Ay, canta y no llores. New wave of Mexican music in Cuba?

The other night I was returning home in the middle of a blackout. Actually it was not very late and the Santiago city center was already in village mode, with no audible complaints from neighbors or barking to break the stillness. Suddenly the wailing pierced the darkness: "ay, ay, ay, ay, ay", and a chorus of trumpets shook the silence. At first it seemed like a joke of the crowd to pass the boredom, then the repertoire became more daring; I took the flashlight out of the phone and walked across the roofs until I found the few twin lights and the farra coming from the hostel on the corner. One after another, classical pieces that, in Cuba, the popular voice simply identifies as Mexican music followed one after the other. Actually, the music of that country is very diverse, but here the sounds and lyrics associated, essentially, with the mariachi format were enthroned more than a century ago. 

The dawns of several families in rural and urban areas have been harmonized for decades by those tones of rancheras, corridos, huapangos, boleros, in whose lyrics there are laments, or the king is positioned to the sombrero macho while someone evokes pigeons and stones that will never know of love. In the cities there were those who disowned the taste for these sonorities under the prejudice that it was a thing of country people. In Santiago, since 1954, Rancho Mexicano has been tuned into CMKC's airwaves, just as other radio stations throughout the country include similar programs in their schedules. 

The Mexicanada has crept from the big screen to the small screen since our great-grandparents could remember. Coming and going Cuba-Mexico lived an important record since the first decades of the last century; the so-called golden age of Mexican cinema and music were left to narrate it, providing images of idols and songs that were enthroned in the island's popularity. In still recent decades, a new wave of northern telenovelas burst with impetus in the domestic panorama of Cuba, whose circulation went from the VCR, to the CD, to flash memories, to weekly packages, and to other incantations of virtuality that, with titles like The daughter of the mariachi, announced where the band would go. The updating of the ranchero repertoire in Latin American artists or the interpretations of boleros halfway between one nationality and the other, renewed a cultural heritage deeply rooted among Cubans of different generations. 

Of course, there is a saga of cultural confluences and musical exchanges, also characterized by the notorious presence of Cuban musicians of different genres on Mexican soil from the nineteenth century and more in the following century, with figures from the concertante field, lyrical singing, exponents of the troubadour, dance orchestras, up to the imprint of Benny Moré and Pérez Prado as two of the most remembered references, among an extensive presence whose connotation transcends the motives of these lines. 

The musical formations known as mariachis were finally established throughout the island. In the catalogs of centers, music companies and houses of culture there was always some representation of the format. With the passage of time, its proliferation has become more and more notorious. While I was navigating virtual waters for the collation of data for the purpose of these lines, I even found out about a national course for the training of mariachis that took place in the province of Granma from 2005 to 2007. I do not know the final effectiveness of the strategy, whose purpose, apparently, was to provide each municipality of the province with such training. From experience, we know that goals of massive and quantifiable intention rarely come to fruition. Since we have not found any update on the aforementioned academy, I infer that it has remained as one of those truncated initiatives. 

In the research on pioneer groups of the ranchera tradition in the national panorama, we find the santiaguero Mariachi Cuba. The group was formed in March 1975, in the mountains of the Segundo Frente, with musicians from several provinces. According to the testimony The first idea of its director, Noel Matos Martínez, was to take this music to the rural areas of the East, with presentations in sugar cane and coffee plantations, for example. From then to the present, the processes that stimulate the insertion of such formats in the context of musical consumption in the country have changed a lot. 

In 2010, Bechy Moya and I, then programming and research specialists respectively at the Miguel Matamoros Center in Santiago, dedicated a broadcast of the space The music gate to Mariachi Cuba. Without exact temporalities, I say that that moment was the prelude to the furor unleashed more recently.

The social and economic dynamics around music as a sign of individual and group status, the spaces of socialization for the performance to take place and the musical enjoyment itself, become important mediators of the resignification of the mariachi phenomenon in Cuba today. What several decades ago was mostly associated to a cultural root with roots in rural spaces and was valued from a prejudiced point of view by some individuals and groups, nowadays seems to be redefined as a trend and a symbol of social positioning by those who consume or hire the service of the groups, especially those of a private nature. 

Ranchera sonorities in the current panorama take place in different sociocultural situations of consumption and emerging market relations. They stand out in private family environments such as the serenade -doors or inside a house-, but we also find celebrations of greater concurrence and diverse nature, as the same promotions state: quinceañeras, weddings, baptisms, love reconciliations, February 14th, Mother's and Father's Day, Christmas celebrations, New Year's Eve, and the most unimaginable occurrences such as the one I found: "for spurned husbands or wives".

In short, there is an explosion of mariachi groups, professional or not, all over the country. I have not brought figures, a glance at the flight confirms it. The notorious representation of the mariachi format expands its boom to social networks such as YouTube, pages and groups on Facebook and Instagram. The prominence facilitated by social networks creates better possibilities for the artist-client dialogue in the arrangement of services and the cultural event itself. Such interactions give new meanings to this music as a sociocultural fact, with expansion in both rural and urban areas.

In addition to the occurrence of family events, there is also the presence of mariachi music in private businesses or enterprises. The participation of artists and groups in privately managed centers such as clubs, bars, terraces, hostels and restaurants and other state-run centers (breweries, ranches and popular festivals) expands and reinforces the legitimization of the ranchera sound as a sociological narrative in the plural Cuba of the present, which also includes religious celebrations such as that of December 12 in the town of El Cobre to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

These dynamics in turn generate the emergence of new mariachi groups that are included in the catalogs of music companies or by the system of cultural centers, in the case of amateur artists. An interesting subplot is the issue of professionalization to swell the payroll of the former. Other formations settle in the porfia -with no corso to endorse them- but there they go, in the luchita. Any day on the streets or from public transportation, the eye discovers the characteristic clothing of the charro, on the way to the most unsuspected celebration.

In Santiago de Cuba, for example, Mariachi Puro México, created in June 2013 under the direction of Ignacio Mora Clavel, violist of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Oriente and professor of artistic education, joined the Miguel Matamoros agency's catalog. It is also integrated by other academically trained musicians also located between the music stands of the Symphony, chamber and choral music formats. The days of these instrumentalists are usually packed and it is even nice to see them exchanging the image adopted for a symphonic concert in the Dolores Hall for the mariachi attire, to, minutes later, go out in the city.

Cities recirculate their music and incorporate habits. Giving mariachis as a gift nowadays entails a variety of meanings, beyond a romantic act. It also entails a series of favorable links for the musicians who, while the wave continues, find alternative sources of employment. It is also beneficial for the durability of a repertoire that, regardless of the motif, transcends time and uses, audiences, spaces, geographic demarcations and socio-cultural relations.

Several weeks have passed since that blackout with serenade. I do not remember who gave the last note, nor if the girl and the boy singers closed chords before or after the "ehhhhhhhhhhhhh" of the neighborhood with the illumination. I was an anonymous audience from my window, but that was a different darkness.