Son Jarocho: What La Bamba Was Before Richie Valens

Written by Kyle about Mexico. Feelin' happy
Kyle_happy

If you woke up this morning and wanted to learn more about the music of Mexico, then today is your lucky day. By good fortune, Bessie and I ended up in a bar / brewery in San Cristobal and along came 4 women who played and introduced us to the Son Jarocho style of music.

San Cristobal 24

Basically, Son Jarocho is a style of music that is a fusion of indegenous, spanish, and african music. The africans tended to do the drumming, which was usually done with a simple wooden box and is now done by flamenco-esque dancing. The guitars (actually they're called jaranas) are small so that they could easily be hidden underneath the dresses and clothing of the workers in the field, as the plantation owners wanted nothing to do with its employees having fun. They are made to be louder and more percussive than a normal guitar, though, and come in various sizes to get difference tambers.

The lyrics are usually improvised are typically about non-family friendly topics (such as cattle breeding), although, truthfully, my Spanish is not good enough to pick out exactly what all the songs are about. Judging by the titles of the songs we heard, it sounds like the ladies kept it clean, although I could be completely wrong.

If you think that you've never heard Son Jarocho music before, then you're wrong, or you grew up in a cave. La Bamba is actually a Son Jarocho song that was adopted and changed to rock by Richie Valens. While the traditional form doesn't sound much like the Richie Valens version, all of the songs we heard were equally as catchy.

In any case, here is some of the action that we got on video:


If you want to hear a higher quality recording of some Son Jarocho music, here's a song called El Son Sin Fin by Los Cojolitos:


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