Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Ah yeah, yeah yeah, And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Jerry's hanging out here wearing a giant sombrero, and that makes this stuff you should know. I was actually gonna sing that that's funny that you thought of the same dang thing. That's that's the one. That's the one that I've you know, I grew up on. Yeah. I think I told the story once before about when it's funny how these things you remember from your childhood. When I was in kindergarten, they taught us the Mexican hat dance, and we danced around uh not hats, but spray can lids, like like like spray pant lids. Why because you know, we didn't have little sombreros, Okay, And it's one of those things we're looking back like bless him. They were teaching us about another culture, which is great for a five year old, but like looking back all these you know, white suburban at Landing kids dancing around spray pant spray paint candle its is a little little cringe. It's an it's a weird, like at a detail, but I'll bet it was still adorable to see. You know, it's an odd substitute, like we didn't decorate them. I would get that they were just the lids, right, no brims or anything like that. So it's more of like a fees dance. Yeah. Sure, it was like a fest Hits minus the tassel. So Chuck, I just want to say, um, if this pick is from your recent trip to the Yucatan, that is a vacation that just keeps giving. Now it's not at all. We heard no mariachi down there. Uh. I don't know why I thought of this. I'm not sure other than the fact that it's a music that I like and it's a fun like when people are over and it's a Friday night where happy hour and up some cocktails. Putting on a mariachi mix is always a good move. Uh. And you know, when I lived in l A, I lived in a Mexican neighborhood in a largely Mexican neighborhood and a Mexican or Mexican American apartment complex. I was the only gringo there and so the music was just blaring out at all times, and I really got tired of it for a while, but it was in getting tired of it that I got an appreciation for it and ending up loving it. If that makes sense, that's really cool. Yeah, it does make sense. Actually, you have subsumed it by attrition, I guess, yeah, yeah, sure, so yeah this was your pick um. I don't know that I ever would have gotten around to this one because I'm not like a huge mariachi fan. Got nothing against it, but like, my exposure to mariachi is sadly like speedy guns all is Um cartoons and like Mexican restaurant visits. But now that I've researched it some I have kind of developed more of an appreciation of it than I had before. But one of the things that struck me about it, Chuck, is that if you listen to like old mariachi and like relatively new mariachi, like there's a some there's something about there's like a through line where it's very clearly the same kind of music after decades and decades centuries. Really you could say, um, and I think that's really cool that it's not like like I went to look for disco mariachi and yeah, it doesn't exist like I found some I found like a mariachi band doing covers of some disco favorites, like you know, but it was still mostly disco with a little bit more horn than than normal. Um. But it's like a really like I don't want to say unchanged because it's definitely evolved in other kinds of merged with other kinds, you know, but but it's you can recognize it from nineteen hundred to nine as mariachi music. Yeah, And you know, I think one of the through lines that I saw, and it's something we talked a little bit about before we recorded was and I think the name of this episode of already titled the Rodney Danger Field of Musical Genres, But it's a it's a genre that I think is always worked at gaining respect globally and among you know, the intelligentia and the classical community. And I think part of that is rooted in some just inherent racism that America feels towards Mexico, which I think is just something that's that's just there. It's a country that is our closest neighbor, obviously Canada as well, but uh, it's an interesting place and that you know, fifty percent of the country, I think, since the pandemic lives below the poverty line, but it's also like a top ten country economically globally, which was hard to believe. So it's Mexico, I think has a lot of people living in poverty and a lot of very wealthy people, so a big wealth gap there. Uh. And this music is a part of their proud tradition. And I think little things have happened over the years, and we'll talk about a lot of them that have helped kind of uh up their respect anti where it's not just a Mexican restaurant music to two people here and around the world. And I think like movies like Coco coming along, like just little things like that have happened over the years that really helped kind of bring it to the four where people realize what a kind of cool music it is. Yeah for sure. Uh. And yeah that's just because you know, people's exposure to it is strictly a Mexican restaurant doesn't mean like that's where it exists like that. It's moved into concert halls, um Uh, it's moved into like schools and colleges like it's it's it's it's definitely gained a lot of respect. But I think what you're saying is is is correct. You know largely that there is a certain sense of, if not racism, at least xenophobia or a sense of foreignness. Yeah, that probably prevents like the average waspy American from getting really deep into mariachi. Um. But I think also in this this stands from Mexico too, that it's a it's a classist thing too, because mariachi music is rooted in the rural areas. It's a proud rural worker tradition. It's like super um egalitarian in that sense. And you know, people of you know, certain classes, they don't like that kind of stuff. They find it low brow, or they they it doesn't appeal to them or whatever. And so I think that even as mariachi has evolved over the decades, that same old kind of grudge or view that's become outdated over time to a large extent, still remains among some people agreed, this is one of our best interests yet. All right, So let's go back to the beginning. How where did mariachi come from? Uh? Well, and