Made for Mariachi
Vero and I went to the Hollywood Bowl for the Mariachi USA festival on Saturday night. We had a great time, just relaxing and listening to at least 5-6 different mariachi groups play. The concert started at 6pm, but the Bowl really didn’t fill-up until 7pm. CPT? LST? Go figure.
It reminded me of when I started listening to and loving mariachi music. When I started learning Spanish 10 years ago, I was working full-time as a Work Comp claims adjuster, plus doing a volunteer gig with InterVarsity. There wasn’t a lot of free time in my schedule to learn a language. So……, I did what I could - I set the radio in my car & the radio at my desk at work to 107.5 KLVE - “Mas musica, mas romantica” - to pick up a new tongue. All day long.
For over 2 1/2 years.
All I listened to was Spanish radio.
I heard a lot of styles of music that I’d never listened to before - salsa, nortena, spanish rock, ranchera, etc. At first, I couldn’t tell the difference - it was all a jumbled mess to my ears. But over time I realized that not only were my ears being trained to hear a new language, but that I recognized and really enjoyed some of the styles of music that I was listening to.
Particularly Mariachi music. I found myself listening to mariachi music, even if I wasn’t focused on language learning. Just enjoyed listening to the music.
My love of mariachi has carried on over the past 10 years. I still remember the surprise on all of our wedding guests faces when, just before my wife walked down the isle, a full-piece mariachi group - with trumpets blasting - lead her procession to the alter. We had a mariachi play at our 5 year anniversary (that was a surprise to my wife), and we even had a mariachi play for my grandmother’s 85th birthday party last summer. Since I did see a few other gringo’s on Saturday, I was trying to figure out how it is that other gringo’s fall in love with mariachi music, since other than cross-cultural marriage, I’m not sure how exactly that would happen.