uneasy coexistence and tension between imagined modernity and regional traditions. I also need to highlight those instances in which Mario Barradas is made to perform music that is foreign to his Jarocho tradition. In El amor a la vida (The love of life), Barradas plays a South American joropo tune; in La bandida (The woman bandit) and Los cuatro Juanes (The four Juans) he plays the ranchera genre. Barradas delivers graceful and unpretentious renditions while working in an industry that often draws randomly from whatever regional tunes come to mind. What follows is a detailed analysis of all the films in which Mario Barradas makes an appearance. It should be noted that these Golden Age films hardly rise to the level of “golden” classics. In most, their inordinate historical value rests with those few minutes that capture the masterful Son Jarocho performances of Mario Barradas. His presence, however marginal, justifies catalogu-

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ing the films and viewing them. With the passage of time, what these films treated as marginal has become the most valuable footage. In this compilation I also include Huapango (1938), although Barradas does not appear in the film. This film’s significance is that it was the first to feature Son Jarocho. Huapango was released when Barradas was only twelve years old, and it was an important milestone in his early life. Huapango, directed by Juan Bustillo Oro, script by Humberto Gómez Landero, 1938 Huapango takes place in the Papaloapan River basin in Veracruz. Production began in 1937 on location in Tlacotalpan, Orizaba, and Córdoba. The film premiered in 1938 in Mexico City. In his life-telling, Mario Barradas recalls how his father took him and his siblings to see this film, in which the renowned Jarocho singer Galo Chaparro Barcelata plays the role of a stylized Sotavento homeland troubadour who travels from village to village singing the story of Ramón Fernández. The story of Ramón Fernández features his long absence from his hacienda and then an incognito return following his father’s death. The protagonist runs the risk of losing his plantation due to the machinations of some supposed bad guys. The casting of a hacienda owner in a sympathetic role marks this film as belonging ideologically to the Mexican prerevolutionary era, the colonial era in which the slave economy was predominant.1 Although much could be said about Mexican cinema’s penchant for casting plantation owners as heroic, my focus here is on the Son Jarocho in this film. This is the first time in Mexican film history that Son Jarocho appears on the silver screen. Also, this film can be credited with avoiding most of the distortive musical excesses prevalent in subsequent Mexican films. To be sure, the director takes liberties in representing Jarocho traditions. However, I surmise that the young Mario Barradas and his family must have felt a closeness to what the film’s introduction refers to as the “genuine spirit of Veracruz, one of the liveliest and richest regions in Mexico.” La mujer de todos, directed by Julio Bracho, script by Mauricio Magdaleno and Xavier Villaurrutia, 1946 In 1946, eight years after viewing the first film staged in Veracruz, Mario Barradas himself performed in a film for the first time: La mujer de todos (Every-

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body’s woman) featuring one of Mexico’s most legendary actors, María Félix. Barradas was twenty years old and had only recently relocated to Mexico City. It was Lino Carillo from Tlalixcoyan who invited Mario to participate as part of a trio. The trio recorded in a studio prior to the filming of the scene. Barradas recalls, “They paid me seventy-five pesos to play for just a little while. That was a significant amount of money in 1946; just imagine, a full meal special at that time cost only fifty centavos!” La mujer de todos is the story of the fictional María Romano, played by María Félix. It was produced by the Mexican government’s legendary Churubusco Studios. The protagonist is a woman with a colorful past who falls in love with a Spanish captain, Jorge Serralde (played by Armando Calvo). In keeping with national ideological narratives steeped in racism and sexism, the couple is marked by a colonial gaping gender inequality; the European male represents what is humanly dignified, and the Mexican woman has no value. The film, characteristically, casts María as destined to failure due to her supposed sexually scandalous past. María flees and enjoys a short period of happiness in the Jarocho town of Tlacotalpan, on the banks of the Papaloapan River. While resting in a hammock, she hears some fishermen interpreting a piece by Lino Carrillo, based on the traditional Son Jarocho “El fandanguito.” A conversation about Mexican national character unfolds, a reductionist stereotype with sexual overtones. María asks, “Who is singing?” Her lover gazes at the river and responds, “The fishermen.” “Do they sing that way every evening?” “Every evening when they return from fishing.” “I love that vague mixture of joy and lamentation in Mexican songs.” “That’s exactly what we’re about.” “They carry the taste of their sweet fruits and acidic fruits at the same time.” “Like your lips.” The musicians are never shown, only heard in the distance. Nosotros los rateros, directed by Jaime Salvador, script by Antonio Lara de Gavilán (Tono de Lara), 1949 Mario Barradas’s second participation in a movie was in conjunction with Nosotros los rateros (We, the thieves), a film originally entitled Ladrones pero honrados (Thieves with honor). It was shot in 1949 at the studios of CLASA (Cinematográfica Latinoamericana, Sociedad Anónima) in Mexico City. This production is a comedy of errors that takes place in a hotel room where Elena (Patricia Morán) is staying. She is engaged to a public prosecutor named

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Ludovico (Estanislao Shilinsky). An attorney named Alberto (Manolo Calvo) enters the room by mistake, and they both discover someone named Mercedes (Manuel Palacios, known as Manolín) under the bed; he apparently had fallen asleep there after entering the room to commit a theft. In addition to the hotel scene, some scenes feature a courtroom; there is also an elegant dinner scene. During that dinner, the comedic pair Manolín and Shilinsky unfold a sketch featuring a group of supposed Russian musicians. Manolín wants to hear the Son Jarocho “La bamba,” while Shilinsky insists that a Russian tune be played. The Russian ensemble starts to perform the emblematic Russian piece “Ochi chyornye” (Dark eyes). Suddenly the Russian ensemble is interrupted by “La bamba,” played at first by a balalaika ensemble until Conjunto Tierra Blanca storms into the dinner scene. Everyone rises and dances to “La bamba.” Mario Barradas recalls that Conjunto Tierra Blanca was recruited at the Folies Bergère nightclub, owned by entertainment entrepreneur Filiberto Zúñiga, “El Chato Guerra.” The film premiered in 1949 at the National Theater, a befitting stage for enacting frivolous film productions featuring caricatured social contradictions and uncanny plots. Pasión jarocha, directed by Carlos Véjar, script by José Gutiérrez Zamora, 1950 The next movie that included Conjunto Tierra Blanca was Pasión jarocha ( Jarocho passion), released in 1950 at Teresa Theater in Mexico City. Pasión jarocha is set in the Veracruz city of Alvarado, a setting that creates favorable conditions for the inclusion of Son Jarocho. The film’s plot is a type of Sotavento Romeo and Juliet story. Instead of the feuding Capulet and Montague families, the film makes use of the traditional rivalry between the cities of Alvarado and Tlacotalpan. Omar (Víctor Manuel Mendoza) and his sister Rosalinda (Irma Torres) are from Tlacotalpan. They visit Alvarado, where she is courted by Hugo (Rafael Lanzetta), even though he is engaged to marry Julia (Nora Veryán). Julia initiates a campaign of lies aimed at stirring up animosity between the two towns. This film’s credits indicate that Marina Orantes, the dancer with Conjunto Tierra Blanca, was in charge of the Jarocho dances. The legendary Son Jarocho harpist Andrés Huesca and his ensemble Los Costeños are heard playing and singing “El palomo y la paloma,” yet Huesca and Los Costeños remain invisible, and the song serves only as background music. Huesca and Los Costeños most likely recorded the music in Mexico City, where the film producers hired Conjunto Tierra Blanca with Mario Barradas on harp to appear in the film.

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Mario Barradas commented that the movie caused unrest when it was shown in Alvarado because the story implies that the rival town of Tlatotalpan saved the town of Alvarado. Historically, the opposite has been the case; it is the town of Alvarado that provides assistance to the inhabitants of Tlacotalpan whenever the periodic flooding of the Papaloapan River devastates that town. Because of its assistance, Alvarado has been honored with the nickname “Generous Alvarado.” Flor de sangre, directed by Zacarías Gómez Urquiza, script by Luis Spota, 1951 Flor de sangre (Blood flower) was filmed at Tepeyac Studios and premiered in 1951 at the Cine Mariscala.2 This film’s protagonist is Flor, a femme fatale who brings ruin on an entire family and on herself. When Flor arrives at a seaside eatery in search of work, the widower owner falls in love with her and takes her into his home against the wishes of his family. What ensues is a kind of erotic slaughter, with the father murdering one of his sons and another son murdering his wife. Even Flor meets with a bloody end. Mario Barradas is featured at Flor’s wake, after she is killed by a motorboat propeller. He recalls, “We played the Son Jarocho ‘Colás’ but instead of singing it the regular way with ‘Colás, Colás, y Nicolás’ we had to change the words to ‘llorar, llorar, venimos a llorar’ (cry, cry, we’ve come to cry).” El amor a la vida, directed and scripted by Miguel Contreras Torres, 1951 El amor a la vida was filmed in 1950 at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City, and it premiered in 1951 at the Teresa Cinema. The film was marketed under four titles, depending on its area of distribution. Its alternate titles were La dicha de los pobres (Poor people’s happiness) and La extraña aventura de un hombre (The strange adventure of one man) when distributed in Mexico and Central America. When distributed in Latin America it was titled En los tiempos de Gómez (During the time of Gómez). “The time of Gómez” references the Venezuelan military man and politician who controlled Venezuela during his presidency as well as from behind the scenes from 1908 until his death in 1935. This film is set in Venezuela because that country was the most important Latin American market for Mexican films. In a nod to that country, the director had the actors, most of whom were Mexican, speak in unconvincing Venezuelan accents.

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The story begins when a solitary wanderer named Lucas (Fernando Soler) arrives at a plantation in the valley of Aragua in Venezuela. On orders from the plantation owner, Rosa María (Alicia Caro), the stranger is taken in and looked after, notwithstanding the lack of any information concerning his origins or intentions. Lucas turns out to be Laureano Santos, a rich and influential politician from Caracas. Santos experiences firsthand the injustices that people face in the Venezuelan countryside, including the problems of the plantation that took him in, problems he is able to resolve by interceding with President Gómez. Mario Barradas’s musical intervention happens at the beginning of the film in a scene in which antagonists silently face off. Barradas’s Conjunto Tierra Blanca had been performing at the Lírico Theater in Mexico City when that theater’s orchestral conductor was hired to direct the music for this film. The conductor gave Barradas a recording of a Venezuelan joropo for the group to rehearse. Performed by Jarocho musicians, the tune demonstrates an affinity between two disparate musical traditions. The use of Jarocho musicians and instruments to play a Venezuelan joropo illustrates that from the heights of privilege and power, folk traditions are regarded as interchangeable. La cobarde, directed by Julio Bracho, script by Arduino Maiuri and Julio Alejandro, 1953 La cobarde was filmed in the state-subsidized CLASA studios in Mexico City under the direction of prominent filmmaker Julio Bracho. It was released in 1953 at the Alameda movie house. The plot unfolds at a seaside town on the Gulf of Mexico. A Norwegian vessel shipwrecks, leaving a little girl, Mara (Irasema Dilián), as its sole survivor. Mara is adopted by an art collector named Arturo (Ernesto Alonso) who lives with his two nephews, Roberto (Carlos Navarro) and Julio (Carlos Agostí). Predictably, when Mara grows up and becomes a beautiful woman, she occasions a series of love conflicts involving not only the two brothers but the uncle as well. Son Jarocho musicians are inserted as a non sequitur intended, perhaps, to remind viewers of the film’s Gulf Coast setting. They perform two traditional Sones Jarochos, “El pájaro cú” and “El butaquito,” at an extravagant festivity. The juxtaposition of monied elegance and traditional Indigenous music unwittingly enacts the emergent Mexican nation’s modernist contradictions. The performing Son Jarocho ensemble was the recently established Conjunto Medellín of Lino Chávez. Among its musicians were Lino Chávez, Mario Barradas, Enrique Márquez Vásquez, nicknamed “El Indio Verde,” and Fernando Pérez Prieto. The film credits explain that the Son Jarocho “El buta-

