Tradition, connection at center of mariachi, traditional dance

MOSES LAKE — It’s an American tradition for people coming to the United States to bring their cultures with them. Ballet Folklorico founder Gabriela Ramirez said she started the troupe because she wanted to keep dancing the traditional Mexican way.

“It’s all about the passion I feel for the Mexican culture,” she said.

Ballet Folklorico Cielo de México, based in Pasco, showcases dances deeply rooted in Mexican tradition; Mariachi Huenachi is the mariachi group from Wenatchee High School and plays the music that’s an integral part of Mexican culture. Both groups performed at the Grant County Fair Saturday.

Her parents grew up with those dances, she said, and it’s a way to make them proud, and to commemorate her heritage.

“Traditional Mexican folkloric dance,” she said.

Each Mexican state has its own style, its own version of the dances and costumes. For Saturday’s performance the troupe chose the styles of the states of Colima, Vera Cruz and Sinaloa, Ramirez said.

Mariachi Huenachi director Eduardo Cortes said the fair was the group’s first public performance of the year - and the first performance ever for many of the students. For many of the seniors, it was the first performance in more than two years, after the discombobulations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Traditional songs are an important part of the repertoire of Mariachi Huenachi.

“Songs that Grandma, Grandpa, uncles, aunts, friends - everyone just knows, that have become very popular through iconic Mexican artists,” Cortes said.

Senior Adrian Rojas was one of the solo vocalists Saturday.

“What I sing, I feel like it comes from the heart,” he said.

There are changes from year to year depending on requests from the students, Cortes said.

“I’ve had students who really want to do more of a ballad, so I have to look and see what I can find,” he said. “And then sometimes students want to do a more modern (song) - maybe it wasn’t written for mariachi, but it was transcribed to be played by mariachi. So it just depends every year.”

Mariachi is a mix of violins, trumpets and other stringed instruments, including that big guitar with the deep body - well, hold on.

“It’s not a guitar. It’s a bass. It’s a guitarron,” said senior Gibson Tarr, who was playing it Saturday.

“It’s a musical ensemble, made up of five instruments,” Cortes said. “The trumpet is just a regular trumpet, regular violin and guitar. And what makes mariachi different is our guitarron, which is a bass, a six-string bass, and the vihuela, which is smaller compared to the guitar, five-string, and higher-pitched.”

Sophomore Yair Garcia explained how the players and instruments work together.

“The violins keep a melody, the guitars keep a beat,” he said.

The trumpets add another level.

“Sound is what we (the trumpets) are,” he said.

It takes four to six hours of practice per week to make it all work.

“It’s a team effort to make it sound good,” Garcia said.

Sophomore Delilah Cabrera said learning to work together is part of the group’s appeal.

“I like it that we are all kind of like a family,” she said.

The band members may tease each other, she said, but they also support each other.

“There are no bad relationships between us,” she said.

Cabrera and Rojas play the vihuela.

The dances performed by Ballet Folklorico feature dresses that are just as much a part of the dance as the dance steps. The embellishment on the dresses and the accessories that go with them all have meaning, Ramirez said.

All that fabric can get pretty heavy, and learning to manage the dress, make it work with the dancer, is part of the experience. But once the dancers learn, the dress isn’t heavy anymore, she said.

“Eventually it’s like a feather,” she said.

She started taking lessons in the dances in middle school, she said, at a Pasco church. When the church stopped giving lessons, she decided to start her own company. She teaches people of all ages, she said, starting at three years.

Mariachi Huenachi dates to the 1990s, Cortes said, and was the first high school mariachi program in Washington. Cortes is a WHS graduate and an alumnus of the group. His first lessons with the violin were in the classical repertoire, he said.

“I heard about mariachi. I knew what mariachi was, but then I heard there’s a mariachi class at the middle school, and I found that was a way to connect with my roots, I guess,” he said. “That’s the music that my parents grew up listening to, living in Mexico.”

Tarr said the music has an appeal that transcends its cultural significance - sometimes he listens to mariachi even when he’s not playing it.

“It’s the music. I really like the music,” he said.