Musician aims to preserve art of mariachi

Multi-instrumentalist and singer Nati Cano has rarely rested in
his 42-year career with his mariachi band, Los Camperos. Now the
71-year-old native of Mexico, who will be playing with his band
this weekend at the Getty, says he’s retired ““ from
work but not from art.

Through his hard work over the years, Cano has become widely
recognized for bringing the music of rural Mexico to the concert
halls of the United States and helping it gain acknowledgement as
an art form.

“Mariachi has become a form of self-expression,”
Cano said in Spanish. “Los Camperos have been leaders in
raising mariachi to an artistic level.”

But in this transformation, Cano has been careful not to change
the core of this folk tradition, which originated in the towns of
western Mexico, including his birth place, Jalisco.

“Mariachi expresses the sentiment of the pueblo, the
Mexican community,” Cano said. “Mariachi is used for
all types of occasions. If you’re happy, you sing, expressing
your happiness through song. But you can cry with music as
well.”

Above all, he said that mariachi is great accompaniment for
dancing. “Dancing and mariachi are like a hamburger and some
fries,” said Cano jokingly. “They complement each
other.”

Cano expressed that it has been important to him to expand the
presence of mariachi music in the United States and bring this art
form to a non-Latino audience. With this idea in mind, Los Camperos
performs several times a week at its “home base” in
downtown, a restaurant called La Fonda, which they founded in 1969.
The idea behind La Fonda was to be a dinner/theater venue to
showcase mariachi in a concert setting and to welcome an audience
of all ethnic heritages.

Although Cano considers himself retired, his band continues to
play without his company four nights a week at La Fonda.

Nevertheless, Cano still takes the stage quasi-regularly to do
performances that he considers good promotion for mariachi. And his
appearances do not go unappreciated: Saturday and Sunday’s
shows are sold out.

Cano has had a number of successes during his career with Los
Camperos, including the release of five albums, a collaboration
with pop singer Linda Ronstadt and a live performance in front of
former President Clinton.

He considers one of his biggest successes to be 2003’s PBS
show, “Mariachi: The Spirit of Mexico,” which televised
Los Camperos’s live performance in Guadalajara, Mexico. He is
proud of the large American audience it reached, and he hopes that
it helped those unfamiliar with the music appreciate mariachi as an
art form.

Having studied classical music for years, Cano is fond of
arranging classical melodies with mariachi instrumentation. Cano
mentioned two recent concerts in which Los Camperos performed
“Ave Maria” and “The Nutcracker Suite” in
the mariachi style.

“(The growth of mariachi into an art form) is like a
moving train,” Cano said with a smile. “It can’t
stop now. The train may break down or run out of gas, but we just
fill it up and keep on going.”

Los Camperos perform Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.
at the Getty Center. Los Camperos play Thursday-Sunday at La Fonda
Restaurant, 2501 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. Call (213) 380-5055
for more information.