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quito” was sung with the verses of “El cielito lindo.” What was not understood is that “El butaquito” existed long before Quirino Mendoza composed and copyrighted “El cielito lindo.” Mario Barradas recalls his chance encounter with Julio Bracho in Tlacotalpan on his way back to Mexico City after visiting Tierra Blanca. Bracho asked Barradas to play him some Sones Jarochos. Barradas played him three sones, accompanied by two great performers from the Papaloapan River basin, Andrés Alfonso Vergara and Rutilo Parroquín. When they finished, Julio Bracho gave Barradas his business card and told him to get in touch in Mexico City. Gitana tenías que ser, directed by Rafael Baledon, script by Janet Alcoriza and Luis Alcoriza, 1953 Gitana tenías que ser was filmed in 1953 at San Ángel Studios and premiered that same year at the Orfeón Theater. The plot revolves around making a film about a Spanish singer named Pastora de los Reyes (Carmen Sevilla) who travels to Mexico to shoot the film. An unknown mariachi singer discovered while singing in Garibaldi Plaza in Mexico City named Pablo Mendoza (Pedro Infante) is selected to play the lead male role. When Pablo and Pastora meet, they develop a hatred for each other. By the time the film shoot ends, they fall in love, as is requisite for romantic comedies of that era. Son Jarocho makes an appearance during an outing to the pyramids of Teotihuacan. The protagonists’ car breaks down, and the actors and film crew stop at a nearby inn owned by a Spaniard. Son Jarocho begins to play from a jukebox, and everybody gets up to dance to “La bamba.” There is a hostile exchange between two members of the film crew. The two men ridicule each other’s dancing style, and they exchange a few couplets, without much attention to metrics. The Son Jarocho ensemble appears in the credits, and “La bamba” is not even included in the list of songs. Llévame en tus brazos, directed by Julio Bracho, script by Julio Bracho and José Carbó, 1954 Mario Barradas’s next film was Llévame en tus brazos (Take me in your arms), which was filmed at Churubusco Studios and released in 1954 at the Olympia Theater. This is yet another male-centered film replete with sexual intrigue caused by a woman. Sexualized national ideologies inscribe women’s sexuality as a currency controlled by men. In this film, Rita Rosales (Ninón Sevilla) and José (Armando Silvestre) live happily in love in a fishing town along the

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banks of the Papaloapan River. Trouble arrives in the form of the business owner Antonio ( Julio Villareal), who takes advantage of debts owed to him by Rita’s father. Those debts, combined with some poor decisions on Rita’s part, convert her into Antonio’s lover. She also subsequently becomes the lover of a politician named Gregorio (Carlos López Moctezuma). After a few years, she re-encounters José, who has by then become a labor leader, defending the rights of sugarcane workers. He initially rejects her, but in the end they return to the river’s edge in order to live happily ever after. The first scene involving Mario Barradas takes place when all is well between the lovers. At a fiesta, Rita dances to “El gavilancito” while musicians recite some delicate verses from José. Quiero decir y no quiero decir a quien quiero bien porque si digo a quien quiero ya van a saber a quien y eso es lo que yo no quiero decir a quien quiero bien. (I want to say and not say who I love greatly because if I say who I love all will know who it is and that’s what I don’t want to say who I love so greatly)

These verses are part of the tradition, part of the communal repository known as versos sabidos, “known verses,” meaning that they are shared by everyone. This stanza is particularly well known because of its tongue-twister quality. The lead singer takes advantage of the arrival of Antonio, the bad guy, reciting some verses that cast the businessman in a bad light. Onlookers delight in the verses, while their target plays deaf. The business owner’s housekeeper, however, does acknowledge the verses. They are sung in a call and response between the verses and the chorus “Volando viene, volando va” (Flying it arrives, flying it departs): Del otro lado del río viene un gato sin orejas y a buscarle las muchachas vienen las malditas viejas

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(From the other side of the river comes a cat without ears and to find some girls for him comes the wretched old women)

When Rita decides to live with Antonio in order to settle her father’s debt, the Son Jarocho musicians act as her conscience, reprimanding her with “La morena” (The dark-skinned woman). La mujer que su decoro rinde al primer amador después ni con todo el oro vuelve a conseguir la flor, que fue su único tesoro en el jardín del amor (A woman who gives up her decorum to the first lover she can hold cannot later recover her flower not even with all the gold, for she lost her only treasure in the garden of love)

After Rita lives in Antonio’s home for some time, a fiesta in honor of a visitor is held. The Jarocho ensemble once again sings the above verses, but to the melody of the Son Jarocho “El balajú.” When Rita’s eyes meet those of her beloved José, the musicians sing, En un tiempo nos amamos yo y una bella mujer. Nos quisimos, nos dejamos y nos volvimos a ver. Los dos a un tiempo lloramos. ¡Mira lo que es el querer! (At one time we loved one another a beautiful woman and I. We loved each other, we left each other and we reunited once again. We both wept at the same time. See what love can do!)

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Rita tries to explain her actions, but when José does not believe that her honor is intact, she decides to get drunk while the Jarocho ensemble repeats the verses from “La morena.” At this point the ensemble is accompanied by an orchestra arrangement by Manuel Esperón. Rita’s downward spiral into moral abandon begins. Notably, the musicians’ names do not show up in the film credits, marking a form of invisiblization that speaks to the film industry’s devaluation of an entire cultural region. The musical credit goes to one man, Manuel Esperón, who is credited with arranging “the popular huapangos ‘El Gavilancito,’ ‘Jarocho soy señores,’ ‘Zapateado Veracruzano,’ ‘La morena,’ and ‘El balajú.’” All are in the public domain except “Jarocho soy señores” by Lino Carrillo. Música de siempre, directed by Óscar Herman “Tito” Davison, script by Alfonso Patiño Gómez, 1958 It is something of an exaggeration to speak of a plot in Música de siempre (Eternal music). The film consists of a series of musical performances linked together by a weak story that mainly serves to transition from one scene to the next. The film was shot at Tepeyac Studios and premiered in 1958 at the Mariscala and Olimpia Theaters. Federico Ruiz and Ángel Quiróz, the musical directors, appear in the credits as “dance designers.” The Jarocho scene features Antonia del Carmen Peregrino Álvarez, known as “Toña la Negra,” accompanied by a who’s who of the Mexico City Jarocho scene including Lino Chávez, Mario Barradas, and the Rosas Santos brothers, as well as Andrés Cruz, Nacho Fierro, and Enrique Márquez Vásquez. The musicians begin with the Son Jarocho “El Ahualulco” sung by Toña and transition to an instrumental rendition of “El zapateado.” They return to “El Ahualulco,” as Toña sings and dances. This scene marks an extraordinary departure from Toña la Negra’s characteristic static performance style, while singing mainly boleros. About the film, Mario Barradas said, What was planned is that we perform with two Jarocho harps. However, the other harp player who was there did not want to tune up with the other musicians; it seems he got mad and was out of sorts. Toña la Negra noticed and she told me, “What’s up with that guy?” “He’s mad because he didn’t want to tune up with me.” “Send him to . . . and let’s get someone else to play.” Fortunately the Rosas brothers ensemble had shown up and “El Pirulí” was playing with them; so he and I tuned up and we played “El Ahualulco,”

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which appeared in that film. After the movie was finished, Toña La Negra invited us to eat at her home, which was at the corner of Aniceto Ortega and La Colonia del Valle. I still remember.

La Cucaracha, directed by Ismael Rodríguez, script by Ismael Rodríguez and José Luis Celis y Ricardo Garibay, 1959 La Cucaracha was a superproduction by the legendary director Ismael Rodríguez, who made Pedro Infante’s classic films and who for this film, set in the Mexican Revolution, had an extraordinary cast, with María Félix, Dolores del Río, Pedro Armendáriz, and Emilio (“El Indio”) Fernández, among many others. The story begins when Colonel Antonio Zeta, played by Emilio Fernández, arrives in a town where the two female characters of the film live. “La Cucaracha” (The cockroach), played by María Félix, is a very strong woman, and Isabel, delicate and cultured, is the wife of the teacher in the town. For different reasons but both attributed to Colonel Zeta, their men end up dead. The conflict between the two women develops because both become lovers of Colonel Zeta, which places them as rivals in love. In the end, the death of the colonel in a battle disables the women’s antagonism, and both prepare to participate in the revolution as soldaderas, implying that the armed conflict was a reality much larger and more important than their rivalry. As expected in a movie set in the revolution, there are no scenes in which Son Jarocho is played, but rather all the music revolves around revolutionary corridos, with the popular song “La cucaracha” prominently featured. The composer and singer Cuco Sánchez was in charge of the songs. The music was all prerecorded, so Mario Barradas’s playing is heard but not seen. Filming began on October 13, 1958, at the Churubusco studios. The film was released on November 12, 1959, at the Roble and Ariel cinemas. Por ti aprendí a querer, directed by José Díaz Morales, script by Jesús Cárdenas, 1960 Por ti aprendí a querer (You taught me how to love) was marketed as a biography of the great composer Lorenzo Barcelata from Tlalixcoyan, Veracruz; although his widow, María Teresa Barcelata, had an acting role in the movie, there is not much adherence to historical reality. The film was shot at Churubusco Studios and on location in the Port of Veracruz, in 1957. However, it did

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not premier until 1960. The story begins in Tlalixcoyan, where the young Lorenzo Barcelata (Antonio Maciel) shows signs of musical genius. He leaves for Veracruz in search of success. There he meets Teresa (Lilia del Valle); they fall in love, and he composes the song “Por ti aprendí a querer” (For you I learned to love) for her. Lorenzo gets into trouble when he supports the wrong politician; consequently, he has to accept a job at the customs house in Tampico. He manages to found a quartet called Los Trovadores Tamaulipecos. During a tour to New York, he re-encounters Teresa, and she becomes his agent. All is well until Lorenzo finds out that he has an incurable ailment. Teresa gets to see him for only a few moments before his death. Conjunto Tierra Blanca plays “El cascabel” in Tlalixcoyan scenes and again as the credits roll.3 Mario Barradas indicates that his father visited him when he was in Tlalixcoyan, and the younger Barradas was able to get him hired as an extra: “They changed his clothes, they put a different guayabera shirt on him, and he appears standing next to me in the film.” La bandida, directed by Roberto Rodríguez, script by Rafael García Travesí and Roberto Rodríguez, 1963 In La bandida, Son Jarocho once again does not fit the plot. What is different, though, is that Mario Barradas and his Jarocho harp, along with members of Los Costeños, appear in a scene dressed as revolutionaries, playing a ranchera by José Alfredo Jiménez entitled “Dos hombres bragados” (Two brave men). The ranchera refers to the protagonists, Roberto Herrera (Pedro Armendáriz) and Epigmenio Gómez (Emilio Fernández), who compete for the love of the same woman, María Mendoza, “La Bandida” (María Félix). The film was shot at Churubusco Studios and released in 1963 in four theaters: Alameda, Las Américas, Mariscala, and Polanco. Los cuatro Juanes, directed and scripted by Miguel Zacarías, 1966 Los cuatro Juanes (The four Juans) was filmed at Churubusco Studios and different locations in Mexico City and Cuautla. It was released in 1966. The film takes place during the Mexican Revolution. Juan Charrasqueado (Scarface Juan, played by Narciso Busquets) is on a mission to secure ammunition to support the Revolution. Three other Juans help him: Juan Sin Miedo (Fearless Juan, played by Luis Aguilar), Juan Colorado (Red Juan, played by Antonio Aguilar), and Juan Pistolas (Pistol Juan, played by Javier Solís). Mario

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Barradas’s ensemble appears at a bordello headed up by La Jarocha ( Jarocho Woman, played by Ofelia Montesco). Although they are wearing Jarocho regional attire, the four Juans perform the ranchera song “¿Cuál Juan?” (Which Juan?) by Juan Záizar, interpreted by Juan Pistolas. Adding to the cultural dissonance of that scene are a pair of trumpet players dressed in mariachi attire. This mix-and-match approach to musical heritage bears testimony to the estrangement between the national cinema industry and the regional cultures of the nation. No hay cruces en el mar, directed by Julián Soler, script by Mercedes Carreño, 1968 No hay cruces en el mar (There are no crosses at sea) was written by Mercedes Carreño, who also plays the chief protagonist in this 1968 film. The film presents the story of María Isabel (Mercedes Carreño), who along with her father is shipwrecked off the coast of Veracruz. They are rescued by the mute Pedro ( Jaime Fernández), who raises the little girl as his own after the father dies. As might be expected from the cinematic obsession with womanhood centered on dangerous sexuality, the little girl develops into a sensual yet naive woman who awakens men’s passions. Her spiritual adviser is the priest Javier (Fernando Soler), and her boyfriend is a young archaeologist named Sergio (Pedro Armendáriz Jr.) who is in the region to study the Mesoamerican ruins of El Tajín. The filmmakers were, perhaps, unaware that El Tajín is at a considerable distance to the north of where the story takes place. The problems begin when the young priest Roberto ( Juan Ferrara) arrives to substitute for Father Javier and falls victim to María’s charms. After trying to kiss her, he decides to leave the priesthood and skips town. Pedro, María’s adoptive father finds out that María is in love with the archaeologist Sergio. Pedro fights with Sergio and almost kills him, but the priest Javier returns just in time to stop the fight. When it is revealed that Pedro is not only María’s adoptive father but also desires her as a woman, Pedro commits suicide by walking into the ocean. Son Jarocho appears in three instances during the first scenes of the film. All three song segments were recorded in Cuernavaca, Morelos. The first Son Jarocho is performed when the town’s fiesta is in full swing. Conjunto Medellín performs “El palomo y la paloma” while the townspeople dance. María’s sensual naiveté causes problems because the men can’t resist her charms. One of those men is chastised by his girlfriend: “She has cast a spell on you and on all the others.” The situation causes a stir that threatens to escalate, but

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the priest Javier calms everyone. Once the townspeople calm down, the priest sends María to the church to pray ten Our Fathers, while the Jarocho ensemble continues with “El Ahualulco,” even though the film credits list it as “El colás.” Son Jarocho is heard once again in the scene when the priest Javier takes leave for the capital city. The musicians play “El jarabe,”4 with verses created for the occasion. Here is the first quatrain. Ha cumplido su deber lo digo yo sin temor ya se va el padre Javier del pueblo su bienhechor. (He has done his duty and I say it without fear Father Javier is now leaving the town where he served.)

