Mexican Americans in California possess a rich cultural history but first hand stories of their experiences are heard little in the general and educational media. Los Cenzontles Mexican Art Center (LCMAC) was established in 1994 as an urgent community effort to provide West Contra Costa County’s substantial population of Mexican American youth a viable medium for individual and community expression through traditional arts. The focus of LCMAC’s programming is the reinforcement of social/cultural context that has historically been the framework of traditional and popular arts. By integrating arts education with community activism, LCMAC has gained unparalleled access to Latino youth and has successfully re-engaged them in the cultural traditions of their ancestors. The result has been the creation of a model community-based arts center, a true Mexican pueblo that is enabling young people to create a collective voice and emerge as future tradition bearers. Los Cenzontles are poised to advocate for increased youth involvement in the exploration of cultural arts.

With support from the James Irvine Foundation Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center has embarked upon the “Cultures of México in California” project, a cultural preservation/awareness project that explores the changing role of roots music and dance in Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American communities in California.

The “Cultures of México in California” (CMC) project is an organic extension of the role that Los Cenzontles has played in researching and promoting rare musical traditions, aimed at entertaining and educating audiences nationwide, while providing youth with the tools for personal and group expression that are intrinsic to these traditional forms.

As consumer culture becomes progressively ubiquitous, especially in the targeting of children and teens through widespread corporate marketing campaigns, the importance of reclaiming cultural identity and the nurturing of self and community expression has become increasingly vital to societal health.

Over the past half century, a decline in participatory vernacular music and dance practiced in a relevant cultural context is emblematic of endemic changes in attitudes toward music throughout the world. In the past generation especially, the gap between cultural musical forms and the social contexts that bore them has widened, with regional variety and distinctiveness giving way to an increasingly universal style and a growingly passive relationship between music and community. The result has been a fundamental change in the role that music plays in community life: more people observing, fewer people actively participating, and widening gaps wedged between generations. With the decrease in direct participation in the performing arts, roots music that was once a powerful vehicle for interpersonal and community expression has become increasingly stylized and separated from its original social context. This is especially troublesome in an era in which the commercialization of musical culture has increased exponentially and youngsters are sold prepackaged identities via music videos and product tie-ins. In essence, the significance of music has shifted from a vehicle for exploration and self-definition to a vehicle for consumerism.

Up until the mid 20th century, regional traditional and vernacular music styles had been transmitted orally from generation to generation and integrated into communal life. Individual variation within traditional forms was infused with significance and fundamental value; music reflected the lives of the people who practiced it. With the evolution toward modern urban styles in the second half of the last century, however, the enhanced scope of mass media produced standardized styles and images that began to displace regional variation. Although this development is a natural result of technological evolution, we have lost the fundamental social relationship between music and community.

This trend towards urbanization, stylization, and elimination of cultural context for traditional arts is a global phenomenon. The increasingly commercial, generation-specific nature of contemporary popular music, while inevitable considering the globalization of corporate structures, has made the nurturing of regional vernacular music extremely challenging. In order to effectively revitalize and preserve cultural arts, one must reach out to youth in the community with a dynamic approach training and education. By deepening the understanding of cultural contexts in traditional arts, it is possible to wean youth from their identification with commercial cultural iconography and develop comprehensive training in and appreciation of regional artistic forms and their roles within society.

By utilizing cultural contexts and their evolution in relation to specific regional styles, the “Cultures of México in California” is engaging Mexicans and Mexican Americans in an examination of the changing role of traditions as they evolve on both sides of the border. Through its research into long forgotten repertoire with elder folk masters, Los Cenzontles is preserving valuable elements of Mexican roots music traditions, representing a broad array of expression and contributing to an increased understanding of the diversity of México’s cultural heritage. These traditions are being passed on to communities in California and México, with special attention given to children and youth.

Cultures of Mexico in California. For the pilot of this distinctive project in 2003, Los Cenzontles conducted a fascinating research project of the long-ignored rural mariachi repertoire from the state of Jalisco, México, and re-presented this tradition in a series of performances throughout the heartland of Jalisco, the cradle of the mariachi as well as California’s Central Valley. The project provoked a beautifully thoughtful series of interviews and performances of people both in Mexico and California that was documented by Mexican videographer Ricardo Braojos. The resulting one-hour educational film entitled, Pasajero: A Journey of Time and Memory, is an extraordinary look into the power and importance of traditional arts in the daily lives of people worldwide.

Pasajero: A Journey of Time and Memory is a one-hour documentary exploring the changing role of traditional arts in California and México. The film follows the young musicians of Los Cenzontles as they join veteran mariachi Julián González to México’s heartland in search of a deeper understanding of the country’s musical traditions. The group travels to nine Mexican cities as well as to five communities in California’s Central Valley with a musical presentation of the roots music of Jalisco – a gutsy little string ensemble and country-dancing which bears little resemblance to the modern mariachi. The film introduces us to unforgettable people who embody the wild spirit of old México and brings to life the untold story of the roots of the mariachi as told by the people who experienced this period first hand. In a day and age when music is presented to youth as yet another commercial commodity, Pasajero reminds us of the importance of engaging young people as active participants in their culture and the role that music and dance play in defining our identities.
During the 2nd to 4th years of the “Cultures of México in California,” Los Cenzontles will explore three additional regional styles of music and its impact on Californian life. These styles include:
Rural Son Jarocho of Southern Coastal Veracruz
Pirekuas and Sones of the Purepecha of Michoacan
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