I don’t know anything about opera, and accidentally once proved it to my date at a screening of Franco Zeffirelli’s film of La Traviata. Halfway through the movie, I whispered, “What a rip off. All they did was copy the plot of Garbo’s movie, Camille.” How did I know that the Verdi opera, based on Dumas’ 1848 novel, […]
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For the Mexican painter Javier Vasquez, painting is performance – a performance done to jazz. As he paints, his hand and brush flash across the canvas, echoing and replicating in paint the rhythms and riffs of the music. He works with the intensity and spontaneity of the action painters of the 1950’s, but for him […]
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From many streets away, we could hear the band playing the distinctive music. It was Carnival in Tepoztlán, and the Chinelos were dancing. We headed in the direction of the music to a small clearing outside the entrance to the church where children, dressed in spectacular costumes and wearing bearded masks, were jumping and hopping […]
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Sometime during my first month in Guanajuato, the idea floated into my head of writing an article about the sonic landscape of the city. This of course includes a great deal of music, since it resounds in every corner. But surrounding the music is a larger sonic landscape, comprising a range of sounds, some magical, […]
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Guanajuato is, and has been for a long time, a centre of culture and education. In one way or another, it has always been prosperous, either through the richness of its farmland or its mines. There was the money to support cultural activities and the desire on the part of the rich mining families and hacendados, I […]
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The city of Guanajuato is nestled in a sort of steep basin in the Sierra Madre Mountains and spreads up around the center of the basin. Imagine a huge, terraced rice paddy such as we’ve seen in photos of Indochina. Then, imagine a city built on those terraces, a city in which there are practically […]
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Nothing better exemplifies the lively spirit of Mexico than a fiery shot of tequila, dashing charro horsemen and the stirring strains of a mariachi band. Jalisco is the heartland of these emblematic figures of the nation. Guadalajara, the state capital, puts them all into the limelight each September during the annual Encuentro Internacional del Mariachi y […]
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Estas son las mañanitas que cantaba el rey David; a las muchachas bonitas se las cantamos aquí. Si el sereno de la esquina me quisiera hacer favor de apagar su linternita mientras que pasa mi amor. Ahora, sí, señor sereno, le agradezco su favor: prenda usted su linternita, que ya ha pasado mi amor. Despierta, […]
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I was born in a land that has her womb full of sunlight; that smells of tobacco, and the air intoxicates you because it tastes of rum. The sea caresses all of her body: it dresses her with garments made from coral and salt. Marisela Verena Each year here in Guadalajara, we host an international […]
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Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan celebrates its 100th anniversary in 1998. “[Mariachi] Vargas was one of the first organized groups to go to Mexico City and become popular. But that was just one style of music. During the thirties and forties, the record industry sort of standardized mariachi music. In a way that was good, and […]
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