México Norte, directed by Emilio Fernández (“El Indio”), scripted by Fernández and Ricardo Garibay, 1979 Mario Barradas’s last film appearance was in 1979’s México Norte. This was the director Emilio Fernández’s penultimate production; he decided to create a new version of Pueblerina, which had been filmed in 1948. He even decided to use the same male actor who appeared in that movie. That actor now had gray hair and had to have it dyed for the occasion. The plot is based on the original script by Emilio Fernández. The film begins with Aurelio (Roberto Cañedo) shooting Julio Reséndiz (Alejandro González) in self-defense. Julio had raped Aurelio’s beloved Paloma (Patricia Reyes Spíndola). Six years later, after completing his prison sentence, Aurelio returns to his hometown. He finds everything changed; his mother is dead, his family home is in ruins, and the town is dominated by Julio and his brother (Narciso Busquets), the movie’s antagonists. Aurelio does not seek revenge; he only wants to farm his lands in peace. He seeks out Paloma, who now has a daughter born of the rape. (In the original Pueblerina the offspring is a boy.) In spite of Paloma’s reluctance and her sense of shame, she and Aurelio end up together. The two brothers continue harassing Aurelio until he decides to flee the town with Paloma and her daughter. The brothers intercept them on their way out of town, and Aurelio is forced to kill them. Mario Barradas, together with the Lino Carrillo ensemble, appears during

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Mario Barradas and Son Jarocho

Aurelio and Paloma’s wedding. No one attends that wedding because they fear the Reséndiz brothers’ threats. Aurelio asks them to play “El palomo y la paloma,” and the two of them dance alone. Son Jarocho is clearly out of place within this plot set in the north of Mexico. It would seem that the only reason the director chose this song was to celebrate the heroine’s name. Conclusion Having followed Barradas’s steps, we can bear witness to his contributions to the history of music and film. His contributions to cinema between 1946 and 1979 provide varied examples of ideologies and contradictions inherent within centrist national cinema. His performances feature a degree of technical ability that had not previously been seen, but they were stripped of all cultural elements associated with community rituals from Sotavento. For the new nationalist Mexico, traditional cultural practices symbolized a Mexico that the modern nation should discard for the sake of economic development, a project that proved elusive for most of the populace. Notes 1. Although the term “hacienda” has often been romanticized in the popular imagination of film, this form of exploitative agricultural institution arose through the illegal dispossession of subsistence farmers throughout the Mexican countryside during the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship. Collectively held lands, a prominent feature of Indigenous civilizations, were seized throughout most of Mexico. The dictatorship protected illegal land grabs by rich individuals, by the Roman Catholic Church, and by foreign corporations. Farmers were then practically enslaved and made to work on their formerly collectively held lands. The recuperation of ancestral lands and liberation from forced labor was at the heart of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. “Tierra y Libertad” was a prominent slogan. 2. This is the only movie from Mario Barradas’s filmography that I was unable to view, given that it is not found in the Mexican national film repositories. In his groundbreaking, eighteen-volume Historia documental del cine mexicano, Emilio García Riera also relies on the plot described by Elda Peralta, life partner of the screenwriter and novelist Luis Spota. Peralta describes the plot in her book La época de oro sin nostalgia: Luis Spota en el cine, 1949–1959 (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1988), and that is the source I draw from, besides Mario Barradas’s recollections. 3. “El cascabel” is a Son Jarocho from the public domain. However, Lorenzo Barcelata copyrighted a version of “El cascabel” with the Mexican Society of Authors and Composers. This film lists it as his composition even though it belongs to the public domain. 4. In the film credits, “El jarabe” is listed as “Adiós al padre Javier.”

Mario Barradas and Mexican Cinema 147

References A Note on Sources In this study I relied in some measure on the foundational work of Emilio García Riera and on viewing and analyzing the films I discuss. Even more valuable was the participation of Mario Barradas himself; he provided a great deal of invaluable firsthand information. Books García Riera, Emilio. Historia documental del cine mexicano. 18 vols. Guadalajara, Mexico: Universidad de Guadalajara; Gobierno de Jalisco; Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes; Instituto Mexicano de Cinematrografía, 1992–1997. Peralta, Elda. La época de oro sin nostalgia: Luis Spota en el cine, 1949–1959. Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1998. Films (in chronological order) La mujer de todos. 1946. Directed by Julio Bracho. Produced by Filmex, Gregorio Walerstein. Nosotros los rateros. 1949. Directed by Jaime Salvador. Produced by Orofilms, Gonzalo Elvira. Pasión jarocha. 1950. Directed and produced by Carlos Véjar. Flor de sangre. 1951. Directed by Zacarías Gómez Urquiza. Produced by Productora Continental. El amor a la vida. 1951. Directed by Miguel Contreras Torres. Produced by Hispano Continental Films, Miguel Contreras Torres. La cobarde. 1953. Directed by Julio Bracho. Produced by CLASA Films Mundiales, Salvador Elizondo. Gitana tenías que ser. 1953. Directed by Rafael Baledón. Produced by Filmex, Antonio Matouk (México), Suevia Films-Cesáreo González (Spain). Llévame en tus brazos. 1954. Directed by Julio Bracho. Produced by Producciones Calderón, Pedro A. Calderón, Guillermo Calderón. Música de siempre. 1958. Directed by Tito Davison. Produced by ANDA, Alianza Cinematográfica. La Cucaracha. 1959. Directed by Ismael Rodríguez. Produced by Películas Rodríguez. Por ti aprendí a querer. 1960. Directed by José Díaz Morales. Produced by Filmadora Panamericana, Alberto López. La bandida. 1963. Directed by Roberto Rodríguez. Produced by Películas Rodríguez, Aurelio García Yévenes. Los cuatro Juanes. 1966. Directed by Miguel Zacarías. Produced by Producciones Zacarías, Alfredo Zacarías. No hay cruces en el mar. 1968. Directed by Julián Soler. Produced by Uranio Films, Mercedes Carreño, José Lorenzo Zacany Aldama. México Norte. 1979. Directed by Emilio Fernández. Produced by CONACINE.

Mario Barradas Discography rafael fiGueroa Hernández

Creating a discography of a major performer such as Mario Barradas has various inherent difficulties. One of the main problems has to do with the lack of information found on the covers of vinyl recordings. In most cases, the cover gives only the name of the group and the titles of the musical selections; covers rarely list the names of individual musicians in the groups or any other musicians invited for the recordings or the recording dates and editions. When a date is shown, it indicates when the record was released; that date can differ, sometimes by years, from the date an extended-play version was recorded and released. In his life-telling, Mario Barradas recalls that the members of the original Conjunto Medellín were Jesús Torres Díaz, Fernando Pérez, Mario Barradas, and Lino Chávez, and that these were the musicians who recorded Veracruz hermoso. It is not clear whether all those musicians participated in the recording of Veracruz. Given the temporal proximity of these two recordings, it is likely that the musicians are the same. That is likely also true of ¡México, alta fidelidad!. The recording ¡Qué lindo es Veracruz! features Jacinto Gatica playing a second harp. Another problem with the album covers is that they credit individual performers as composers of traditional songs. In this discography I decided to leave the compositional crediting as it appears on the recording edition. It should be kept in mind, however, that those credits are mostly for Sones Jarochos that have their origins in the early days of colonization. This discography is ordered according to the groups with which Mario Barradas played. Conjunto Medellín is the first group, followed by Conjunto Tierra Blanca and other groups. A secondary ordering criterion is chronology, although access to exact dates has been limited. The discography is exhaustive given the resources at my disposal. It is more than likely that some recordings are not listed here. I hope that this discography will help bring other forgotten recordings to light. 149

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Discography

The recordings listed here are long-play (LP) except the first one, a single by Dueto Hermanas Huesca. The members of each ensemble are listed alphabetically by surname. Recordings are listed by group name, title, record company and number, and year when possible. Song titles are listed as given on the covers, with credit for the composition or the arrangement in parentheses, followed by track length. The album tracks correspond to songs in which Mario Barradas performs. The tracks on which Barradas does not perform are not listed.

Discography 151

Dueto Hermanas Huesca (Peerless 3657), ca. 1949 The Arhoolie Foundation’s Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings notes that attribution on the label “is incorrectly stated as ‘Dueto Hermanas Huesca’ when it should read ‘Dueto Hermanos Huesca.’” However, the name is indeed Hermanas Huesca.

PerforMers:

Gloria and Luz María Huesca, singers Original members of Conjunto Medellín

side a

El Agualulco 2:47

side B

El pájaro cú 2:54

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Discography

Various groups, Sones Jarochos (Peerless AP 124), no date

disc 3, side a

2. El cascabel 2:40

Various groups, ¡México, alta fidelidad! (Vanguard VRS-9009), 1956

side a 1. 2. 4. 6. 7.

El pijul 3:55 El zapateado 2:01 Coplas a mi morena 2:27 La bruja 3:30 El siquisirí 4:23

side B

2. La bamba 3:48 4. El cascabel 3:06 6. El tilingo lingo 2:41

Discography 153

Conjunto Jarocho Medellín de Lino Chávez, Veracruz hermoso (RCA Camden CAM-28), 1961

side a

1. La bamba 3:03 2. Balajú (Pedro Galindo) 2:27 3. El cupido ( Joaquín Castillo B., Ángel Arzamendi) 3:12 4. El siquisirí (Lorenzo Barcelata) 2:48 5. La manta (Nicandro Castillo) 2:58 6. María Chuchena (Licho Jiménez)

side B

1. El colás (Luis E. Plata) 2:35 2. El butaquito (Elpidio Ramírez) 2:40 3. El pájaro cú ( Juan Neri Mancilla) 2:55 4. El jarabe 3:18 5. El huateque (Lino Carrillo) 2:54 6. El tilingo lingo (Lino Carrillo) 2:40

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Discography

Conjunto Jarocho Medellín de Lino Chávez, Veracruz (RCA Camden CAM-5s), 1961

narrator: arturo Benavides side a

1. Introducción and Coplas a mi morena (Lorenzo Barcelata) 4:24 2. La tuza 2:57 3. El cascabel (Lorenzo Barcelata) 2:19 4. El coco (Licho Jiménez) 2:04 5. La indita (Gustavo Morales) 2:40 6. Estampa jarocha 2:35

side B

1. Ahualulco 2:27 2. El torito (Elpidio Ramírez) 2:23 3. Que bello es Veracruz (Víctor Huesca) 2:45 4. El gavilancito 2:19 5. La guacamaya 2:55 6. Zapateado y final 3:40

Discography 155

Conjunto Medellín de Lino Chávez, Qué lindo es Veracruz! (RCA Camden CAM-108), 1964

side a

1. La indita 2:53 2. La bruja 3:01 3. Canto a Veracruz (Víctor Huesca) 2:47 4. El tuxpeño (Edmundo Martínez Espejo) 2:44 5. La vieja (Licho Jiménez) 2:55

side B

1. La rama 2:56 2. La morena (Lorenzo Barcelata) 3:20 3. Huapango huapanguerito (Willy Samperio) 2:30 4. El cataza 2:36 5. El canelo 3:21

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Discography

Conjunto Tierra Blanca

Conjunto Tierra Blanca, Veracruz: Huapangos y sones jarochos (Columbia México DCA53), no date

