Mariachi de Uclatlán, Grupo Folklórico de UCLA to share the stage in Fowler Out Loud event

Ethnomusicology doctoral student Jessie Vallejo said that she knew for years that she wanted to go to UCLA to learn about her heritage through mariachi music.

Vallejo has found her place as a violinist in Mariachi de Uclatlán, which according to Vallejo, is a student performance group for advanced mariachi musicians.

“I joined the group from a totally different angle than everybody else because I grew up in New York, and I’m only part Mexican. … For me, it’s been a whole adventure of trying to piece everything together and memorize songs. It’s been a big change in my life,” Vallejo said.

Mariachi de Uclatlán will be performing with Grupo Folklórico de UCLA today as part of the Fowler Out Loud music series.

According to Lauryn Salazar, a doctoral student in ethnomusicology and lecturer at UCLA, the original Mariachi de Uclatlán was founded in the 1970s. Because of a lack of steady participants, the group went through several periods of inactivity.

In 2006, Salazar revived the performance group with the help of Mary Alfaro and Leticia Soto, two mariachi musicians, to provide a place for advanced mariachi musicians to play.

The close-knit group now consists of 10 to 13 musicians because some members are no longer UCLA students. Each member plays an instrument such as the trumpet, violin or the guitarra, a large guitar witha concave back. Salazar said the group’s claim to fame is its proud record of never earning lower than second place in mariachi competitions.

Mariachi music originates from Jalisco, Mexico, but borrows elements from other regions in Mexico, Latin America and even Europe.

“Mariachi is a highly flexible genre. With the ensemble, we have songs in our repertoire that are from other parts of Latin America or Europe. But the point is that it becomes something that is a part of mariachi,” Salazar said. “We’ll play a waltz, mariachi-style.”

In today’s performance, Mariachi de Uclatlán will play traditional Mexican songs, such as “El Son de la Negra” (“The Sound of the Black Woman”), while Grupo Folklórico de UCLA will perform stylized cultural dances.

According to Ciani Nuñez-Murillo, a third-year world arts and cultures student and the artistic director of Grupo Folklórico de UCLA, folklórico is a stylized dance based on traditional rural ceremonies. Each Mexican state created its own folklórico dance and costumes to display its culture.

“Folklórico is important in that it shows the rest of the world what Mexican culture is through dance,” said Nuñez-Murillo.

The group consists of 60 members, most of whom are Latino, and has collaborated with Mariachi de Uclatlán before.

Grupo Folklórico de UCLA varies its dances, embodying five to six different Mexican regions during each performance. In the past, they have performed the jarocho dance of Veracruz and danced to the banda music of Sinaloa and polka music native to the northern regions of Mexico.

Because the Fowler performance is a collaborative effort with Mariachi de Uclatlán, Nuñez-Murillo said the group will also perform dances that are traditional to the state of Jalisco.

Nuñez-Murillo said she appreciates her culture and the traditions that go along with it. She also said the Fowler event will allow the groups to expose the UCLA community to the variety of cultures that is present on campus.

“We always hope to teach others about our culture and hear similarities between their culture and ours,” Nuñez-Murillo said.