What kind of music is mariachi

The Vihuela. The Guitarron. What is Involved in Singing? Throughout the years, people have argued over the roots of the word mariachi.

The explanation that had become the most common is that it comes from the French word mariage, meaning marriage or wedding. It is said that when the Frenchman Maximillian was the Emperor of Mexico, the French began to call the Mexican musicians Mariachis because the entertained at weddings.

Mariachi is a traditional Mexican music and a fundamental element of Mexican culture. Traditional Mariachi groups, made up of two or more members, wear regional costumes adapted from the charro costume and interpret a broad repertoire of songs on stringed instruments. The wide repertoire includes songs from different regions, jarabes, minuets, polkas, valonas, schottisches, waltzes and serenades, in addition to corridos typical Mexican ballads narrating stories of battles, outstanding deeds and love affairs and traditional songs depicting rural life.

Northeast Asia. Southeast Asia. Southern Asia. Western Asia. Eastern Europe. Northern Europe. Southern Europe. Western Europe. Australia and New Zealand. The two-trumpet combination popularized by Mariachi Mexico de Pepe Villa in the early s is the most recent innovation to take place in the standard mariachi instrumentation. All members may sing. In the s, its leadership was taken over by his son, Silvestre Vargas, considered the greatest mariachi organizer and visionary of all time.

In , the group moved permanently to Mexico City, where it played a leading role in the evolution of mariachi music. Since the s, Mariachi Vargas has been the model ensemble for the urban mariachi tradition, in which its trajectory and influence are without parallel. Mariachi music has become deeply rooted in the United States, where it has taken on unique characteristics and even influenced its Mexican counterpart.

During the late s and early s, a number of organized mariachi groups immigrated to Los Angeles, an urban area that has in many ways become to the United States what Mexico City is to Mexico as an urban Mecca of mariachi music.

Other U. Mariachi Cobre, founded in Tucson, Arizona in , was the first prominent Mexican-American mariachi group. In , a U. Since then, mariachi festivals and conferences have proliferated in the United States; Mexico celebrated its first international mariachi festival in Mariachi music reached its peak in popularity during the s and s.

Since then, it has become increasingly marginalized by the communications media that initially catapulted it to fame. With the exception of isolated attempts to infuse new vitality into the tradition from outside sources, relatively little new mariachi music is composed or performed today.