by the way, we're I'm really worked on a lot of these pronunciations. I'm gonna do my best, but as always, we try, We're we're gonna try. But yeah, there's a lot of pronunciation challenges up in this one, all up in here. Uh So, we gotta go back to colonial Mexico and the original form of the music came and this is pretty obvious. Is obviously some Spanish influence, but something that may surprise folks is that also enslaved Africans that the Spanish brought to the colonies, a lot of the rhythmic traditions of that music is present in the origins of mariachi as well. Yeah, and there are a lot of people say, plus there was indigenous music at the time, so those things always just kind of blended and gelled together, which is pretty um appropriate for mariachi as we'll see over the decades, like it's they've not hesitated to be like, oh I really like that sound. I didn't think of using that instrument and incorporating it to make a new a new sound. Yeah, yeah, totally. Um, you gotta go to western Mexico to uh Jalisco, where we talk about a musical form called sun Holly Sience. I know, I got that one right, because prexit over and over, uh and the crack. I don't want to have practice for nothing, holly, yeah, very nice, okay, Um, I think we should each pronounce everything, okay, and then Jerry can just blend them together. Had a little guitar own on top of it, and we're all set. Uh. So that music was happening in Jalisco and western Mexico, but it was you know, similar kinds of music were happening in other places in Mexico. And like you said, these were farm workers. They would play for special occasions, they would Uh. It's interesting in the early mariachi did not have horns, which is almost hard to believe because horns are so vital to it now. But violence, guitar and harp were sort of the first mariaci instruments. Yeah, mostly string string ensembles, right, and they were they were songs performed by the peasant class working on haciendas. And at the time before the Mexican Revolution UM that ran roughly from nineteen and nineteen twenty UM, there was a feudal system essentially that that that was the hacienda um and the people who worked on those haciendas were very much exploited. But one of the jobs you could have is a mariachi performer. I got the impression like, if you're a mariachi performer, that was your job. You didn't necessarily work in the fields or do anything else. That was the role you played on the hacienda. And the thing is that kind of um inequality is just unsustainable. It doesn't matter what century you live in, it doesn't matter what country you live in. Eventually, as one group is just so thoroughly exploited by another group, that the exploited groups going to revolt. And that was the basis of the Mexican Revolution, that it was a class revolution where the workers rebelled and said no more, You're not going to exploit us anymore. Right, And as you'll see, they wrote a lot of music about this stuff in the form of the mariachi songs. But um Kokula, which is in Jalisco outside of Guadalajara, is um where some people say it started, even though you can't draw like written history there. If you want to look at the word in print, which is something we always seem to talk about the first time we see things written down, Uh, it is a letter from a Catholic priest in eighteen fifty two that was denouncing it, basically saying, you know, these big drunken festivals in this music that you're doing, uh is a problem. Please cut it out right, signed local crank priests exactly. So, Um, that was the like you said the first time in print, right, and yeah before that it was a local place name. Um. But really Mariachi as we understand it, the word the etymology, I guess, has long been kind of disputed. And here's the little fun fact. I had no idea about. Uh. The French, as in France occupied Mexico from eighteen sixty two to eighteen sixty six. Did you know that? Sure you knew that. I did. I think I've seen that in movies. I had no idea. The only reason I wouldn't know anything. So so during that for your occupation of Mexico by the French, apparently local musicians would be hired to perform at weddings. So there was a longstanding myth that the word mariachi was a kind of a local butchering of the French word mariage. Yeah, not true, No, that's not. Actually the answers a lot cooler. I think, well, they still don't know for sure. I mean, my money is on the tree. Is that what you were talking about? Yeah? What else could it possibly be? I don't know, because there's a tree, it's separated out differently, but it is the word mariachi. It's just mariachi. That sounded totally Italian. That's probably probably put the stress in the wrong thing. But that was a tree that legend has it, or people say at least was the wood that they made the instruments out of, and that I don't know, that seems pretty convincing to me. For sure. It was an indigenous Cora word too, so hats off to them as well. Um, there's another there's one more that I'm like, I don't know about this one, but they're they're like, no, the g is from the Cora language, but the maria refers to the Virgin Mary, and that these were religious songs. At first, I didn't see anything about these being particularly religious at any point in time, did you not? Really? And I mean, I'm sure they're religious mariachi songs, but most of the stuff I've seen is about like working on the farm, or these love ballads and stuff like that. Yeah, or just getting you know, crunk, getting down. Yeah. So, like I said, the hacienda system, I don't believe it actually ended, but I think it was very much disrupted during and right after the revolution, and as a result, there was you know a lot of people who were displaced as workers, including mariachi musicians, who no longer had like a regular gig on the local hacienda. And so whenever there's a disruption in the countryside, those people tend to make it towards city centers to see if there's work or other ways to support themselves. There's a big influx of people to Mexico City around the nineteen teens in twenties, and a lot of them were mariachi musicians, and they brought their different traditions with them, because depending on