PerforMers, as naMed BY Mario Barradas: Chico Barcelata, director, guitar Mario Barradas Murcia, harp José de Lourdes García Rosas, jarana Teodoro Hernández (“El Negro Jetas”), requinto Jesús Torres Díaz (“El Tuero”), guitar

side a

1. Canto a Veracruz (Hermanos Samperio) 3:05 2. El cascabel (Lorenzo Barcelata) 3:10 3. Tilingo lingo (Lino Carrillo) 2:40 4. La bamba 2:25 5. Zapateado veracruzano 2:11 6. Fandango jarocho (Cuates Castilla) 2:39

side B

1. Estampa jarocha (Ricardo Otañez) 2:18 2. El Ahualulco 2:17 3. El huateque (Lino Carrillo) 2:26 4. La morena (Lorenzo Barcelata) 2:11 5. Vuela, vuela palomita (Lorenzo Barcelata) 2:20 6. Veracruz (Andrés Huesca) 2:29

Discography 157

Los Costeños

Los Costeños, Lo mejor de Los Costeños (Orfeon Videovox LP 12-271), no date

PerforMers:

The cover photo shows Antonio Rosas Torres, Ricardo Díaz (“El Pollo”), José Ruvalcaba Sánchez, Mario Barradas, Osmany Blancarte Madrid, and Rodolfo Ruvalcaba Sánchez

side a

side B

1. Veracruz (Agustín Lara) 2:53 7. Flor de azalea (Manuel Esperón) 2. El cotompintero (Hermanos 3:17 Samperio) 3:02 8. Tú, solo tú (Felipe Valdés Leal) 3:42 3. El plebeyo (Felipe Pinglo) 4:17 9. Nube gris (Felipe Pinglo) 2:35 4. Yo ( José Alfredo Jiménez) 3:55 10. Compadécete mujer (Víctor Huesca) 5. La mal pagadora (Felipe Valdés Leal) 3:07 2:45 11. Pobre corazón (Chucho Monje) 3:15 6. Juan Charrasqueado (Víctor Cordero) 12. A orillas del Papaloapan (Víctor 4:36 Huesca) 2:25

158

Discography

Los Costeños, Arpas y guitarras de México (Orfeón LP-Lab2), no date

PerforMers:

Mario Barradas Murcia, harp Osmany Blancarte Madrid, guitar Lino Chávez Zamudio, requinto Ricardo Diaz Villatoro, guitar Víctor Gallegos, guitar Jacinto Gatica, harp Gilberto Romero López, guitar, requinto Antonio Rosas Torres, requinto José Ruvalcaba Sánchez, requinto Rodolfo Ruvalcaba Sánchez, guitar

side a

1. Las mañanitas (arr. Rómulo Morán) 3:00 2. El Ahualulco (arr. Ricardo Díaz) 3:30 3. Cucurrucucú paloma (Tomás Méndez) 4:37 4. La feria de las flores (Chucho Monge) 2:40 5. La bamba (arr. Ricardo Díaz) 3:25

side B

1. Guadalajara (Pepe Guízar) 3:13 2. Cielito lindo (Quirino Mendoza) 3:45 3. Aires revolucionarios (arr. Pedro Martínez) 4:35 4. México lindo (Chucho Monge) 4:04 5. Canción mixteca ( José López Alavés) 3:45

Discography 159

Conjunto Lindo Veracruz

Macario Cruz y Su Conjunto Lindo Veracruz, Alegría Jarocha (Malibú LPM1022), 1966

PerforMers:

Mario Barradas, jarocho harp Macario Cruz, requinto jarocho Pedro Venegas, jarana jarocha

side a 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

El querreque 2:59 La bruja 2:42 El palomo 2:32 El butaquito (M. M. Ponce) 3:12 El tilingolingo (Lino Carrillo) 1:35 El huateque (Lino Carrillo) 2:18

side B 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

El Ahualulco (Andrés Huesca) 3:11 La bamba 2:40 El colás 2:24 La vieja (Licho Jiménez) 2:23 La iguana 2:01 El toro abajeño 1:05

160

Discography

Macario Cruz y Su Conjunto Lindo Veracruz (Tono Fiel CTF72627), no date

PerforMers:

Mario Barradas Murcia, harp Macario Cruz Bejarano, requinto Jorge Márquez (“Malibrán”), jarana Pedro Hernández Herrera (“Perico Chay”), jarana

side a 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

La bamba 2:13 El coco 2:00 El huateque 3:06 El butaquito 3:24 Zapateado jarocho 2:33

side B 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

El Ahualulco 3:24 El tilingo lingo 2:51 El canelo 2:57 El colás 3:02 El palomo y la paloma 2:10

Discography 161

Various

Conjunto Jarocho Villa del Mar de Ángel Valencia, Canto a Veracruz (Tizoc TM1014), no date

side a 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Balajú 2:53 El Ahualulco 2:30 Canto a Veracruz 2:13 El tilingo lingo 2:10 El siquisirí 3:00 Zapateado 1:17

side B 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

La bamba 3:12 María Chuchena 2:06 El huateque 1:47 El cascabel 2:22 El colás 2:00 El pájaro cú 2:17

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Discography

Cuco Sánchez y Dueto América, La Cucaracha: Canciones de la revolución (Columbia DCA97), 1959

PerforMers:

Cuco Sánchez with Antonio Bribiesca on guitar and Mario Barradas on harp (A1, A3, A5, B1, B3, B5) Dueto América with David González on requinto and Mario Barradas on harp (A2, A4, B2, B4)

side a 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

La cucaracha 2:51 La cautela 3:04 La Adelita 2:57 El venadito 3:10 La Valentina 2:03

side B 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

La mancornadora 2:18 Una noche serena y obscura 3:06 La mujer ladina 3:05 La modesta 3:20 La chancla 2:30

Discography 163

Various, México y Venezuela cantan: Folklore (Discos América F-HF-0101), 1963

PerforMers:

Wilebaldo Amador, jarana, lead vocal Mario Barradas Murcia, harp, pregón (caller) Rolando Hernández, requinto jarocho, second (response) vocals

side a

3. La guacamaya 3:30 5. El coco 3:47

side B

6. El gavilancito 2:37

164

Discography

Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, Mariachis en Acapulco! (RCA Víctor MLK/S1955, LD), 1973–1974

PerforMers:

Mario Barradas, harp Jacinto Gatica, harp Antonio Rosas, jarana (probably)

side a

6. La bamba (arr. Luis Martínez Serrano) 2:10

About the Authors

It is Son Jarocho that ties the four book project collaborators together: Mario Barradas, Francisco González, Yolanda Broyles-González, and Rafael Figueroa Hernández. The shared deep academic and performance interest in Indigenous Mexican/Chican@/Latin@ musical performance perfectly complements the four of us across borders and geographies. We worked on the book manuscript in various places: Santa Barbara, California; Tucson, Arizona; Xalapa, Veracruz; and Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Our collaboration on this Barradas volume unites various domains of expertise that none of us alone could have put forth. Rather than provide the readership with a distancing third-person narrative regarding each collaborator, we decided to bring in each of our voices. Each of us narrates at the intersection of Son Jarocho, the individual trajectory, and the transborder amalgamation of four individuals into one book collaboration. As in the structure of Son Jarocho, each participant performs a narrational segment. Yolanda Broyles-González Son Jarocho has always been present in my life in varied ways, personally and professionally, along with various other forms of Indigenous Mexican and Chican@ music. I experienced Son Jarocho, without its dance and community components, firsthand as a child in 1950s Los Angeles’s legendary Million Dollar Theater; that theater showcased all major Mexican regional music genres in live performance, week after week. My East Los Angeles community and my parents were avid music fans, and we rarely missed a performance at the Million Dollar. That theater venue, along with Mexican radio, featured diverse Mexican iconic singers and regional music traditions, including norteño, 165

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About the Authors

tambora (banda), música de antaño, Son Jarocho, bolero, Son Jaliciense, and more. During the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, almost every film title was a song title. Son Jarocho masters not only performed in Los Angeles but also lived and died there, notably the master Son Jarocho harpist Andrés Huesca. Son Jarocho also permeated my East Los Angeles 1950s years in the form of the smash hit “La bamba,” a Son Jarocho classic turned rock and roll by Chican@ Ritchie Valens (Richard Steven Valenzuela). In our small East Los Angeles home, Mexican musical genres were beloved, and some reigned supreme. My mother, who grew up in Sinaloa, the homeland of the currently exploding banda genre, heavily favored that music, which at the time was called “tambora.” My father, born at the turn of the twentieth century in Sonora, greatly favored música de antaño, which has passed into dormancy. Later in life, as a teenage university student in the 1960s, I was awarded a scholarship to spend one year at the Freie Universitaet Berlin, an eccentric endeavor for a Yaqui Xicana. I recall selecting two recordings to take with me to Germany. They were LPs about a foot in diameter and very fragile, a highly impractical, bulky means of transporting music from one continent to another yet the only means before music became digitalized. One of those two LPs was a Son Jarocho album with Mario Barradas playing harp. My own performance passion was with conjunto music. After meeting Francisco González, who worked as musical director for El Teatro Campesino, we entered into a life and musical partnership in the early 1980s. He taught me how to play jarana, sister instrument to the arpa jarocha (Son Jarocho harp) while he learned to accompany my conjunto (tejano-norteño) buttonaccordion music with the bajo sexto. We performed in varied places across the United States: homes, clubs, schools, prisons, festivals, universities, and streets. Initially alternating between norteño music (accordion, bajo sexto) and Son Jarocho, the latter ultimately became the exclusive family focus, with both of our children embarking down the Son Jarocho road as well. When Mono Blanco came to California in 1989, one of the first Son Jarocho fandangos in the United States unfolded in our Broyles-González Santa Barbara home. Our son, Francisco González Jr., at ten years old played arpa (harp) for Maestro Mario Barradas when Barradas visited California in 1996. Our daughter, Esmeralda Broyles-González, received her first jarana on her fourth birthday from Grupo Mono Blanco. My academic life and research center on the ancestral oral tradition of Indigenous Mexican America, a body of knowledge that transcends national borders and encompasses the wisdom of many centuries on this land. This project organically connects to my other research pursuits such as my published oral

About the Authors

167

history with Lydia Mendoza, Lydia Mendoza’s Life in Music: Norteño Tejano Legacies (Oxford University Press). Although I have more recently published on cumbia (Selena and Celso Piña) and on Jenni Rivera, the honor of transmitting a musical elder’s oral history, in this case Mario Barradas’s, is matchless. Francisco González I am a child of two cultures, two languages, and two social-political systems, none of which cared to claim me and others with similar backgrounds and circumstances as full members. Thus I was forged and formed into a person with a new social reality and a new twentieth-century experiential category. I am a Chicano. I liken the skills I developed growing up in East Los Angeles, California, to having a toolbox filled with both metric and standard wrenches but missing several key sizes, making it hard to convey the historical, cultural, and technical elements of a musical binational, multiregional project such as this in all of its complexity. As challenging as my toolkit is, my particular skills placed me in the position to deeply question and learn. I carry more than fifty years of experience with Mexican music and countless hours of study with musicians who generously took the time to teach me. I approached Mario Barradas Murcia’s story with a unique point of view, that of a practicing musician and Mexican harpist. Without that background I could never have truly understood or appreciated the gift of music and history that Barradas left us. Music has defined my life. Throughout my childhood in East Los Angeles I played an instrument or sang, studied music in school, and played music in yards, garages, and parties. I am the youngest of seven children and grew up in a household where music was beloved. My father sang in large Mexican theaters in 1930s and 1940s Los Angeles, my mother sang in church, and my older brothers played guitar. I was exposed to many genres and cultures including Mexican regional styles such as Son Jarocho. The recordings featuring Mario Barradas fascinated me as a child. But by the time I reached high school I became aware that something had gone missing. Most of what I was playing belonged to some other place or people. I could not nor was I encouraged to express myself in my own Mexican musical language. And although I truly loved all music, my own artistic heritage was always displaced by the musical languages of other cultures. But what was my language? It was clear I did not know the answer. I had forgotten that language. I had never developed or studied it, and so it had faded deep into my memory like

