DESCRIPTION:
"Companeros" is one of the pieces that plays at the Day of the Dead Festival in Year 1. The name roughly means "comrades" and alludes to Salvador and his Lost Souls' Alliance, since the festival takes place right above LSA headquarters. To me, all of the traditional folk-sounding music in the game somehow connects to the LSA or to the Temple in Year 4, either as Music of the People or as sacred music. The style is a sort of blend between rural folk music and the sounds of a Mexican mariachi band. To get inspiration and understanding of this kind of music, I did a lot of listening, both to recordings of Mexican folk tunes, and to live mariachis.

San Francisco has an area called the Mission District which has an incredible mix of Latin and Anglo-American cultures. Depending on the club you walk into, you can hear live swing, salsa, modern jazz, acid jazz, punk rock, folk, blues and mariachi bands nearly any night of the week. Most of the musicians who played on the Grim Fandango sound track either live in the Mission District and play these clubs regularly, or were found through contacts I made there. The mariachi musicians who perform in "Companeros" are among these. The band includes trumpet, violin, guitar, a small tenor guitar-like instrument called the vihuela, as well as a beautiful bass guitar called the guitaron.

-Peter McConnell

Grim Fandango is © Lucasarts