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Friday, July 20, 2001

Mariachi band plans to spice up Bandshell

By RICK de YAMPERT | News-Journal Entertainment Writer

DAYTONA BEACH — Fans of mariachi, that traditional folk music of Mexico, got a surprise when the band Mariachi Cobre performed at the Hollywood Bowl.

True, the band was formed by Mexican-American musicians in Tucson, Ariz., in 1971. True, 11 years later, they began a residency at Epcot, where their performances at the Mexican Pavilion continue to display the musical heritage of their ancestral homeland.

But the singer at the Hollywood Bowl concert was from a land a bit east of Mexico ... far east of Mexico.

"There's a Japanese girl who worked here (at Disney World)," says Mariachi Cobre founder Randy Carrillo, who will lead the band in concert Sunday at the Bandshell in Daytona Beach. "She took a liking to it so much, she learned the words and she's gone with us to sing at the Hollywood Bowl. And she's from Japan."

The old adage, it seems, is quite true: Music, indeed, is a universal language.

"We're living proof of that," Carrillo says by telephone from Epcot a few minutes before his band is due to take the stage. "We have a cross section of visitors here at Walt Disney World. It covers the globe, from Asian to Eastern European, Western European, Scandinavian, Serbian, Czechs, Spanish, Germans and, of course, Latin America and Mexico.

"Almost all enjoy mariachi or they find an actual musical connection. Especially a lot of the Eastern Europeans -- their folk music, like the tamburitzan groups, the Czechoslovakians, they relate to the music. They find a lot of similarities."

Mariachi is "a lively music," Carrillo says, which is like saying the pope cracks open a Bible once in a blue moon. Mariachi Cobre includes 11 musicians who perform on trumpets, violins, guitars and "two instruments that are uniquely Mexican," Carrillo adds. "One is the vihuela. That's a five-string guitar, pitched higher than a normal guitar. Then you have a guitarron, a six-string bass. The name just means 'big guitar.' "

Mariachi Cobre's 25th-anniversary album includes such songs as "La Chuparrosa" ("The Hummingbird"), "Maria Elena" (a ballad about a girl), and "Popurri Pancho Villa" (a suite of folk songs about the real-life Mexican revolutionary hero). All of the songs are sung in Spanish. Carrillo plays guitar and guitarron.

The "Cobre" of the group's name is Spanish for "copper."

It's a nod to the band's home -- Arizona is the "Copper State" -- and a nod to "the significance that copper had with Meso-American cultures," Carrillo says.

Mariachi's cultural roots reach back to central-western Mexico, to a time before what Carrillo calls the "Spanish intervention," when the native Coca tribe would chop down mariachi trees to fabricate the dance floors for lively festivals.

Eventually, the dances, the musicians and the music itself all became known as "mariachi."

Few mariachi bands of U.S. origin existed until the 1960s, Carrillo says.

Now, due in part to the success of Mariachi Cobre as well as mariachi albums released in 1987 and '91 by pop star Linda Ronstadt, "you can't even count the mariachi groups in the United States," he says.

Mariachi Cobre has performed with Ronstadt, Julio Iglesias, Carlos Santana, bluegrass star Alison Krauss, the Boston Pops and 20 other symphonies.

"A lot of people relate to mariachi," Carrillo says.

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