168

About the Authors

any vaguely remembered childhood experience. Surrounded by a different culture and language, going to English-speaking schools that considered all things Mexican as inferior or at best an impediment, I had fallen into a state of denial in which I would hear Mexican music but not listen to it. This subtle form of self-hatred allowed me to choose not to comprehend and to dismiss outright any music deemed not suitable and to not identify with what I was hearing. I ultimately came to the shocking conclusion that when it came to Mexican music, the music I had heard since birth, the music that surrounded me on a daily basis, I had become a musical deaf-mute. I shared this malady with my friends, most of whom had been in the United States since birth or early childhood. It was during the Chicano movement that I began to truly listen to what I had not allowed myself to hear: Mexican music. This musical journey of discovery began in high school and continues unabated to this day. Even after all these years, the more I learn, the less I feel I know because there is so much more yet to learn. That musical journey motivated me to found Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles in the 1970s and later work as musical director with El Teatro Campesino. I also established Guadalupe Custom Strings because appropriate strings for our Mexican instruments were otherwise not available. Mario Barradas was consistently present in my musical cultural development, starting when I was a child. His musicianship was a highly influential childhood presence; later I studied his recordings in earnest. He ultimately became a friend and teacher who shared his oral history with me. With this life telling, which my collaborators and I have compiled and made into a book, I can try to begin to repay the debt of gratitude I owe to Mario Barradas Murcia and the countless musicians who took the time to teach and inspire a once-young “pocho” kid from East L.A. With this publication we hope to preserve a very important part of Son Jarocho history. Rafael Figueroa Hernández I was born into a family from Tlacotalpan, a family that like many others had to leave the Sotavento homeland in Veracruz in search of better opportunities. My father, Rafael Figueroa Alavés (known as Don Fallo), left behind the musical practice that he had started during childhood of performing Son Jarocho along with music from the Afro-Latin Caribbean. But he never ceased to belong to Tlacotalpan; as the old saying goes, “You can take the boy out of the country but cannot take the country out of the boy.” My parents left Tlacotalpan, but Tlacotalpan never left them. After our migration to Mexico City, music was one of the fundamental elements that helped us maintain con-

About the Authors

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nection with the faraway homeland. Our musical predilections at home were inclined toward “música tropical,” as we knew salsa then, but Son Jarocho remained present in recordings. Among several albums, the one that visited the turntables more often than the others was one of Conjunto Medellín. Now I know that the harpist of those recordings was Mario Barradas and that his way of executing Sones Jarochos became part of my conception and identification with the genre. This was true for many other Son Jarocho listeners. My musical training, as a performer and as a listener, was varied, but the two backbones were always the Afro-Cuban rumba and Son Jarocho traditions, although there were also strong doses of jazz, classical music, rock, and any kind of music that fell into my hands as a teenager in Mexico City of the 1970s. I studied trumpet at the then National School of Music of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM). At the same time I studied sociology in the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the same university. At the end of my sociology studies, my circumstances and my personal preferences made me decide on the social sciences, and I left musical performance as a profession, although I continued playing sporadically. Around the end of the 1970s I witnessed the beginnings of a movement of young musicians who tried to reclaim or rescue the traditional ways of performing Son Jarocho. This movement later became known as the movimiento jaranero (jarana players movement). It taught me, and with me a whole generation, to listen to another side of Son Jarocho, the one that had remained in the countryside and had not reached the recording studios. My generation turned enthusiastic in claiming to rescue traditional Son Jarocho. However, only a few of the enthusiasts understood that the so-called rescue did not have to mean demonizing what the generation of Mario Barradas had done in the city. The canon of the new rescue movement tended to regard the style created by Andrés Huesca, Lino Chavez, and others in Mexico City as a distorted deviation from the “authentic” Son Jarocho. I always understood that Son Jarocho was a musical stream far from its place of origin. Yet that tributary is part of the great river that is Son Jarocho. It is a tributary that separated from the rural mainstream and acquired very particular characteristics. The urban Son Jarocho developed as a different way of seeing and shaping the forms that had been created over centuries in Sotavento; the urban Son Jarocho had its clear differences with what was now called “traditional” Jarocho, but it also had many elements in common. My views concerning the old and the new Son Jarocho were corroborated on a trip to Los Angeles in 2006 to an encuentro de jaraneros (jaranero summit) there. That Chicano gathering was held in the historic Placita Olvera and included paying tribute to Mario Barradas. There I met the man behind the harp that I had heard all my life. That meeting might have remained a mere

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casual encounter if I hadn’t also met Francisco González. Francisco was representing Guadalupe Custom Strings at a table, selling custom-made strings for Jarocho instruments. He was also selling T-shirts with a photograph of Mario Barradas. I am not sure if it was at that moment that I first met Francisco González, but we soon began to establish a friendship. What I am sure of is that it was through Francisco González that I really met Mario Barradas, not merely Mario Barradas as a person but, much more important, the historical Mario Barradas. I found out that Francisco had collected a large series of oral history interviews with Maestro Barradas over the years. Francisco asked me for help in reviewing the transcriptions that several hands (and ears) had made of the recordings. I undertook the task, and soon I was immersed in a world that was unveiling before me as I edited the transcriptions. It was a world that began a little before the beginning of the twentieth century and that is practically unknown by the members of the jaranero movement. It is a world narrated in the stories that Mario Barradas lived. I took a virtual trip with Mario Barradas from his native Tierra Blanca to Mexico City, and I understood the development of this particular style of Son Jarocho and how it adapted to the music scene of Mexico City, creating a new style from the creative work of Andrés Huesca, Lino Chávez, and Mario Barradas, among other musicians. I have done research and published on Son Jarocho and other forms of Veracruz music for many years, such as in Son Jarocho: Guía histórico-musical (Conaculta, 2007). However, by interacting with Francisco González—and through him with Mario Barradas—I have acquired a much more complete overview of what Son Jarocho is and what it has been.

Index

Absaroke people, 89 accordions, 166 Acosta, Guillermo, 27 Actors and Performers Guild, 33 African heritage in Mexico, 58, 62, 89–95, 97, 103–104, 121n69, 122n87, 169 Agostí, Carlos, 137 agricultural practices, 56–57, 62–64, 117n8 agua de cachaza, 8 Aguilar, Antonio, 143 Aguilar, Eliderio, 33 Aguilar, Luis, 143 “Los aguinaldos,” 75 Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo, 89, 92, 95, 120n63, 121n68 Aguirre Tinoco, Humberto, 68 “El Ahualulco,” 26, 69, 107, 141–142, 145 Alcántara López, Álvaro, 103–104 Alcatraz Proclamation, 116n5 alcohol consumption, 15 Alcoriza, Janet, 138 Alcoriza, Luis, 138 Alegría Jarocha (record), 159 Alejandro, Julio, 137–138 Alemán, Miguel, 23–24, 28, 45, 107 Alfonso, Andrés, 47 Alonso, Ernesto, 137 “El alvaradeño,” 69–70 Alvarado (town), 16, 21, 23, 24 Amador, Gonzalo, 12, 19 Amador, Wilebaldo, 163 El amor a la vida (film), 132, 136–137

ancestral knowledge system, xiii, 83, 85, 109–110, 111 Andrés Huesca y Sus Costeños, 18 animal themes in Son Jarocho, 62–73, 84 antiphony, 46, 93, 95 “A orillas del Papaloapan,” 70 “Arbol de La Vida” (Tree of Life), 54 areitos, 91, 96 Arizmendi, Ehekatl, 74 Arizmendi Arias, Aurelio, 55 Armendáriz, Pedro, 142, 143 Armendáriz, Pedro, Jr., 144 Arpas y guitarras de México (record), 158 arpistas de sala, 14–15 arpistas de sones, 14–15 Los Arpisteros de la Sierra de Zongolica, 55, 59 Arpisteros de Pajapan, 60 Arturo Núñez Orchestra, 18 Austrian colonialism, 74 Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), 169 Azcárraga, Emilio, 29 Aztecs, 38n6 “Bailes de negros” (Aguirre Beltrán), 89–90 bailes de sala, 34, 35, 43, 50 bailes de sones, 38n13. See also fandangos bajo sexto, 166 baladas, 108 “El balajú,” 20, 140–141 Balcomb, Hannah Eliza Alexia, 115

171

172

Index

Baledon, Rafael, 138 Ballet Folklórico, 29–30, 37 “La bamba”: and authors’ backgrounds, 166; and Barradas’s early work in music, 20; Conjunto Tierra Blanca performances, 22; and El moño (the bow), 19, 39n19; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 132, 135, 138; and Mexico City music scene, 24; and porteño style of Son Jarocho, 34; and urban style of Son Jarocho, 45 banda, 166 La bandida (film), 132, 143 Barahona Londoño, Andrés, 104–105 Barcelata, Chico, 17, 22, 25, 32–33, 156 Barcelata, Indalecio, 16 Barcelata, Lorenzo, 6, 17, 34–35, 47, 142, 146n3 Barcelata, Manuel, 16 Barcelata, María Teresa, 142 Barcelata, Mocho, 16 Barcelata, Rafael, 17 Barcelata Chaparro, Galo, 18 Baroque guitar, 46 Barradas, Adolfina, 3, 50 Barradas, Andrea, 3 Barradas, Aquilino, 3 Barradas, Carlos, 3, 30 Barradas, Francisco, 3 Barradas, Fructuoso, 3 Barradas, José Gabriel, 3 Barradas, Pedro, 2 Barradas, Pilar, 3 Barradas, Plácido, 3, 50 Barradas, Roberto, 9 Barradas Díaz, Manuel: and ancestral knowledge systems, 85; and Barradas’s childhood, 18; and Barradas’s early work in music, 12–13, 16, 19; and Barradas’s family background, 1–6, 8–10; and Barradas’s music classes, 37; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 133, 143; and harp construction, 27, 31–32; and the jarana, 2; and Lino Carrillo, 21; and playing styles, 35, 43; and railroad work, 106; and rescate movement, 49 Barradas Díaz, Santiago, 2 Barradas González, Fabián, 50 Barradas González, Mario, Jr., 108–109

Barradas Murcia, Mario: contributions to cinema, 131–146; death of, 50–51; discography featuring, 149–164; early years in music, 12–19; education, 41–43, 49–50; family background, 1–5, 6–12, 16–18, 30, 31–32; legacy in Son Jarocho, xi; marriage, 30–31; Mexico City home, 42; military service, 32–33; move to city, xi–xii; music background, 6–8; playing style of, 41–43; railroad work, 5–6, 7–12, 19–20, 31, 33, 43–44, 56, 106; retirement of, 33; siblings, 3–4 Barradas Reali, Carlos, 50 Barrio Libre Yaqui ceremonial community, xiii Basques, 99 bass strings, 35–36 Batalla, Bonfil, 85, 99–100, 110–111 bebop, 111 Bejarano, Macario Cruz, 160 bird themes in Sones Jarocho, 62–70, 71– 73, 110, 123n98 Black migration to Mexico, 89–95 Black music, 108 blacksmithing, 4 Blancarte Madrid, Osmany, 157, 158 blues, 108 Boca del Río, 6, 18, 19 boleritos, 34, 38n10 boleros, 34, 38n10, 50, 109 Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo, 71 bordónes, 31, 40n41, 45 Bracho, Julio, 133–134, 137–138, 138–141 Bribiesca, Antonio, 162 Bricker, Victoria R., 100 Brill, Mark, 123n97 British colonialism, 74 Broyles-González, Esmeralda, 166 Broyles-González, Yolanda, xiii, 165–167 “La bruja,” 27 Bullock, Stanley, 114 buñuelos, 38n8 “El buscapiés,” 20 Busquets, Narciso, 143, 145 Bustillo Oro, Juan, 133 “El butaquito,” 137–138 cabarets, 20, 22 call and response, 93, 95, 139

Index 173

Calvo, Armando, 134 Calvo, Manolo, 135 “El camotal,” 62–63 Campos, Daniel, 16 Campos, Ruben M., 101 canciones, 50 La Candelaria (Candlemas), 5, 38n7, 60 Cañedo, Roberto, 145 “El canelo,” 28, 35 Cano, Nacho, 26 cantados, 37, 40n43, 45 Cantares mexicanos, 100 Canto a Veracruz (record), 161 “Canto a Veracruz,” 107 capitalism, 56 Carbó, José, 138–141 Cárdenas, Jesús, 142–143 cargo/mayordomía system, 58 Caro, Alicia, 137 Carreño, Mercedes, 144–145 “La carretilla,” 14 Carrillo, Daría, 21 Carrillo, Lino: Barradas hired by, 44; and Barradas’s early work in music, 20, 21; compositions by, 14; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 18, 134, 145–146; and rescate movement, 47; U.S. tours, 30 La Casa de la Música Mexicana, 36, 37, 41, 49–50, 107 “El cascabel,” 26, 36–37, 143, 146n3 Casino Veracruzano, 27, 28 Castro, Ponciano, 18 Catholicism, 38n7, 74–77, 101, 146n1 cattle ranching, 2, 4, 14–15, 21, 103–104, 121n69 El Cayuco, 80–81 Celis y Ricardo Garibay, José Luis, 142 censorship, 75, 83 Centro Cultural Nigan Tonogue, 114 Chacalapa, Veracruz, 58 Chagoya, Roberto “Bobby,” 113 Chalchiuhtlicue, 38n7, 60 chaneques, 58 Chaparro Barcelata, Galo, 133 “El Chato Guerra,” 135 Chávez, César, 110 Chávez, Lino: and Conjunto Medellín, 25– 26, 149; and Conjunto Tierra Blanca, 22–23, 44; and discography of Barra-

das’s work, 158; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 137, 141; and Lino Carrillo, 21; and Mexico City music scene, 23– 24, 170; and migrations of Son Jarocho, 108; and porteño style of Son Jarocho, 35; and rescate movement, 169; and Son Jarocho recordings, 27; and touring shows, 32. See also Conjunto Medellín Chepilla y Su Conjunto Cubano, 20 Chicano (Chican@) movement, xiii, 108, 110–111, 115, 168, 170 chinampa, 70 Chopin Hall, 29–30 chordal patterns, 37, 40n42 Christianity, 38nn6–7, 59, 118n18, 120n63. See also Catholicism Chuchumbé (group), 64–65 “El Chuchumbé” (song), 75, 76–77, 119n46 Churubusco Studios, 134 “El cielito lindo” (film), 138 cinema, xiii, 131–146, 166 Cinteopiltzin, 72 Circle of Life, 54, 64, 73, 85 civil rights movement, 110. See also Chicano (Chican@) movement class divisions, 106 classical guitar, 46 La cobarde (film), 132, 137–138 “El coco,” 29, 37 “El coconito,” 62 Los Cojolites, 77–79, 114 “El colás,” 29, 84, 136, 145 Colombia, 108 colonization and colonialism: and African migrations to the Americas, 121n69; colonial race terminologies, 88–89, 96; and cultural context of Son Jarocho, 53; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 133; and Indigenous knowledge systems, 56–57, 97–100; and Indigenous lifecycle celebrations, 60–62; and Indigenous politics in Son Jarocho, 74–76, 78; and Mexico City culture, 106; and roots of Son Jarocho, 88–89, 91–93, 149 commercialization of Son Jarocho, xii, xiii, 107–108, 114 La Coneja (railroad worker), 12 “El conejo,” 62