what state you're talking about, each state has its own kind of musical mariachi tradition. And in that in that era in in Mexico City is when they first started to really kind of blend together. Yeah, I think, I mean, I love this kind of thing where different whether it's food or musical styles, when different people of different cultures all of a sudden are living among each other and start sharing opinions and ideas. That's just I don't know. I think that the best stuff in history is created that way. And that's what happened there. And they brought their musics together. This is when band sizes grew. It was not necessarily like a quartet like it had been. All of a sudden, you could see Mariachi in the you know, like twelve people playing in a band. This in big time game changer. This is when horns came into the mix. Uh. And you know, basically this was what nineteen teens you said in twenties, maybe yeah, Mariachi would never be the same after the introduction of those trumpets, no, for sure. Um And apparently in pretty short order they figured out how to do you know, more than one trumpet. As we'll see, there's actually one band that was responsible for that. But one of the other things they started doing two was wearing charos, those um cowboy outfits, the very like slick cowboy outfits with like the short waistcoat and the tight pants and the ankle length boots and a wide bow tie and a big sombrero that that emerged from this era as well too, where all of a sudden, these guys were in the big city wearing peasant guard with straw hats. This is probably a little ghost all of a sudden, and they were making pretty good money. So you could outfit like a dozen Mariotti musicians and matching outfits and you know, probably attract even more money because people would want to hire you because you had that kind of thing going on. And it became a tradition pretty quick. Can I admit something. Yeah, if it were not for uh being accused of cultural appropriation, I would wear Chatto clothing at every fancy event I ever went to. So I think it's so cool looking. I love it. Uh, And I think I might just have to settle for a nudy suit. Uh you know what those are? Birthday? No, you probably do. It was there was a tailor and he was a lot of things. In fact, he might make an interesting episode one day named Nudy Cone. And he made these suits that uh like Graham Parsons war and Ryan Stone cowboy type stuff with like roses embroidered on the suits and all that stuff. Uh. So nuty suits became really popular with like the earliest alt country scene and like rodeos and stuff. So I think I could get away with a newty suit, okay, but why you're not part of the cowboy culture, you're appropriating that. Why is it any different? Like why couldn't you just wear a charo suit? I think if you think something is cool and you're wearing out of respect and because you think it's super cool, not because for whatever reason. If you're just positively wearing something, I don't see how somebody could legitimately accuse you of cultural appropriation. And if they did, I think they'd be wrong. No, I'm with you. It would be from fear of being accused of that more than anything being accused. I think because people would probably think, like Tom Hanks showing up in Big in that thing, they would think I was being funny or making a joke, where I'm like, no, I actually think I look really cool because this is a really cool suit and the tailors that make this stuff are amazing and I would love to show it off. So the difference would be you would show up and just not say anything about your charo suit. I don't know I would be the way to do it, okay, because you're not trying to be like, hey, get a load of this, get up you're just like, this is what I'm wearing. If you're wearing a regular suit, I wouldn't say anything about that. So I definitely shouldn't have a squirting flower in my lopell no, or like a little a spray paint. Can cap you do a little hat? Answer? Yeah, I would have a little elastic chord that hangs like like a little tiny bell hat pat totally. Uh No, anyway, I just think those are super cool, and I think nudy suits would be maybe a short stuff. Okay, I'm glad you explained nudy because I think no, there's not a T. It's in U d I E. Okay, So yeah, that's exactly. That was a guy's name. Hey, you want to take a break and come back because we're like eighteen minutes into this great one. Hey, let's do it. Okay, we'll be right back everybody. So one more thing, Chuck about this kind of diaspora towards Mexico City. Um, there was there was. There was a change in how they performed too. They started performing in like public places, in like bars and plazas. Um. And they also started to be more mobile. They would move around in part because they were busking basically, so if there was a somebody that looked like they might be a paying customer, they might follow them around for a little bit and see if they could get them to pay for a song or request a song or something like that. So that mobility, the charos, suits, and the expansion and like rearrangement of instruments, including the horns, those were all big things that happened in the twenties. Yeah, And I think that tradition when you see a small mariachi quartet moving around a Mexican restaurant, it's sort of rooted in that tradition. And I think that's another reason I didn't have an appreciation now that I remember back is whenever that happened when I was at dinner with my family and I was a kid, I could just see the air leave my dad's body and just like he hated it so much. He hated any attention at all, being like pointed publicly his way, like at Disney World. Theory like let me pick somebody from the audience, if they ever looked at my dad, he would just shake his head. I can not smile or anything, whereas I could not be more different. I'm like raising my hand wanting to jump up and volunteer for whatever. And I love it when the mariaci comes by the table, even though Atlanta doesn't have nearly enough of that. UM. And I think just word of advice if you never if you feel awkward and you don't know, like do I eat or not? Uh yeah, you just keep eating and like smile at them and just enjoy the whole