Art in the Lives of Immigrant Communities in the United States

6. The Intimate Circle: Finding Common ground in Mariachi and Norte

109 Stepping into Tijuana’s from the cold of the New England seaport street, pushing in through the swinging doors into a warm and golden Mexican hacienda, we are greeted in Spanish by a petite woman with long black hair and a menu in her hand. She seats us next to a Latino family out for a Saturday night dinner; kids scramble on and off the laps of their parents and stop to take in the music as it passes by. It is, in all respects, an intimate setting—the small restaurant is tightly packed with families, each sitting at small tables piled with enchiladas, rice, beans, glasses of horchata and Dos Equis. A five-piece mariachi group squeezes between tables, and the customers shift their seats to get an equal view of the performers. The mariachis—in their sharp black matching outfits—form a hemicycle facing the customers, moving up close to them to form a full circle. The performance too is intimate; musicians stand close, and the trumpet, six-string bass guitarrón, sixstring guitar, five-string vihuela, accordion, and vocal harmonies project a uniformity of sound and identity that is both directed at and inclusive of those customers in its embrace. Looking around the restaurant at the Mexican décor, food, and musicians, and at what appears to be mostly Latino patrons with some African Americans and Euro-Americans intermixed, one could mistake this place for southwest Texas. Yet when stepping outside, taking in the damp ocean air hanging on the compact, colonial streetscape, it becomes unmistakably clear that this is a New England port city. A mariachi ensemble in Massachusetts appears out of place at first, and yet on closer examination there is something even more incongruous at work here: Chelsea, Massachusetts, where this ranchera scene plays out on a nightly basis, has The Intimate Circle finding common ground in mariachi and norteño music Clifford R. Murphy c h a p t e r 6  clifford r. murphy 110 been a predominantly Latino city for nearly three decades. What is incongruous about this scene is not the mariachi in Massachusetts, but the act of unified ethnic solidarity and multiethnic sociability reenacted during its performance. Mariachi Estampa de América—one of several groups that play regularly in family-style restaurants and late-night bars throughout Chelsea—consists of performers from various Central, South, and North American Latino nationalities. Chelsea’s early history as a Latino city was characterized by tension and open fighting between different Latino nationalities, and by a multiethnic resistance to Latino solidarity. Nevertheless, the ubiquitous nature of Mexican radio broadcasts of mariachi and norteño music throughout Latin America since the 1930s—and the repercussion of mariachi and norteño music such broadcasts have engendered in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the southwestern United States—has created important commonalities for music-making and musical sociability in Chelsea’s Latino community. The mariachi, then, acts as an engine for multiethnic sociability in settings like Tijuana’s and in turn further develops multiethnic Latino identity in places like Chelsea. There is another incongruity in the instrumentation of the mariachi group, particularly in the use of the accordion. Traditionally, mariachi ensembles do not utilize the accordion in live performances, and they only occasionally use it on commercial recordings. Nevertheless, the accordion plays a central role, both musically and symbolically, in Mexican norteño music and in conjunto music (a regional variation of the same genre prominent in the southwestern American border region, particularly in San Antonio, Texas). Although mariachi, norteño, and conjunto music are derived from many similar folk and popular traditions, it is unusual for performing groups to attempt to bridge styles in live performance. Relative to the fairly conservative musicality of mariachis, norteño music—like American country music—is wildly popular as a contemporary pop form throughout Latin America, and it often incorporates electronic elements. While the appeal of mariachi music appears to span all generations and class backgrounds, norteño and conjunto are decidedly associated with the working class. Accordion player and Mariachi Estampa de América band leader Elías Interiano deliberately incorporates the accordion into the mariachi ensemble in order to appeal to a broader base of Latin American immigrants, including those with a working-class background . According to Javier Iraheta, a singer and guitarrón player in Mariachi Estampa de América, There’s a lot of Central Americans in this area, and they...