174

Index

conjunto (term), 39n17, 95 Conjunto Alma Grande, 113 Conjunto Hueyapan, 113 Conjunto Jarocho Villa del Mar de Ángel Valencia, 161 Conjunto Lindo Veracruz, 32, 159, 160 Conjunto Medellín: and authors’ backgrounds, 169; and Barradas’s influence and legacy, xii, 42; and discography of Barradas’s work, 149, 153, 154, 155; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 137, 144; hybrid style of, 44; and intermixing of musicians, 32; and Mexico City music scene, 28; and music themes from natural world, 70; origins and early members, 17, 25–26, 149, 151; and porteño style of Son Jarocho, 34 Conjunto Papaloapan, 113 Conjunto Tierra Blanca: and Alemán’s support, 24; and Andrés Huesca, 25; and Barradas’s early work in music, 20; and Barradas’s influence and legacy, xii; and discography of Barradas’s work, 149, 156; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 135–137, 143; and intermixing of musicians, 32–33; and Mexico City music scene, 28; and migrations of Son Jarocho, 107; origin and members of, 21–23; and porteño style of Son Jarocho, 34; repertoire of, 44 Conjunto Tlacotalpan, 19, 44 Contreras Torres, Miguel, 136–137 “Las coplas indígenas de México” (Bricker and Edmonson), 100 Córdoba Uscanga, Tachín, 18 Corn Divinity, 72 corridas, 34, 39n34 corridos, 109, 110, 142 corruption, 80–81 Cortés, Hernán, 57, 121n69 Cosamaloapan, 16 Los Costeños, 24, 25, 32, 34–35, 157, 158 costume styles, 43 counter-singing, 35 cross-rhythms, 93 Cruz, Amadeo, 117n6 Cruz, Andrés, 141 Cruz, Julián, 114 Cruz, Macario, 159

“¿Cuál Juan?,” 144 Cuate, Beto, 33 Los cuatro Juanes (film), 132, 143–144 Cuba, 18 La Cucaracha (film), 142 “La cucaracha” (song), 142 La Cucaracha: Canciones de la revolución (record), 162 Cuco Sánchez y Dueto América, 162 cultural roots of Son Jarocho, 88–100 cumbias, 108 “El Cupido,” 37 “El curripití,” 62 customs of Son Jarocho music, 42–43 dancing and dances: and arpistas de sones, 14; and Barradas’s early work in music, 20; and Barradas’s family background, 1; colonial repression of folk dance, 75; and Conjunto Tierra Blanca, 26; and cultural roots of Son Jarocho, 95; at fandangos, 12; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 131–132, 135–136, 138, 141, 144–146; and Indigenous knowledge systems, 58; jaguar dances, 58; and origins of fandango, 58; and Spanish Inquisition, 89–90; Trío Alvaradeño, 26; and variety shows, 22; and zapateado, 22, 58, 93–94, 107. See also fandangos danzón, 50 Davison, Oscar Herman “Tito,” 141–142 death rituals, 118n18 De Certeau, Michel, 101–102 décimas, 80, 83 declamadores (oral poets), 83 decolonization, 74, 110–113. See also colonization and colonialism La Defensa (Mexican army), 32–33 deforestation, 117n7 de guitarra tuning, 45–46 Delgado Calderón, Alfredo, 58, 71, 118n18 Del Río, Dolores, 142 Del Valle, Lilia, 143 demographics, 92. See also cultural roots of Son Jarocho Díaz, Jesús Torres, 27 Díaz, Porfirio, 61, 146n1 Díaz, Ricardo, 157 Díaz Morales, José, 142–143

Index 175

Diaz Villatoro, Ricardo, 158 La dicha de los pobres (film), 136 Dilián, Irasema, 137 Dine’e people, 89 disappearances, 77–78 discography featuring Son Jarocho and Mario Barradas, xiii, 149–164 diseases and epidemics, 91 Domínguez, Juan, 16 Don Tañón (harp maker), 3 “Dos hombres bragados,” 143 Los Dos Reales, 32 Duarte de Ochoa, Javier, 81 Dueto América, 162 Dueto Hermanas Huesca, 150, 151 Durán, Isabel, 1 Durán, Luisa Murcia, 1 East Los Angeles, xiii, 42, 108–110, 111, 112–113, 165–167 Edmonson, Munro, 100 eight-string jarana, 45–46, 77 El Ejidal, 16 elections, 44. See also political patronage electric guitar, xii El Santuario, 2–3, 5 El Tajín, 144 El Yale, 17, 39n16 Encuentro de Jaraneros ( Jarana Players Gathering), 60, 170 English, 100, 102 En los tiempos de Gómez (film), 136 entertainment industry, 45. See also film and cinema; radio environmental damage and protection, 64, 74, 110, 114, 116n1, 117n7 La época de oro sin nostalgia (Peralta), 146n2 erotic themes in Son Jarocho, 69, 75–76 Esperón, Manuel, 141 “Estampa jarocha,” 28, 35, 39n36, 107 European colonization, 53, 56. See also colonization and colonialism family dynasties in Son Jarocho, 16–18 Fandango at the Wall, 116 Fandango: El ritual del mundo jarocho a través de los siglos (García de León and Rumazo), 95, 122n85 “Fandango jarocho,” 107 fandangos: and arpista de sones, 14; and

authors’ backgrounds, 166; and Barradas’s influence and legacy, xiii; and cultural context of Son Jarocho, xi; as democratic institution, 61–62; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 131; and Indigenous ceremonial practices, 57– 62; other terms for, 38n13; and playing styles, 35, 37; and rescate movement, xii, 47, 48–49, 113–115; song for initiating, 37, 39n21, 58; and Son Jarocho family dynasties, 16; and urban Son Jarocho, 45 “El fandanguito,” 20, 134 Félix, María, 20, 134, 142, 143 Fernández, Emilio, 142, 143, 145–146 Fernández, Esther, 29 Fernández, Jaime, 144 Fernández, Ramón, 133 Ferrara, Juan, 144 Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico (Mexican National Railroad), 105. See also railroads Fierro, Nacho, 141 fiestas, xi, 144–145. See also fandangos Figueroa, Julián Cruz, 22 Figueroa Alavés, Rafael, 56, 168 Figueroa Hernández, Rafael, xiii, 41, 115, 168–170 film and cinema, xiii, 131–146, 166 Filovilarao, Filo, 19 flamenco, 132 flooding, 21, 136 Flor de sangre (film), 29, 136 floreo de tarima (flowering of the tarima), 59 Flores, Juan, 109–110 Flores, Vidal, 11 Folies Bergère, 135 folklore, 4 Folklórico, Ballet, 32 Forbes, Jack, 98–99 foundry work, 12 Freedom School, 115 Freie Universitaet Berlin, 166 French colonialism, 74 Gallegos, Juana, 3 Gallegos, Víctor, 158 “Gallo,” 62 García, Lourdes, 26

176

Index

García, Vicente, 5–6 García de León, Antonio, 95–97, 122nn85–87 García Riera, Emilio, 146n2 García Rosas, José de Lourdes, 156 García Travesí, Rafael, 143 Garibay, Ricardo, 142, 145–146 Garrido, Juan S., 108 Gatica, Jacinto, 28, 35, 149, 158, 164 “El gavilancito,” 62, 68–69, 119n32, 139, 141 genocide, 53 geographic subjects of Sones Jarocho, 69–70 German cultural influences, 95 Gerst, Art “Arturo,” 113 Gitana tenías que ser (film), 132, 138 Gómez Landero, Humberto, 133 Gómez Maqueo, Roberto, 30 Gómez Urquiza, Zacarías, 136 González, Alejandro, 145 González, Anita, 93 González, Bernadino, 23 González, David, 162 González, Francisco, xii–xiii, 93, 98, 109– 111, 166, 170 González, Francisco, Jr., 166 González, Kamál, 58–59, 81, 82 Graciana, La Negra, 55 El Gran Combo, 110 Greece, 99 Grupo Los Arizmendi, 55, 57 Grupo Mono Blanco, 46–47, 68, 70, 77, 98, 114, 166 “La guacamaya,” 27, 62, 64–67, 68, 107 Guadalupe Custom Strings, 42, 46, 168, 170 “La guanábana,” 75 guitar, 11, 21, 22, 26, 33 guitarras de sones, 38n1 guitarróns, 36, 40n38 Gutiérrez, Gary “Goyo,” 113 Gutiérrez, Gilberto, 98 Gutiérrez Zamora, José, 135–136 gut strings, 2, 13, 85 Gwich’in people, 89 hacienda system, 104, 133, 146n1 “The Hardest Thing for a Mexican to Say Is ‘Soy Indio’” (Rodríguez), 98 Harding, Tim, 113

harps: and Andrés Huesca, 24–25; and Barradas’s early years in music, 12–13, 14–15, 18–19; and Barradas’s family background, 2–3, 5–8, 10–11, 16–18, 30–32; and Barrradas’s playing style, 35; and Conjunto Medellín, 26, 27–28; and Conjunto Tierra Blanca, 22; construction of, 27, 31–32; gut strings for, 2, 13, 85; harp-playing centers, 14, 16, 44; and key Son Jarocho instruments, 33, 58; and migrations of Son Jarocho, 106; mirrors on, 31, 39n31; and musical styles, 35–36, 37–38; and music in Mexico City, 19–21, 33–35; and playing styles, 37; and rescate movement, 49; and Son Jarocho recordings, 27–28; Sotavento style of playing, 45; Spanish origins of, 101; treble and bass strings, 40n41 Havasupai people, 89 healers, 3–4 hemiola, 93, 95 Los Hermanos Huesca, 21 Hernández, Alexandro Davis, 115 Hernández, Álvaro, 21–22 Hernández, Amalia, 29, 30, 32, 37 Hernández, Jake, 114 Hernández, Pedro, 22, 160 Hernández, Teodoro, 156 Hernández Ruiz, Eduardo, 25 Hidalgo, Arcadio, 56, 61, 80, 113 Hidalgo, Patricio, 60–61 Hijos del Chuchumbé, 78 hojuelas, 38n8 Holland, Sharon P., 95 Holy Inquisition, 75–77, 89–90, 96, 119n46 Holy Week, 18 Homshuk, 72 Hotel María Isabel, 32 Hotel Uruguay, 23, 28 Hualapai people, 89 huapangear, 39n35 Huapango (film), xiii, 18, 133 huapangos, 34–35, 141 “El huateque,” 21, 107 Huerta, Dolores, 110 Huesca, Andrés: and authors’ backgrounds, 166, 170; and Barradas’s early work in music, 18; Barradas’s introduction to,