thing. I don't think it means, hey, stop what you're doing and only look at us. It's it's a part of the lively atmosphere of enjoying the food. But you can also, if you're in your dad mindset, order a double margarita stat Uh. Yeah, he didn't drink though. Oh well, yeah, I'll bet he was super He really didn't have to discomfort. Uh. So we're talking nineteen fifties about this time and as uh, this is when we had a couple of trumpets come on the scene. Uh. And again we'll talk about the two gentlemen who worked out how to how to do that. Uh. You had a few violins usually, and then you had two really key instruments, um that are basically ubiquitous in any madiachi. One is the vihuela, which you might call a guitar, but it's a little different. It's smaller, it's got five strings. Uh, it's it's higher pitched, so the G, D and A strings are all tuned in octave higher, so it sounds a little different. But it's got those nylon strings. Uh yeah, yeah, Well, I mean you strum it with your fingers as well, but uh, fingerpicking and strumming. Uh. And then you've got the really the heart of the band, and the most important strument is that guitar on that I talked about, and that's that it sort of looks like a stand up bass with a super super short neck that you are playing. It's really really big bodied and uh. This thing, though, is not plucked like a standard bass. It also has five strings, although there are some five string basses, but traditionally you think of a four string bass. Uh, but it's not plucked. You're playing octaves on the strings with a guitar on, yeah, and you're playing it like a guitar, So it looks like a hilarious, oversized, novelty guitar until you hear it and then you're like, okay, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, but that's the whole rhythm section. Because one thing you will never hear someone say is did you get a load of that drummer in the mariachi band? Right, Yeah, it's true. That huge, deep, hollow body like produces all of the sound you need from that. Yeah, it's it's pretty great. It's really a key some other things though you might you might overhear people saying it a mariachi show is wow, wasn't that accordion player amazing? Where the French horns or the flout ist even because they like wind instruments and they like accordions, and one of the things that they'll play, as we'll see are things like waltz's, polka's And that was because of the influence of German immigrants to northern Mexico and southern Texas in the nineteenth century, that that that music influenced mariachi as well. That's right. One of the big respect boxes was ticked in when UNESCO came forward and said, mariachi the string music. The song in the trumpet is now officially added to what is called the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which is a great sounding list. I love the whole intangible aspect. I went to a place in Kyoto, UM that was like a bamboo forest, and Unesco added the sound of wind moving through that bamboo floors to that same lists. We should, at the very least, we should do this list. We could just read it off and be like that one's awesome too, here's another. Yeah, I love it. Okay, So yeah, that's a huge deal. I mean, and that was two thousand eleven. So Mariatta, it's like this is this is never going anywhere um and it wasn't going to anyway. There was a guy who bring in Jalisco's second Ministry of Culture. His name was Alejandro Cravotto, and he said at the time that there's no Mexican musical musical expression more widespread throughout the world. And he also said that it's so much a part of Mexican people's lives that they they hear it. It's played from their baptism to their burial. And it's absolutely true. They play baptisms, they play funerals, and they play everything in between. Two yeah, but it's interesting when that happened. There was a TV musician and a TV house named Cornelio Garcia you like that that said this happened, that said, you know, Maryachi still isn't getting the respect among academics here in our own country. Uh. And you'll see that's one of the sort of recurring themes over and over is within Mexico itself, it's gained more acceptance in the US than it has in some parts of Mexico among higher classes. Yeah, and I think that's that kind of classic's grudge that I was referring to is still around, you know, because again, it's the music of the revolution, and the revolution was the revolution of the peasants, and it's really prideful, patriotic music, you know in a lot of ways too, and it's the music of Mexico. There's a Mariachi song called El Sonde la Negra and it's um considered Mexico's second national anthem. Yeah, so it's it's like it's just so woven into the fabric that, Yeah, it's pretty tough. Like if if you live in Mexico, if you're born and raised Mexican intellectual and you don't like Mariachi, I'm sure you just have a miserable life down there. You're the Mexican version of my dad. Uh so you mentioned the different musical sounds incorporating things like waltz and polka. Uh. Fan dango is also another like it these African rhythms that we were talking about, and they have you know, obviously the ballads and the waltzes and things like that, but some other uh sort of song styles. Uh. One of them is called rancheria. And these were very much songs of the Mexican Revolution. These are the ones that are really the patriotic songs of the peasant class talking about how great and that's what's so cool about it too, was like these songs weren't talking about Maybe some did, but it seems like they were never talking about oppression. They were celebrating the farm and celebrating ranch life and stuff like that, right exactly, Yeah, I'm romanticizing it. You could even say, Um, there's a very famous song called the valve Are evolve Are? I think it's maybe how you'd say it. Sure it was in practice that one. It was very famously performed by a named Vincente Fernandez known as El Rey de la Musica Renchera. And this guy is my speed, Like he he looks like a total tough guy from the seventies, but he also looks like he probably smells really good, and he's like, um singing this this like one plaintive love song where his heart's clearly broken. Um