Shake those maracas!

Young Chang

FAIRGROUNDS -- Jose Hernandez got a call Tuesday just hours before a

phone interview with the press.

It was good news. Unprecedented too.

“They told me we’re the first mariachi [group] in history to get a

[Latin] Grammy nomination,” said Hernandez, leader of the Mariachi Sol de

Mexico group and musical director of the Fiesta Del Mariachi, which will

take place at the Orange County Fair on Sunday. “I knew it was in the

preliminaries, but now they’ve named the five finalists.”

The honor tributes more than just a group of mariachi players,

Hernandez said.

A recent story in the Los Angeles Times posed the question, is

recorded mariachi music -- the authentic kind and not “pop” mariachi -- a

dying breed in terms of record labels?

The answer to this question is a sad affirmative, said Hernandez, with

the rise of music that is a mix of genres and labeled “pop mariachi.”

But live mariachi, with its fiestas, loyal fans and performers, is

still alive despite the music’s increasing absence from the mainstream

label world, he said.

“Mariachi’s a phenomenon,” Hernandez said. “There are loyal fans very

much like country music fans. They follow you everywhere, and mariachi

music is the second most important thing in Mexico after the flag.”

Mariachi Sol de Mexico’s recent Latin Grammy nomination for best

ranchero album suggests that the tradition is anything but dying out as a

genre.

“After the military suit, the mariachi suit is the second most

important suit in Mexico. People see it, and they feel so proud.

Especially the second and third generations that listen to it,” Hernandez

said.

Mariachi stems back 125 years in his family lineage. He is a fifth

generation mariachi musician who leads the Mariachi Sol de Mexico in

regular performances at the Cielito Lindo Restaurant in South El Monte.

The group’s credits include eight albums, recent tours in North Korea and

China, and six performances in past years at the fair.

Hernandez is also making sure the tradition trickles down to his own

children, because it’s important to this international music figure that

the art stay alive.

Even women and children are jumping aboard his cause.

Mariachi Reyna, America’s first all-female mariachi group which will

also perform at the Orange County Fair, is another example of the Mexican

musical genre surviving with the times.

Traditionally a male-dominated art, some conservative men didn’t

support the group when it first formed seven years ago.

“But what happens now is it’s a little more indirect and more hidden,”

said member Judith Kamel, a student at UCLA. “You get a lot of comments

that are flattering, but condescending. But people are definitely more

tolerant now.”

And the Mariachi Cobras de Jalisco, a group of mariachi children also

to appear at the fair, won a Disneyland mariachi competition two years

ago.

“It’s a very strong force,” Hernandez said of the mariachi style. “The

passion behind the music is incredible. It transcends generations.”

FYI

What: Fiesta Del Mariachi Day

When: Noon to 10 p.m. Sunday

Where: Grandstand Arena at the Orange County Fair, 88 Fair Drive,

Costa Mesa

Cost: Free with general admission to fair, which is $7

Call: (714) 708-3247