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.
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:
We're silly and adventurous, computer geeks and yoga peeps.
March 02, 2008
Mumsie
March 03, 2008
Kyle
Also, just to be clear, I only made the first video. The second video was done by someone way more professional than me. If I could make the second video, I would truly have a second career!
March 03, 2008
Mumsie
March 04, 2008
Bessie
I am proud to say I'm the creator of the water park video. I like exciting videos, which you'll see a bit more of... (ominious foreshadowing)
March 04, 2008
Kristine
March 04, 2008
Kyle
Jefe: "No, El Guapo"
El Guapo: "Then how do you know there is a plethora of pinatas if you don't know what a plethora is?!!"
Awesome.
March 04, 2008
DADDIO
March 04, 2008
Bessie
I think us finding the first brewery of the trip helped Kyle from the inside too... I mean we love plain Jane Mexican beers and all, but they all start to taste the same. Chicago's beer variety spoiled us both.
March 05, 2008
Linda