in a Mexican restaurant with a horse in there with him, and he plays his song on the jukebox and starts singing it, and it's really awesome. So I really kind of like VINCENTI Fernandez as of yesterday. Yeah, that's a good song. I remember hearing a lot of ballads when I lived in Yuma. I my sort of best friend for that years, this guy named Mark, And this was like a big cultural shift for me to all of a sudden, my best friend was this Mexican guy, and I hung out at his house a lot and just got kind of thrown into like the real deal culture as opposed to the kid dancing around the spray paint lid. And it was just they were also sweet and so nice and and Mark's dad, like I remember seeing this picture on the fridge of Mark's dad in the seventies and he was like he had these sideburn shops and was riding a Chopper motorcycle and was wearing like a beaded vest, and I was like, do you have any idea how much cooler your dad is than mine? And it was like your dad was it is just like the coolest looking dude I've ever seen. And I remember like his mom would play these great Mexican uh mariachi ballads and I like the ballads, Okay, I really like the up beat, upbeat stuff a lot more, but it's kind of fun. It's like these these ballads are so like sort of slow and languid and syrupy, and you could they just feel very sincere, Yeah, for sure, like in in some some places gut wrenching UM. In uh last June, a bunch of mariachi I think something like fifty of them showed up at Uvaldi to basically sing um and just just two mourn with everybody there. And there's plenty of videos on it. And if you want to just have your guts wrenched, like go watch that. It's It's just really amazing how um just applicable this music is to all these different like UM events or or occasions. You know, yeah, absolutely, Uh that song you were singing, by the way, that are you kind of Lee read sang it with the I I ai uh that is very famous ranch era and that song is uh uh ci Alito Lindo. That's the that's the one that everyone has heard. Everyone has heard either that or Laka, which is not a ranch era, that is called a corrido. Yeah, so I am not a harderd percent certain that there's a clear dividing line between ranchers and currito's because the Voliver Volver song is it tells a story. So that's one of the defining characteristics of a carito. It's a ballad, and it's not necessarily just about like love lost or even love game. They can be a crime, it can be about heroism. And I saw on a site called Remes cla Um that that's usually paired with like a moral lesson of some sort. So it's like a ballad basically, is the is the best way to put it, as we already did. Yeah, and you know what, this is a great time to mention that I was wrong. We had our sort of ballad disagreement a while back when I said that ballads were love songs, uh, and we had a lot of people right in they were like no, no, no, like your own Billy Joel Chuck saying the ballad Ability to Kid and uh, the Ballad of Curtis Lowe by Leonard Skinner. They're like these they're just story songs. But I think I just was thinking more love ballads and that's a subgenre. Sure. Yeah, so correction made. So wait a minute, were they saying Josh was right? Oh yeah, you were way right? How did I miss this bunch of emails? Then I forgot to frame them and sin the view like yeah, but I have like a filter set on my outlook anytime it says the phrase Josh is right or any variation, and it goes right to the top of you have. You have searches out for the words correct. Sometimes I hit up people who have already sent in listener mail just to kind of goad them into sending those kind of emails. Uh. And then the final little style that will cover is when we mentioned at the beginning, Uh, the son hallis Salencia and that is the original folk style. Yeah, that's that. Yeah. That elsn de Lenegra, the second um national anthem of Mexico, and that's usually accompanied by a dance called zappa tied. Hey I nailed this first time. I would say tato oh man, I actually surprised myself. I had that like, um like little or fanany like like surprised look, and I still didn't get it. Right, Come here, Sandy, come mere girl. Right, but that's like a heel stomping foot dance. That's pretty cool if you just look that up. That's what we were doing in kindergarten. Okay, okay, gotcha, I got you. You're doing this still so embarrassing, tiato. I guess so we called it the Mexican hat dance, which is probably wrong too. I'm quite sure it was. It sounds. Yeah, of those two, I'm pretty sure Mexican hat dances the wronger in nineteen seventies America. Of those, uh, that's right. I guess. The last thing we should mention about the music um itself. Like the sound is one of my favorite parts of this or any music, which is multiple voices singing together. I love choral music. I love three, four or five part harmonies. I love There probably is no just thing as five part harmony. Why not? I don't know. Is there a limit? I don't think so, only in your mind? Oh hold on, uh yeah, but there's there aren't. I mean there are there are singers that have backing mariachi bands, but there in a mariachi band, there's typically not what's called elites singer that someone may take a lead on the song, but it's usually a lot of people singing at once. Yeah, it's like Chicago, basically everybody can sing right and they take turn. You'll actually you'll actually see uh, like you know, a guy stopped playing um his trumpet and moved to the front and start singing on a on a new song. Like that's just kind of how laid back it is. One of the other cool things about mariotchi two is if you watch, like if you watch the violinists, they'll be like three or four of them just standing there potentially, and they'll all start to bring their bow to their instrument at different times. It's not it's not this precision timing. And because there's multiple instruments, one can come in like you know, a half measure late or something like that, and it makes no difference. Was there you can't hear it in the first place. But it's just like it's not meant to be this uh intensely perfect, imprecise music. And and that's actually seen in a way that it's passed along like you, um, you don't you