I want to talk today about Los Cenzontles, an organization that makes music, films, videos, art, and wonderful people. But first, a slight detour.
Part of my mission at Music Sin Fronteras is to tell my readers things they may not know. I don’t mean facts and figures or even new singers and music, although I do that. But the “soul” of different kinds of music from different peoples and places.
Because I am in Mexico, and was raised in Los angles, which used to be Mexico, I focus a lot on that country. We were taught in school that the history of the US, beings in 1620 when the Pilgrims landed (west coast schools gave us a little Mexican and pre-Cortez history, but mostly about missionaries “civilizing” native tribes in California). But the Spanish were colonizing the western part of the continent 100 years earlier and the culture they encountered , unlike what the Pilgrims found, was 3000 years old, with vast cities, pyramids greater than Egypt’s , and sophisticated music that used wind and percussion instruments and even a stringed slit drum.
Much of the music in Mexico originated in the Veracruz area. Spanish settlers brought guitars, lutes, and harps, and European melodies and dances such as the fandango. Meanwhile, enslaved Africans contributed complex rhythms, syncopation, and percussion instruments.Indigenous peoples of the region, particularly the Nahua and Popoluca, added their own rhythmic patterns and vocal traditions, resulting in a mestizaje—a cultural blending—that is uniquely Veracruzano.
Two of the most celebrated musical genres to emerge from this cultural fusion are son jarocho and huapango. Son jarocha has lively rhythms, improvisational singing, and the distinctive instruments like the jarana, requinto, arpa jarocha, and a donkey jawbone.Huapango is marked by its 3/4 or 6/8 time signatures, falsetto singing, and signature instruments, including a European violin.Both genres are performed at community gatherings known as fandangos, where music, poetry, and dance intertwine. A key element in both son jarocho and huapango is the zapateado, a percussive dance performed on a wooden platform, derived from the Spanish flamenco
The ”soul” of this music is authentic, human-scaled. Its value is not in numbers of streams or sales, but in its power to pull together communities and transmit traditions. It has been called “the music of the people”, but I think that diminishes it. I think a better way to understanding it is as the heartbeat of a culture.
If you go to Spotify (I know, I said the value is not of streams) and find Los Cenzontles , you can ,listen to that heartbeat. Los Cenzontles, whose name means “The Mockingbirds” in Nahuatl, is actually a Mexican-American cultural arts academy, media production studio and music group. Based in San Pablo, California. It was founded in 1989 by musician and educator Eugene Rodriguez to connect local youth with their Mexican heritage through music and dance. They have ended up connecting all of us.
They have produced hundreds of songs, over 30 albums, films, music videos and even a book. They have played with Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, the Chieftains, Los Lobos, Ry Cooder Taj Mahal and many others. And they have figured out how to do all of that and keep their authentic soul. Their latest release, “Paloma Negra”, follows their 2023 Son Con Son, En El Suelo Americano album, brings you this sound, sometimes a bit strange to the ear, but always sweet to the heart.
Their music is far more that the notes and lyrics; it is the energy that flows among the musicians, the students, the community they have built and serve, which reaches back into the Spanish contact 100 years before the Pilgrims, and to the civilizations that predated that by 3000 years. Listen to “Paloma Negra” and Son Con Son, En El suelo Americano with an open ear and curious mind.
And you might take a look at their new book, Bird of 400 Voices, and one of their films, Linda and the Mockingbirds, with Linda Ronstadt.
Patrick O’Heffernan