Local Group Mariachi Continental Play Infectious Evening of Mariachi Standards at "Twilight in the Park" August 6

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Tuesday, August 6) I went to the “Twilight in the Park” concert at the Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park to hear Mariachi Continental, a quite good and infectious ensemble based in Chula Vista that first organized in 2001. According to their Web site, the group’s current members include musical director Saúl Gonzalez and Marco Navarrete on trumpets; general director Fredd Sánchez on vihuela (a miniature guitar); Rolando Arellano and Alejandro Tapia on guitars; Anthony Mendoza on chitarrón (a large hand-held bass guitar); and Jacqueline Sierra and Samantha Montufar on violins. At the Organ Pavilion there were more musicians than that, including two other violinists (a woman and a hauntingly handsome man who also sang lead vocal on a song called “Solamente una Vez”) and at least one other trumpet player. They began with a medley of two songs, an instrumental introduction followed by “La Charreada,” a traditional mariachi song covered by Linda Ronstadt on her Spanish-language album Canciones de Mi Padre (“Songs of My Father”). Next they did an instrumental called “Honor y Patria” and a set of songs called “Carmina de Guanajuato,” “El Pitayero” and “México de Noche.” For that one, another instrumental, two of the three trumpet players moved off the main stage and played from the wings of the Organ Pavilion.

After that they announced that they would be playing some more romantic songs, and the next song on their program was one I actually recognized: “Cucurrucucú Paloma.” I had an interesting personal connection to this song because it was the theme for a Mexican movie from 1965, directed by Miguel M. Delgado and starring Mexican singer Lola Beltrán. I happened to see the film in 1967 when my mother, my younger brother and I spent the summer in a Mexican fishing village called Ajijíc in Jalisco state. There was an outdoor movie theatre there and they would show double bills of one Spanish-language movie and one foreign film, usually from the U.S., with Spanish subtitles. (One of the foreign films was That Man from Rio, a French spy spoof starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, and between my teeny smatterings of French and Spanish I had a fun time trying to figure out what was going on!) One night Cucurrucú Paloma was their Mexican film, and most of it eluded me even though I got the basic gist of the plot, described on imdb.com as “Talented young singer Paloma is discovered at a low-entry nightclub where she performs with talented composer David. A TV producer brings her to fame and fortune, and she is entangled and must decide between fame and true love.” The three of us fell absolutely in love with the title song, and a couple of years later we stumbled on an album called My Mexico by another Mexican singer, Maria de Lourdes, that contained her version of “Cucurrucucú Paloma.” So it was pretty astonishing to hear this song again, especially since the people sitting behind me knew it well enough they sang along.

After that Mariachi Continental played another song that sounded familiar, “Solamente una Vez,” though I knew it better from the English version, “You Belong to My Heart,” that became a hit in the U.S. after Walt Disney featured it in his 1945 combination animation/live-action feature The Three Caballeros. Then they played a song called “Gema,” though my husband Charles (who got to hear the concert via my recording after he got back from work; I asked him to show me how to use Google’s app for recognizing songs so I could get the titles of the various pieces Mariachi Continental played in Spanish) said that should be pronounced “Hey-may.” The next song was introduced by the bandleader giving a rather strange rap about a lost child in the audience, and it turned out “Niño Perdido” was actually the name of the song. After that they played a medley of four songs: “Serenata Huasteca,” “Rogaciano de Huapanguero,” “Acuarela Potosini” and “El Gustito.” Then they played a song called “Cielo Rojo” (“Red Sky”) and another one that stumped the Google app, though I had guessed the title from the repeated catch phrase, “Por Que Te Quiero Tí.” Then they played a song called “Si Dios Moduito la Vida,” another instrumental called “Nereidas,” and “Aires de Mayab” – which seemed like an odd title for a Mexican song but maybe that’s a throwback to the 600 years in which Muslim Moors ruled Spain and brought a lot of Arab culture there. (The guitar was actually invented in Persia – modern-day Iran – and brought to Spain by the Moors.) For their encore they did another medley, “Suavecito” and “La Negra Tamasa.” The concert was introduced by guest host Enrique Morones, whom I knew mostly as a pro-immigrant activist with a group called Border Angels which gets water and food to undocumented immigrants crossing through the Mexican desert, but he’s also the founder of the House of Mexico in Balboa Park. He said that mariachi music was the most infectious genre there is, and after last night’s concert I’m inclined to take that seriously!