can now as I I think the sixties. You can go to schools, um sometimes public schools like elementary and middle and high schools. But there are some college curriculum that UM teach you mariachi. But traditionally it was passed down just by practicing, like it wasn't written down. It was like here's how you play see Elito Lindo, you know, um, and you would pick that up. Or else you go watch your favorite mariachi band in the town plaza and you know, basically be a groupie long enough that they'd let you start playing with them. That kind of thing. That was Coco. Did you ever see Cocoa? I did not know. One of the best uh movies, animated films. It's just fantastic that but one definitely the best looking animated film I've ever seen. But that was the kid in Coca was like a little mariachi groupie would and would just like and you know, his parents didn't want him hanging around Like all of this stuff is kind of spot on, uh, really good movie thown, great music, UM, but mariachi finally would make its way to the United States long before Cocoa in the nineteen forties. In Los Angeles obviously has always had a strong proud Mexican American community there and then up through the nineteen sixties, which during the zoot suit Um episode, we talked a lot about the Chicano movement in the sixties where Mexican immigrant communities all of a sudden kind of stood up for themselves and organized and it was very much akin to the Black Power movement, and they adopted a lot of mariachi songs has kind of part of their movement. Yeah, and some of they repurposed. There's a famous song called de caloris Um that talks about how beautiful the landscape is in spring, and they basically repurposed it to to be more of a metaphor for how, you know, the beauty of different people of color, you know. Um. Other ones were actually written. There's a song called l Pickett Sign It's hilarious. Did you listen to it? I did, and it doesn't It doesn't sound very mariachi. It more sounds like a nineteen sixties acoustic guitar protest song, which is exactly what it was. But it was, you know, part of the um the United farm Workers Union strike and the larger Chicano movement too. A big respect box again was checked in the eighties when Linda Ronstat came out with her album, UH concionis Dami Padre And this was a very big deal. I don't know if you remember this at the time, but it was. Linda ron Stat was a huge star. And I can't recommend the documentary about her enough. It's called The Sound of My Voice. One of the great UH singers of all time UH in any genre is Linda Ronstat. And she has Mexican heritage, and not many people know this because she's very fair skin. Her name is ron Stat is German, but she that's why she made that album, and she did interviews at the time, and and the documentary talks a lot about her Mexican heritage, and it was I think she's part German too, and that was like you were talking about the German influence in Mexico. It was she. It was a big melting pot and she was a part of that melting pot. I think her uh, either father or grandfather was Mexican. And so she came out with this album and it was huge. It went double platinum. And this was in the like mid late nineteen eighties, and it gave a huge boost to the mariachi music. Yeah, and she was playing with like some legit mariachi bands. I think she hosted basically three of them on her album. She played with one of the mariachi Vargus on Saturday Night Live. Yeah, I mean it was a giant, enormous thing. I don't remember when it happened, but I can just imagine America being like, wait what and then listen being like, oh, this is really good. But that also explains a longstanding mystery that I never understood before, which is why on the Mr Plow episode of The Simpsons, when Barney is hanging out with Linda Ronstead, she tries to adapt the Mr. Plow song into Spanish. Really yeah, or she's like that funny Senior Plow nois macho solda mente umbaraco, which Mr Plow is not mainly only a drunk, and it's like it lasts like to three seconds, but no idea. Man, that was so random. God, don't you love that when a Simpsons joke hits, you know, twenty years later exactly thirty years actually, that episode came. That is crazy. All right, Well, let's take another break. I'm gonna go get my spray paint candle it. That's really tough to say, isn't it. It really is that stumble you say it, spray paint candle it. Yeah. See, I've been practicing in my head because I knew this moment would come. I've been stumbling over the whole time. So I'm gonna keep rex in saying that and We'll be right back. Spray paint candle it. Very nice, everybody, very nice? All right. So now we are in the mid twentieth century and Mexican cinema is all of a sudden finding its way into theaters all over the world, and that means Mexican music is going to be introduced in more places all over the world, which includes mariachi and uh, depending on where you are in the world, it might have taken hold more than others. And this is I think it is a really cool thing when something from one disparate culture makes this way to another place, and for some like Hasslehof in Germany, like all of a sudden, that place really loves this thing. And that happened in Yugoslavia. One of the reasons is at time political leaders there um didn't want a lot of Soviet music, they didn't want a lot of American music, and they saw this Mexican music as neutral politically, So it was a little more not encouraged, I guess, but not shunned. And all of a sudden there were some parallels being drawn between the revolutionary traditions in both of those countries, and even today in places like Serbia and Croatia there are mariachi bands that play. Yeah, and this wasn't like a fringe thing like mariachi. From what I can tell, there's a really interesting Roads and Kingdom's article that Olivia dug up Um that basically says like mariachi was as as big as any music in Yugoslavia in like this, I'm guessing fifties, sixties and seventies is the impression that I had, maybe I ever heard Yugoslavia music. I listened to a little bit, well, I listened to a little bit of Mariochi. That's the other thing too. It doesn't matter if it's a Serb playing um mariachi, a