DESCRIPTION:
A brief interview with members of Mariachi San Jose. .

Special thanks to the band members.

This video, recorded by Ashwin Kumar, is for Professor Keller's Music 104 class at Ohlone college.

----Main Interview Transcript---------

(0:18) Hi we're members of Mariachi San Jose and for those of you who don't know what mariachi music is, its um... its not that!

( 0:31) Well anyway, so mariachi music is a cultural identifier of Mexico. It's regional music, but within it, it has many sub genres as well. Characteristically, a mariachi typically has six violins, a special bass called the guitarron, a special guitar called a vihuela, and a regular classical guitar, and two trumpets. They are both B flat trumpets. What else... we play music from every part of Mexico, which is very diverse. You can identify the sound of mariachi but you can't really say that mariachis only play one genre in music. We play a lot of things and its[the music] its very diverse. We're a very young group. Most people think mariachi is like made up of older men and everything, but we're very young as you can see and we're women, and that's one of the newer things going on in mariachi that we're women, we're females who are playing and it's awesome, cuz[sic] we rock !

And yea, that's mariachi in a nutshell.

Question: So you guys play the violin?

Yup, yes we do.

Question: And then the guy in black plays the vivuela?

The vihuela. And I play the guitarron, the special bass. Yes.

Q: And then two trumpets right?

Two trumpets, yes.

Q: Are there usually any extra instruments with mariachi, like do they add other instruments?

Sometimes they use a harp, actually. Yes they use a harp sometimes. And that's usually the only other instrument they add to them. Sometimes an accordion is added, but that's to add texture to a specific type of song. It's not the usual thing to have, but in big concerts sometimes you'll sometimes have an accordion and a harp played[sic] like specific types of songs and genres. So..It's really cool.

( 2:39) And we always wear the outfits, called a... well they call it a mariachi traje or a charro traje and you will always see mariachis dresses like this, not particularly in this color. They can be in black, or green or red, pink. Whatever you want. Pretty much any color. You can look however you want... yes.. And in the summer it gets really hot, like you deal with it. And yea, do you still have any questions?

Interviewer: Alright, thank you. That's awesome, ok, thank you

No problem, you're welcome.

--end interview--