Today I would like to touch on a Mexican icon. As you know, the mariachi band is a major symbol of our culture and our country, and the mariachi plays an important and defining role in the colorful and mostly joyful folkloric music to which we dance and that mostly all foreigners associate with the mariachi band.
In Spanish a mariachi is not a band, nor do we call them a group, an ensemble or do we have any other noun to describe it, though maybe in reality it is all those things. A mariachi is a mariachi. It’s commonly been thought that the word mariachi is a variation of the French mariage, meaning wedding or marriage, and hails from when Maximilian, a Frenchman, was Emperor of Mexico. Accordingly, the mariachi was named by the French after the “par-tay” with which it was most commonly associated. I read that this story has recently been discredited, because apparently the word mariachi was already used when the French came to Mexico, though it was related more to the wood of the platform where musicians and dancers performed than the actual musicians. But nobody really knows.
Anyhoo, I mention the mariachi because I’m convinced we carry it in our genes. Many younger generations may show disregard for the “ranchera” music essentially sung with a mariachi (forget the happy sones and huapangos performed by professional dancers).
The word “ranchera” refers us to the “rancho,” but not as our ranches in the United States, in terms of a ranch being a large chunk of land being the private property of one individual or family. A rancho in Mexico refers to a small village or hamlet mostly made up of farmers and peasants. Men wearing sombreros and women wearing shawls or rebozos; all from a very low socioeconomic class. For instance, my parents and the rest of my ancestors, were born and raised in the rancho of Abadiano in the state of Michoacan. Nowadays Abadiano is more a small town than a “rancho.” But my first images of Abadiano do not include running water or electricity. Rocks were used to make fences; there were no paved roads or trails. You get the picture.
So, in their origin a ranchera song was typically a song created by the inhabitants of the ranchos. When I pay close attention to these songs I can imagine the men (more than women) making up verses, adding and enriching the song as they plow their fields under a harsh sun, or while strumming an old guitar as the sun sets.
The bottom line I guess is that the ranchera music in its essence comes from the land and the people that cultivate it, not from schooled people or city folks, not from professional composers or singers, though later it will be wildly commercialized when it has its heyday especially in the forties and fifties. A good old-time ranchera song is sun-toasted brown and it doesn’t know any fancy words. And many of them are sung with grammatical mistakes, reason why many express their disdain for this music because they consider themselves too high above this “lowly” artistic form.
But in a good ranchera song you find poetry and light. I will try to show you with one example. This song is called “La mujer ladina.” The word ladina has a negative connotation, referring to someone of mixed race (like a mestizo) that really has not fully assimilated to the Spanish colonization, or someone that is sly, cunning or malicious. In this song the woman has toyed with the guy’s affection. The original song has some mispronounced words (in quotes in the Spanish lyrics). In spite of them, I think you can sense how deeply this man felt for his “ladina” girl and the long-term effect of her nearness in his life. I find the words very evocative. A Google search will give you several versions. I believe the onne by Lucha Reyes (another icon) might have been the first one. Please excuse my literal translation into English, but I hope it gives you an idea of our ranchera songs. In any respect, I didn’t even get to name the Mexican icon I had hoped to write about. But the mariachi and the rancheras are inevitable if I’m to talk about Him. Hopefully I’ll do that soon.
“The Ladina Woman”
I lost my peace of mind
because of one cunning woman
she nailed a thorn deep in me,
thorn that I cannot pull out
Since she had no morals
And she was an evil woman
She took my love with her
And never did she return
[refrain]
Down by the bank of the river
Under the shade of a pepper tree
She gave me her love
An early morning blue
And later in the canoe
We went a-drifting
Ay, the water how nicely it rocked us
When I started kissing her again.
They say that time erases
All of love’s regrets
But to me it seems
That it only gets worse
I have no joy, I know no peace
and sometimes I even cry
and my soul pains me so
That I can’t stand it anymore
[refrain]
Down by the bank of the river
Under the shade of a pepper tree
She gave me her love
An early morning blue
And later in the canoe
We went a-drifting
Ay, the water how nicely it rocked us
When I started kissing her again.
Spanish original by Juan José Espinoza
Por una mujer ladina
perdí la tranquilidad,
ella me clavó una espina
que no me puedo arrancar.
Como no tenía "concencia"
y era una mala mujer...
se “juyó” con mi querencia
para nunca jamás volver.
A la orillita del río,
a la sombra de un pirul...
su querer fue solo mío
una mañanita azul.
Y después en la piragua
nos fuimos a navegar...
Ay, qué lindo se movía el agua
cuando yo la volví a besar.
Mas dicen que el tiempo borra
los pesares del amor,
pero a mí se me “afigura”
con que con el tiempo estoy “pior.”
No tengo dicha ni calma
y a veces me hace llorar
y me duele tanto el alma,
que no me puedo ni “resollar.”
[refrain]
A la orillita del río,
a la sombra de un pirul...
su querer fue todo mío
una mañanita azul.
Y después en la piragua
nos fuimos a navegar...
Ay, qué lindo se movía el agua
cuando yo la volví a besar.
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