Japanese band playing mariachi or um. You know, somebody from Texas playing Mariochi. It is the same music. Mm hmm, it's pretty cool. Yeah, I think honoring that tradition, like, no one wants to put a spin on something that is so much just what it is. I looked, Uh, there are Japanese mariachi, one called Mariachi Samurai that's been around for twenty plus years. Uh. There is confirmed mariachi band in China, as we will see there in the big festival happening this year. There is one from Sweden that's showing up. So it definitely like took hold in different parts of the world in the twentieth century. So, Chuck, I feel like we should talk about some notable mariachi. Yeah, and we should also point out that when we say mariachi, that can be a band, that can be an adjective describing the music, or it can be, as in the case of the great Robert Rodriguez film El Medriachi, it can be a single individual is a mariachi. I still never saw it. I've only seen Desperado. I've seen it like fifty times, but I never moved on to El Mariachi. Well moved back. El Mirachi was the first one, and then Desperado was kind of a remake, but kind of not like Evil Dead an Evil Dead too. Yeah, very much in uh yeah, in a lot of ways. You should check out al Mariachi. It's the one he made for like eight thousand dollars or whatever. I'll check it out. I'll check it out. I'm pressure me. It's good. Back off, bub all right, go ahead, tough guy. Tell me some some notable matriachi. One of the first actually was Um the Quartetoko Linse Okay, I think that's that's good. There's a guy named Husto Villa and he Um was the first mariachi to performer his His quartet was at the mex Can Capital back in nineteen o five. They were also the first ones to put the som whacks as early as nineteen o eight. So these guys were holding it down because remember mariachi, it had only been fifty sixty years old tops when it was first being started to be played, you know, in the rural areas. So these guys were the first in Mexico City playing this stuff and at the turn of the twentieth century, that's right. We could also mention mariachi Vargas, this is a tough one day to call it Lan will say it again to caliplan O. Now I added a t to make it I think you I think you said it right the first time that that's a tough one. But um, this was one of the more famous, uh maybe the most famous and longest running mariachi group ever. They were founded in eight and is still around today. Um. Obviously over the years they just you know, swap people in and out, but it's still still the same band under the same name, which is pretty cool. And they really kind of established the mariachi style from that region and uh used that harp early on. Yeah, so they've been playing since the nineteenth century. In the thirties, they made their way to Mexico City because again this is like now the epicenter of mariachi music. And I don't know how or exactly what they did, but they were named during that decade the official mariachi of the Mexico City Police Department. I thought that was really funny, really, like did they follow them around on like raids and stuff and like playing music or that would be pretty great. Um. They also started to show up in movies, um, and they would play. They would back up a guy named Pedro and Fonte, who was like a pretty huge star during the Mexican Golden Nage of the thirties to the fifties. Um, and these movies were typically vehicles of his and I'm guessing those were a lot of the ones that made their way to Yugoslavia. Yeah. Probably. Uh, let's just pick out a couple of more of these, because we could just list people all day long. I'm gonna well, since we mentioned these guys earlier, we need to shout up Miguel Martinez and Jezus Cordoba, who were from the band uh Mariachi Mexico de Pepa Villa, and they were from the nineteen fifties. And those are the two guys who worked out how to use two trumpets together. Uh. And it sounds like you just play the same thing at the same time and the same melody, but that that wasn't exactly what they did. Uh. They mixed it up and I think they played in harmony and all of a sudden, two trumpets were a thing. Yeah. There's another group, Mariachi Los Camperos, that was founded by Nadi Kano Um and he really kind of like with this this existing band into shape UM and got them into Carnegie Hall in nineteen sixty four. They were the first mariachi group to perform there. Um they opened their own restaurant, Lafonda de los Camperos in l A. And that explains why vincent A. Rodriguez was in is basically in a Mexican restaurant where I guess just a restaurant, and in the two videos I've seen of his UM, so that became kind of like a thing like you would have your own like home base where you could perform every every night of the week if you wanted to, and also probably attract more business. Plus you're making that restaurant money on the side too. Yeah. And you know, highly recommend if you go to Los Angeles you want to do something fun one night. There are quite a few restaurants there that have not the roaming the tables mariachi, but the full like twelve to fourteen symphonic on a stage performance scene. Uh. And there's a lot of fun to go to these places and get some great food and margarita's and and listen to these performances. So look it up. It's online. I don't have any I can the one I went to I could texted my friend but he never answered, so I can't remember the name of it. I'll tell you another place to get all that same experience as Epcot Center. Are you talking about Mariachi Cobra. Yeah, they've been the house um Epcot Mexico Pavilion Mariachi band since two. Not a bad gig. That's a pretty good streak. That's a forty year streak. Well, I love it. They're just like, why hird, Like these guys are great, so let's just keep them on forever exactly, And that band was like, Florida's pretty great, We're just gonna move here. Uh. If you notice we keep talking about men. Uh, Like many many musical genres have we've seen that we've covered throughout the years, and except for disco, actually notably is that women have had a harder time getting a toe in the pool, and Mariachi is no different. At the beginning, it was exclusively men, and they