After four songs full of guitar strumming, lively foot stamping and singing, Alfredo \u201cEl Godo\u201d Herrera of the band Pa\u2019Sumecha took a break from his set to remove his red neck cloth. While wiping the sweat from his face, hands and guitar, he laughed away his display of fatigue.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all this is not a job,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a culture, a community. This is my feeling tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first annual Son Jarocho Festival took place Aug. 16-19 at the Brava Theater, where artists like El Godo filled the Mission venue with the sounds of music from the Veracruz region of Mexico.<\/p>\n
The festival was well attended–according to organizer Camilo Landau, about 700 people came–but the sets still felt intimate. Traditional Jarocho<\/em> music is inherently a fusion–the complex history of Veracruz has led to overlapping Indian, Afro-Caribbean and Spanish influences. In recent years, Latino immigrants in the U.S. have begun experimenting with Jarocho<\/em> rhythms.<\/p>\n Friday night, Pa\u2019Sumecha and Quetzal took the stage to demonstrate two different approaches to La M\u00fasica Jarocha<\/em>. Pa\u2019Sumecha–visiting from Mexicali–worked typical instruments such as: the jarana<\/em>, a small eight-stringed Mexican guitar; the quijada<\/em>, a horse\u2019s jawbone hit with stick; and the marimbol<\/em>, a giant box with piano-like keys.<\/p>\n Many of the songs maintained a constant rhythm despite varying emotional content–from the yearning (\u201cpueblos desaparecidos \/ los jovenes se van\u201d) to the playful (\u201cyo me pele\u00e9 con la bruja\u201d).<\/p>\n In Veracruz, \u201cPa\u2019sumecha\u201d is an expression frequently used to suggest surprise or incredulity. Perhaps some of the sounds did surprise audience members–the singing was somewhat atonal and the jawbone sound unfamiliar.<\/p>\n But surprise gave way to delight as the barrier between artist and audience melted away. During a much-needed water break a woman in the audience said to El Godo, \u201cStop, or you might get drunk maestro.\u201d The audience laughed and he smiled enjoying his drink. Quetzal\u2019s sound was smoother than Pa\u2019sumecha\u2019s, and featured cello, violin, drums and electric guitar, in addition to jarana<\/em> and foot stamping. The real draw of Quetzal, though, was the voice of Martha Gonzalez.<\/p>\n Wearing a red rose and bright blue feathers in her short-cropped hair, Gonzalez clutched her loose white dress at the waist as she delivered her lines in a strong, perfect pitch.<\/p>\n Jarocho<\/em> musicians worry often about the danger of fusion–does mixture with other genres destroy tradition? So far, Quetzal seems to have struck the right balance. The festival demonstrated that Jarocho<\/em> music is not a museum display of folkloric tradition or an album recorded for the Smithsonian, but a living cultural form.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cWhether or not we have roots in Veracruz, the festival\u2019s done a really impressive job of showing both where Jarocho<\/em> has come from, and where it\u2019s going,\u201d said Alex Quintanilla, who was selling homemade Mexican jewelry at the festival.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After four songs full of guitar strumming, lively foot stamping and singing, Alfredo \u201cEl Godo\u201d Herrera of the band Pa\u2019Sumecha took a break from his set to remove his red neck cloth. While wiping the sweat from his face, hands and guitar, he laughed away his display of fatigue. \u201cFirst of all this is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":16334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[1799,1730,1727,1726],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-16253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia-en","tag-pasumecha","tag-quetzal","tag-san-francisco-son-jarocho-festival","tag-son-jarocho","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nQuetzal–a six-piece band from East L.A.–took the stage next playing what emcee Jose \u201cDr. Loco\u201d Cuellar, San Francisco State professor emeritus, called, \u201cJarocho music with a taste of postmodernity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAt the end, Los Cojolites and Pa\u2019sumecha joined Quetzal onstage for a delirious final fandango; Alejandra Gonzalez Machado (Pa\u2019sumecha) and Gonzalez sang and stamped their feet in harmony as the other musicians filled the theater with sound.
\nAmong the other events included were: a Thursday film screening of Son Siglos<\/em>, a documentary by Marco Villalobos about three Son Jarocho musicians; a Saturday concert by Los Cojolites, Andres Flores and Sistema Bomb; and musical workshops with the artists on Sunday.<\/p>\n