Index 177

24–25; death, 25, 32; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 135; and Indigenous knowledge systems, 55; and migrations of Son Jarocho, 108; and porteño style of Son Jarocho, 34–35; and radio broadcasts, 17; and rescate movement, 169; and urban style of Son Jarocho, 45 Huesca, Gloria, 151 Huesca, Juan, 18 Huesca, Luz María, 151 Huesca, Víctor, 26, 47 Huesca Sisters, 26–27, 29 Huidobro, José Alejandro, 61 human-animal kinship themes, 62–73 hybrid music styles, 44 “La iguana,” 62, 67 improvisation: and cultural roots of Son Jarocho, 94–95, 111; and geographic identities of Son Jarocho, 112; and Indigenous politics in Son Jarocho, 74, 78–79, 82–83; as key feature of Son Jarocho, xi; and oral tradition, 83–84, 84–85; and radio programs, 29; and rescate movement, 47–48; and Son Jarocho recordings, 107; and urban style of Son Jarocho, 44–45, 46 Indian republics (repúblicas de indios), 91 Indians of All Tribes, 116n5 Indian Territory, 95 Indigenous cultures: and Barradas’s influence and legacy, 111; ceremonial practices, 57–62; and cultural appropriations, 101; and cultural context of Son Jarocho, 53; Indigeneity concept, 54; Indigenous knowledge systems, xiii, 54–57, 85, 100–105, 111; Indigenous politics in Son Jarocho, 74–83; indomestizos, 121n72; languages of Veracruz, 57; and Las Posadas, 38n6; and memory arts, 83–88; and mestizaje ideologies, 98, 118n18; and music themes from natural world, 62–73; and nature-culture nexus, 54–55, 61, 85–88; and origins of fandango, 57–62; poetic patterns, 64; and roots of Son Jarocho, 88–100; UN definition of, 116n1 “La Indita,” 70–71 Infante, Pedro, 138, 142 Inquisition, 75–77, 89–90, 96, 119n46

instrumental improvisation. See improvisation intercultural relations, 88–100 Ireland, 99 jaguar dances, 58 “La jaibera,” 6 Jalisco, 40n38 jam sessions, 41 “El jarabe Gatuno,” 75 “El jarabe loco,” 83–85 Jarana de concha (shell jarana), 39n19 jaranas: and authors’ backgrounds, 166, 169–170; and bar gigs, 23; and Barradas’s family background, 2; and Conjunto Medellín, 26; and Conjunto Tierra Blanca, 22; Encuentro de Jaraneros ( Jarana Players Gathering), 60, 170; evolution and tuning styles, 45–46; and family dynasties in Son Jarocho, 16, 17; family of instruments, 38n4; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 18; jarana de concha, 19; jarana segunda, 33; and key Son Jarocho instruments, 33, 58; and La Rama, 5; and playing styles, 37; and porteño style of Son Jarocho, 34; and rescate movement, xii; and social dances, 12–13; and sones viejos, 17; and Son Jarocho in Tierra Blanca, 16; and Son Jarocho playing styles, 7; and Spanish Inquisition, 77; and Vergara’s music background, 19 Jaraner@ movement, 115 “El jarocho,” 21, 111–112 Jarocho/Jarocha people, xi “Jarocho soy señores,” 141 jazz, 93, 94, 108, 111 Jesús Carranza (town), 9–10, 11 Jiménez, Bernardo, 18, 19 Jiménez, José Alfredo, 143 Jiménez, Licho, 32 jokes and joke cycles, 67–68 El Jorongo, 32 Juachín, 1 “Los juiles,” 62, 63–64 Kohl, Randall, 121n70 labor activism, 110 Lagunes, Benjamín, 23–24

178

Index

land-based knowledge systems, 56 Lanzetta, Rafael, 135–136 La Palmilla, 18 Lara, Agustín, 19, 106 Lara de Gavilán, Antonio, 134–135 Lenape people, 89 life-cycle events, 57–62, 88. See also fandangos Lightning (deity), 72 Lírico Theater, 18–19, 137 Llévame en tus brazos (film), 131, 138–141 Lobato, Othón León, 24 Las Lomas de Jazmín, 16 “La longaniza,” 21 long-play (LP) records, 150. See also specific recording titles López Mateos, Adolfo, 30 López Moctezuma, Carlos, 139 Los Angeles, California, 108, 109, 115. See also East Los Angeles Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles, 108, 111–113, 168 Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles (film), 42, 109, 111 Los Vega, 59, 85–86 love themes in Sones Jarocho, 63–64, 69, 70–71 Loza, Steve, 110 lunar phases, 63, 85 lyrics of Sones Jarocho, 62–73 Macario Cruz y Su Conjunto Lindo Veracruz (record), 159–160 machine tuners, 34, 46 Maciel, Antonio, 143 Magdaleno, Mauricio, 133–134 Maiuri, Arduino, 137–138 malaria, 17 “mal gobierno” songs, 79 “El manicero,” 12 Manolín y Shilinsky, 132 El mar de los deseos (García de León), 122n87 mariachi, 40n38, 108, 138, 144 Mariachis en Acapulco! (record), 164 Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, 164 “María Chuchena,” 21 marimba, 11 marimbol, 16, 39n14 Márquez, Jorge, 160

Márquez Vásquez, Enrique (“El Indio Verde”), 27, 137, 141 mass emigration, 56 mass media, xii, 47. See also film and cinema; radio Mata, Antonio, 19 Matías Romero (town), 5, 9, 10, 18 Mayans, 38n6, 68 Medellín, 6, 14. See also Conjunto Medellín media technologies, 105 Lo mejor de Los Costeños (record), 157 Meléndez Nuñez, Elías, 55 Méndez, Reymundo, 28 Mendoza, Amalia, 39n32 Mendoza, Juan “El Tariácuri,” 32, 39n32 Mendoza, Quirino, 138 Mendoza, Víctor Manuel, 21, 135–136 La Merced, 23, 39n23 Mesoamerican tradition, 68, 71, 118n18. See also Indigenous cultures mestizo identity: and cultural roots of Son Jarocho, 88, 92, 96, 97–99; and Indigenous knowledge systems, 103–105; “indomestizo” identity, 121n72; mestizaje ideologies, 98, 118n18; as tool against Indigenous identity, 118n18 metal fabrication, 8, 12 Mexica culture, 110 Mexican Petroleum Company, 29 Mexican Revolution: and Barradas’s family background, 3–4; and cultural context of Son Jarocho, 53, 98; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 142–144; impact on regional music styles, 43–44; and land reforms, 146n1; loss of Barradas’s family farm, 56; and migrations of Son Jarocho, 109; and oral tradition in Son Jarocho, 83; and treatment of Indigenous people, 61, 106 Mexican War of Independence, 75 ¡México, alta fidelidad! (record), 149, 152 Mexico City: and authors’ backgrounds, 169, 170; and Barradas’s early work in music, 18–19, 19–21, 23–24; Barradas’s home in, 42; instruments and playing styles of, 22; and migrations of Son Jarocho, 105–116; music scene in, 28–31, 33–35, 39n33, 43–46, 170; and porteño style of Son Jarocho, 33–35; and rescate

Index 179

movement, 47, 169. See also urbanization of Son Jarocho México Norte (film), 131, 132, 145–146 México y Venezuela cantan: Folklore (record), 163 Michoacán, 28 migrations of Son Jarocho, xiii, 105–116 Mi jarana es mi fusil (Son del Centro), 116 Miles, Tiya, 95 Miller, Paco, 18 Million Dollar Theater, 30, 39n30, 165 Ministry of the Navy, 30 minor keys, 14 mirrors on harps, 31, 39n31 Mixe-Zoquean family of languages, 57, 116n5 El moño (the bow), 39n19 monophonics, 94 Montané, Lalo, 18 Montero, Nicolás, 76, 119n46 Montesco, Ofelia, 144 Morales Reyes, Cirilo, 77, 119n47 Morán, Patricia, 134–135 Moré, Beny, 18 “La morena,” 36–37, 140–141 Moreno, Beto, 33 movimiento jaranero (jarana players movement), 169 La mujer de todos (film), 20, 131, 133–134 mulattos, 96, 103, 104 mule jaws, 58 Murcia, Carmen, 30 Murcia, Juan, 1 música de antaño, 166 Música de siempre (film), 141 musical styles, 35–36, 36–38 música moderna, 108 música tropical, 108 nahualismo, 68, 84 Nahua people, 55, 57 Nahuatl culture, 93, 100 National Actors Association (ANDA), 20, 25, 26 Native American peoples, 53, 88–100. See also Indigenous cultures nature themes in Son Jarocho, 54–55, 61, 62–69, 85–88, 100–105 Navarro, Carlos, 137 Ndee people, 89

“El Negro,” 32 El Negro Tian, 16 neocolonial ideology, 106. See also colonization and colonialism New Buds Energy, 72 No hay cruces en el mar (film), 131, 144–145 nonteleche, 90 norteño music, 95, 110, 165–167 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 56, 117n8 Nosotros los rateros (film), 132, 134–135 nsála (life force), 93 Nueva Trova, 110 Nuevo Laredo, 30 Oaxaca, xi, 6, 55 octave technique, 40n37 ojo de gringa, 15 oral tradition, 83–88 Orantes, Marina, 135–136 Order of Mercy, 76 origins of Son Jarocho music, xi–xii origin stories in Sones Jarocho, 71 Otáñez, Ricardo, 35 Otatitlán, 1 Our Lady of Guadalupe, 20 “El pájaro carpintero,” 35, 37, 62, 68, 71–73 “El pájaro cú,” 20, 37, 62, 109–110, 137, 151 “El pájaro viejo,” 68 Palace of Fine Arts, 29, 30 Palacios, Agustín, 98 Palacios, Manuel, 135 “El palomo,” 67, 68 “El palomo y la paloma,” 144, 146 “Los panaderos,” 75 “El pan de manteca,” 75 panela production, 8–9 pangas, 24 Panteón Jardín, 25 Papaloapan River, 24, 70, 133–134, 136, 138 “los parabienes,” 29 paraguayadas, 36, 40n39 Paraguayan music, 36 Paraíso, Raquel, 59 pardos, 103 Parroquín, Rutilo, 5, 22, 138 Pascoe, Juan, 114

180

Index

Pasión jarocha (film), 21, 131, 135–136 Paso del Toro, 6, 16 Patiño Gómez, Alfonso, 141–142 patoles, 90 patriarchal society, 83 Peerless label, 26 Peña, Juan, 20 Peralta, Elda, 146n2 Pérez, Fernando, 24, 27, 149 Pérez, Juan, 114 Pérez Fernández, Rolando Antonio, 92–93, 95, 121n72 Pérez Montfort, Ricardo, 80, 97, 102 Pérez Prieto, Fernando, 137 Perry Guillén, Ricardo, 114 personal styles, 35–36 picardia, 67 “El pijul,” 27, 107 Pinal, Silvia, 33 “El Pirulí,” 141 pláticas y sones, xiii Playa Vicente, 7, 16 Plaza de Armas, 43 plucking methods, 45 La población negra en México: Estudio etnohistórico (Aguirre Beltrán), 89 “Las poblanas,” 68, 74, 77–78, 118n27 political patronage, 45, 107 political themes in Sones Jarocho, 73, 74–83 polkas, 50 polyrhythms, 93, 94–95 Popoluca people, 56–57, 58, 72, 100, 116n5, 119n47 popular culture, xii, 48. See also rescate (rescue) movement popularity of Son Jarocho music, xii por cuatro tuning, 34, 45–46 porteño style of Son Jarocho, 33–35, 39n33, 42, 46–49 Por ti aprendí a querer (film), 131, 142–143 “Por ti aprendí a querer” (song), 143 Port of Veracruz, 18, 36, 74 Posadas, Artemio, 98 Las Posadas, 5, 38n6 pregonero, 46 Prieto, Antonio Rosas, 25 primitivism, 74 print cultures, 83

Pueblerina (film), 145–146 pulque, 25 pulso, 37, 40n44 Qué lindo es Veracruz! (record), 28, 149, 155 Lo que se perdió (record), 50 Quevedo, Agapito, 6 quijadas, 58 Quiróz, Ángel, 141 racism and racial conflict, xiii, 58, 80–81, 88–89, 96, 121n68. See also colonization and colonialism; Indigenous cultures; slavery radio: and Barradas’s early work in music, 18; and Barradas’s eduction, 8; and Barradas’s influence and legacy, xii, 41; broadcasting from Mexico City, 28–30 (see also specific radio stations); and cultural context of Son Jarocho, 53; influence of Mexican radio on authors, 165–166; and Mexico City music scene, 28–29; and migrations of Son Jarocho, 105; and Son Jarocho family dynasties, 17; and Son Jarocho recordings, 28, 107–108 railroads: and Barradas’s family background, 1–2, 4–10, 106; Barradas’s work with, 9–12, 19–20, 31, 33, 43–44, 56, 105–106; Railroad Workers Union, 9, 10, 43–44; Veracruz to the Isthmus (VCI) route, 6–7, 11, 38n9, 43, 105–106 Railroad Workers Union, 9, 10, 43–44 La Rama, 4–5, 38n5, 62 Ramírez, Benjamín, 6, 8, 9 Ramos, Aurelio, 3 rancheras, 29, 34, 39n20, 50, 132, 143–144 El Rancho del Charro, 24 Rangel, Luis, 26 Rangel, Sebastián, 26, 35 rape, 83, 145–146 raza cósmica ideology, 98 RCA Victor, 27, 39n27 recording industry: Barradas’s contributions, 42, 50, 149–164; Barradas’s early work in music, 20; Barradas’s influence and legacy, xii; and Conjunto Medellín, 26–28; and popularization of Son Ja-