were playing in these sort of rough and tumble places where people were getting boozed up on survesa and it was not seen as an acceptable thing for women to do. In the mid nineteenth century, in Mexico, but Olivia is keen to point out there always have been exceptions. Beginning in the early nineteen hundreds. That was a thirteen year old named uh Rosa Quirino who had played with male mariachi bands, but uh eventually went on to lead her own group and apparently used to carry a piece to protect herself on the road because it was dangerous business. I also saw that she would um threaten heckler's and people who harassed her while she and her band were playing with it. She would say, a gentlemen, we are working and she would produce her gun and just let them see like she was not to be trifled with. She also wore like bandal aros like Pancho Villa. Oh cool, Yeah, she sounds pretty goods Uh. In the early um, I'm sorry, late nineteen forties, Uh, they're start. You started to see some bands that were all women so mariachi groups in Mexico City. Eventually they would make their way to Los Angeles in the US. The first all female uh Mariaci group was last Lancritas and this was an Alamo, Texas in nineteen seven. And I believe there is even now an all l G B t Q plus mariachi group with the very first transgender woman in the history of the genre, with Natalia Melndez. Yeah, mariachi are courious, are courious. Yeah, I mean things have come a long way. Yeah. There's also another one worth mentioning Florida tot tolo Achi. They're from New York. I think there are four piece and they are really amazing too. But even even still today, even with all of these like really great all female mariachi bands, um, they still are just kind of viewed differently than the male performers are. There was a anthropologist in two thousand thirteen named Mary Lee m Holland, and she basically just started studying the difference between male and female mariachi performers and found that the male performers are typically expect to represent like that kind of rural rough and tumble body um humorous sometimes uh like just macho kind of vibe, while the female performers were expected to like be sober and like dignified and pretty. Don't forget pretty had me pretty too, And then they were judged on that, And I mean that's I guess it's to be expected, but I get the impressions that the female performers were still just be just treated differently depending on where they performed, and they said, by and large they tended to prefer performing at weddings and baptisms and that kind of stuff rather than like at bars and like the public applauses where the male performers typically go. Who wants to be heckled, objectified and have to flash your gun? Yeah? Exactly what else you got? Uh? I think that's about it. I mean the last section here is just where to here's some mariachi music, and I think you can you can hire him out in your town to play a party if you want a bet you every big city, in many small towns, if you look up on the inner webs, we'll have mariachi that you can hire. You can go to look up and see if there are Mexican restaurants that have that music you can go check out. Uh. There are festivals now and and certainly Mexico and all over the world where you can go here lots of mariachi, or just dial some up on your favorite music service. Yeah, you could do a lot worse than um. Starting with Vincente Fernandez, Is that your guy? He is definitely he's a good gateway mariachi performer. I think you know. Yeah, by the way, shout out. Since I mentioned women in disco, Rolling Stone magazine just came up with with They're they're doing a bunch of top two hundred lists. They came out with their top two hundred dance songs of all time. Uh, and not just disco, just like club anything. And Donna Summer was number one with I Feel Love one of the greatest songs ever. That's a great one. You're right. Well, since Chuck doesn't have anything else and I don't either, I think that means everybody that it's time for listener mail. Yeah, we're gonna call this breaking news. It's fun when a stuff you should know mystery and uh, Australia woke up and started emailing us one after the other around midday Georgia time today because the Somerton Man has been solved. Somerton Man mystery. I'm like, I'm bivalent about this. I I don't know how I feel interesting. Did you want it to remain a mystery? Yeah? I think I did. Actually, I don't think there was any harm in it remaining a mystery forever and I almost feel like this guy just kind of cheated. All right, Well here we go. Uh, long time listener, first time writer from Adelaide, Australia. I've got excuse to right in. I thought you and your listeners might be interested in breaking news. After exhuming the body last year, Professor Derek Abbott Boo, a researcher at the University of Adelaide, has completed DNA matching. No, I get what you mean. He didn't do like just good detective work, unless you want to discount DNA is good detective work. I mean, there's that show called The New Detectives and it's all about this kind of thing. But I don't know, all right, so we like the Old Detectives. Yeah, in this in this particular case, I got no problem with using DNA evidence to capture contemporary murderers. How about that, alright? Or two exculpate then exonerate. Yeah, childs All of a sudden, don't you know who that is? Oh? Jackie Child's from Sinville. Yeah, totally all right? Great? Uh. Summer to man was Carl Webb, an engineer and instrument maker from Melbourne who came to Adelaide seeking a reconnection with his estranged wife. The name of the tie t Keene was his brother in law. The book of Persian poetry still a mystery. So you got that going for you. That's good. Uh, And thanks for the show. And that is from Rafe and many others. But Rafe was the first person we got to so or they got to us. Yeah, thanks a lot, Rafe and everybody for sending that in. Um yeah, who knows. Well, at least the Tamim shoot part is still a mystery. Okay, Yeah, that's right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Rafe did and kind of bring us down at me at least, you can do that via email. Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.