Index

rocho, 43; and porteño style of Son Jarocho, 35; and scope of study, xiii. See also specific recording titles Red Power movement, 116n5 regional cultures, 106, 144 relational life knowledge systems, 54 religious observances: and Barradas’s early work in music, 18, 20; La Candelaria (Candlemas), 5, 38n7, 60; and Indigenous life-cycle celebrations, 58–59; La Rama, 4–5, 38n5; Las Posadas, 5, 38n6; and origins of fandango, 58 Renaissance guitar, 46 repúblicas de indios (Indian republics), 91 requintos: and Conjunto Medellín, 26; and Conjunto Tierra Blanca, 22; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 18; and key Son Jarocho instruments, 33, 58; and La Rama, 4–5; requinto jarocho, 38n1; and rescate movement, 49; and sones viejos, 17; and Son Jarocho family dynasties, 17; and Son Jarocho playing styles, 7; towns known for, 2–3, 16, 44 rescate (rescue) movement, xii, xiii, 42, 46–49, 113–114, 169 Reyes Spíndola, Patricia, 145 rhythmic elements of Son Jarocho, 93 Rincón Viejo neighborhood, 5 Rivera, José Julián, 84 rivers featured in Sones Jarocho, 70 rock and roll, 108, 166 Rodríguez, Ismael, 142 Rodríguez, Richard, 98 Rodríguez, Roberto, 143 Roman Catholic Church. See Catholicism Romero, Matías, 7, 18 Romero López, Gilberto, 158 La Rondalla Mexicana de Tata Nacho, 34–35, 108 Rosales, Juan, 15, 17 Rosas, Antonio, 164 Rosas, Raúl, 33 Rosas, Toño (“El Gordito”), 32 Rosas Santos brothers, 141 Rosas Torres, Antonio, 157, 158 Ruiz, Federico, 141 Ruiz Cortines, Adolfo, 30 Rumazo, Liza, 95, 96–97 rumba, 169

181

Ruvalcaba Sánchez, José, 157, 158 Ruvalcaba Sánchez, Rodolfo, 157, 158 sacar la rama, 4–5, 38n5, 62 Salazar, Rafael, 122n87 Salinas y Rocha Company, 25 salsa, 169 Salvador, Jaime, 134–135 San Andrés, 39n24 Sánchez, Cuco, 142, 162 Sánchez-Tello, George, 115 San Francisco Independent, 98 San Juan Bautista procession, 58 Santana, 110 segregation, 96 “Señor Presidente,” 78–79, 115 Sevilla, Ninón, 138–139 sexual humor and satire, 67, 75 sexual violence, 74, 83, 145–146 Shilinsky, Estanislao, 135 El Siete Mares, 33 Siglo de Oro (Golden Age), 102 Silvestre, Armando, 138–139 “El siquisirí”: and Andrés Huesca’s funeral, 25; and Barradas’s early work in music, 20; and Barradas’s music classes, 37; Conjunto Tierra Blanca performances, 22; and Indigenous life-cycle celebrations, 58–59; and porteño style of Son Jarocho, 34; and radio broadcasts, 29; role initiating fandangos, 37, 39n21, 58; and themes from natural world, 68 slavery: and African migrations to the Americas, 121n69; and Andalusia, 122n87; and cultural roots of Son Jarocho, 90–92, 94, 95, 97; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 133; and hacienda system, 146n1; and Indigenous knowledge systems, 56–57, 102–103; and Port of Veracruz, 74; and treatment of Indigenous people, 61; and Yanga, 16, 38n12 social justice themes, 77, 80–82, 110 Soler, Fernando, 137, 144 Soler, Julián, 144–145 Solís, Javier, 143 “Solo Veracruz es bello,” 20 Son del Centro, 116 Son de Madera, 63–64, 68, 74–75, 114, 118n27

182

Index

Soneros del Tesechoacán (video), 54–55 sones de a montón, 36, 75–76 Sones de la tierra (Aguirre Tinoco), 68 sones de la tierra (earth songs), 100–105 Sones Jarochos (record), 152 Son Guerrerense, 93 Son Huasteco, 28, 39n29, 39n35, 93 Son Jaliciense, 93 Son Jarocho: afroandaluz and afromestizo influences, 62, 92, 97, 103–104, 122n87; and Barradas’s early years in music, 14, 41–43; and Barradas’s teaching, 49–50; family dynasites of, 16–18; and Indigenous identity, 54–57, 74–83, 83–88, 116n1, 116n5; and Indigenous knowledge systems, 100–105; length of sones, 1, 14, 45, 82; and life-cycle celebrations, 57–62 (see also fandangos); and Mexico City music scene, 28–30, 33–35, 39n33, 43–46; and music themes from natural world, 61, 62–73; and nature-culture nexus, 54–55; origins and cultural influences, 88–100, 118n18; Paraguayan elements, 36, 40n39; and personal playing styles, 35–38; and political patronage, 24; porteño style, 33–35, 39n33, 42, 46–49; recordings featuring Barradas, 42, 50, 149–164; and rescate movement, xii, xiii, 42, 46–49, 113–114, 169; and rhythmic patterns, 35, 39n35, 58, 81, 83, 92–95; spread and popularization of, 7, 38n9, 43–46, 105–116; and themes from natural world, 85–88, traditional forms of, xii; transnational character of, xii, 48. See also specific artists and instruments “El son jarocho como expresión musical afromestiza” (Pérez Hernández), 92–93 Son Jarocho: Guía histórico-musical (Figueroa Hernández), 170 Son Viejo, 17, 38n3, 42, 47 Sosa, Nicolás, 22, 114 Sotavento region: and costumes of musicians, 43; and cultural context of Son Jarocho, xi–xii; and Figueroa Hernández’s background, xiii; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 135–136; and Indigenous knowledge systems, 55; and Indigenous life-cycle celebrations, 59; and Indigenous politics in Son Jarocho,

74, 77; and popularization of Son Jarocho, 43–46; and urban style of Son Jarocho, 45 Spanish language and culture: and cultural roots of Son Jarocho, 88–100; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 132; and Indigenous knowledge systems, 57, 100–102; and life-cycle celebrations, 57–58, 60; and sones de la tierra, 104–105; Spanish colonialism, 74; Spanish Inquisition, 75–77, 89–90, 96, 119n46 Spota, Luis, 136, 146n2 stereotypes, 102 Stiegler, Morgen, 94 Stigberg, David Kenneth, 108, 123n108 stipends for musicians, 33 storytelling tradition, 84 stringmaking, 42, 85, 168, 170 strumming techniques, 39n35 sugarloaf processing, 8–9 supernatural themes, 71–73, 104 syncopation, 93, 94, 95 syncreticsm, 60, 93–94 Tabasco, xi, 55 La Taberna, 33 Tacubaya, 30 talonear, 23 tambora, 166 tambourines, 58 tangueo (melodic pattern), 22, 36, 39n22 Tariácuri (term), 39n32 tarima, 5, 14, 38n2, 48–49, 58 El Teatro Campesino, 166, 168 El Teatro Variedades, 18 technological advances, xi, xii, 53, 105, 108 television, 20 El Templo de Diana, 25 tempo, 36–37 “la tercera raíz” (third root), 89. See also African heritage in Mexico Tex-Mex music, 95 Tierra Blanca: and authors’ backgrounds, 170; and Barradas’s childhood, 7–11; and cultural context of Son Jarocho, 53; and harp manufacturing, 6; and harp players, 14; and playing styles, 37; and railroads, 4, 6–7, 9–11, 16–17, 19–20, 43–44, 105–106; social dances, 12–13; and Son Jarocho family dynasties, 16–

Index

18; and Son Jarocho playing styles, 36. See also Conjunto Tierra Blanca Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, 1 Los Tigres de la Costa, 35 “El tilingo lingo,” 21, 84 “La tirana,” 75 Tlacojalpan, 1, 4–5 Tlacotalpan, 16, 21, 60, 168–169 Tlalixcoyan, 13 Tlaloc, 38n7, 60 Tohono O’odham people, 89 Toña la Negra (Antonia del Carmen Peregrino Álvarez), 30, 141–142 tonalli (life force), 93 tonic chords, 40n42 “El toro,” 75 “El toro abajeño,” 20 “El toro Zacamandú,” 84 Torrealba, Ernesto, 9–11, 18–19 Torres, Irma, 135–136 Torres Díaz, Jesús, 149, 156 translation process, xiii tren de hacer panela, 8 tribal affiliations, 89 trickster expressions, 94 trineos, 36–37, 40n41, 40n43, 45 Trío Alvaradeño, 26 El Trío Calaveras, 32 Trio los Gavilanes, 32 Trío Los Panchos, 20 El Trío Medellín, 17, 105 El Trío Tariácuri, 39n32 “El trompito,” 75–76 Los Trovadores Xalapeños, 33 tuning methods, 34, 45–46 “La tuza,” 62, 67 United Farm Workers of America, 110 United Nations, 116n1 upright bass, 36 urbanization of Son Jarocho, 44–45, 106, 114, 132, 169–170. See also Mexico City urban Son Jarocho, 47 Uruchurtu, Ernesto, 20 valenciana guitars, 46 Valens, Ritchie (Richard Steven Valenzuela), 108, 166 variety shows, 20, 22, 25 Vasconcelos, José, 98

183

Vega, Andrés “El Güero,” 47, 55, 113 Véjar, Carlos, 135–136 Venegas, Pedro, 159 Venezuela, 36, 136–137 Veracruz: and commercial media, 108; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 132, 133; harp styles of, 3, 31; impact of Mexican Revolution, 43; Indigenous culture and politics, 55, 74–75, 80–81; and La Rama, 5; and Mexico City music scene, 24; and origin of Conjunto Medellín, 26; and radio broadcasts, 28; railroad lines, 6–7, 11, 38n9, 43, 105–106; and rescate movement, 113; and the Sotavento region, xi; and themes of Sones Jarocho, 73 Veracruz (record), 42, 107, 149, 154 Veracruz Cultural Center, 28 Veracruz hermoso (record), 27, 149, 153 Veracruz: Huapangos y sones jarochos (record), 156 Veracruz to the Isthmus (VCI) railroad route, 6–7, 11, 38n9, 43, 105–106 Vergara, Andrés Alfonso: and Andrés Huesca, 24; and Barradas’s early work in music, 18, 19; and Conjunto Tlacotalpan, 44; and films featuring Son Jarocho, 138; and Indigenous knowledge systems, 55; and playing styles in Tlacotalpan, 16; and rescate movement, 47, 113, 114 Vergara, Miguelito, 17 Vergara, Santana, 17 versos sabidos (“known verses”), 139 Veryán, Nora, 135–136 Vidal, Moisés, 3 “El Viejo,” 81–82 “Vientos del mar,” 85–88 Vik label, 27, 39n27 La Villa (Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe), 23, 39n23 Villa Florencia, 32 Villareal, Julio, 139 Villaurrutia, Xavier, 133–134 violin, 17, 28 visión del mundo (“vision of the world”), 93 Vista Hermosa, 9 vocal harmony, 34, 46 voladores, 58 “La voz de María,” 80–81

184

Index

Waikiki (cabaret club), 20 waltzes, 34 weddings, 60 West African cultural influences, 93 white supremacists, xiii Wildcat, Daniel R., 54 Williamson, Emily J., 115 woodpeckers, 71–73, 74–75, 104. See also “El pájaro carpintero” Xalapa, 57 XEQ radio station, 22, 41, 107 XEW radio station, 17, 26, 29, 105, 107 XEX radio station, 23, 26, 28, 29, 107 xiutototl, 123n98

Yanga, 16, 38n12 Yavapai people, 89 Yoeme people, 89 Zacarías, Miguel, 143–144 Záizar, Juan, 144 zapateado, 22, 58, 93–94, 107 “El zapateado,” 14, 22, 29, 83, 141 “Zapateado Veracruzano,” 141 Zapatista uprising, 79, 116n5 Zapotecs, 18 Zavaleta, Clemente, 33 Zongolica region, 59 Zoque-Populuca languages, 57 Zúñiga, Filiberto, 135