My Mexican Mid-Life Crisis

After Jeya and I – reluctantly – left the wedding calenda, we walked to a small beer/mezcal/coffee spot called Ciudadania in a funky neighborhood in the hills of the city. She said we were meeting some of her friends who were gathering to play “son jarocho.” Jeya, who has spent a lot of time in Oaxaca, was playing cruise director and I was just along for the ride, so I was game for whatever. I had no clue what son jarocho was but it turns out it is the best thing in music ever.

Son jarocho is a style of Mexican regional folk music from Veracruz, a state on the Gulf of Mexico. From Wikipedia: “It represents a fusion of indigenous (primarily Huastecan), Spanish, and African musical elements, reflecting the population which evolved in the region from Spanish colonial times. Lyrics include humorous verses and subjects such as love, nature, sailors, and cattle breeding that still reflect life in colonial and 19th century Mexico. Verses are often shared with the wider Mexican and Hispanic Caribbean repertoire and some have even been borrowed from famous works by writers of the Spanish “Siglo de Oro“. It is usually performed by an ensemble of musicians and instruments which collectively are termed a “conjunto jarocho“. Son jarocho is often played only on jaranas and sung in a style in which several singers exchange improvised verses called décimas, often with humorous or offensive content.”

The dancing that accompanies the music is called “zapateado.” From a UC Riverside course syllabus: “Zapateado is intricate, percussive dancing that occurs on top of a wooden platform known as a tarima. Dancers stomp, strike, pause, slide, and shuffle their feet in rhythmic syncopation to the son, or music connected to zapateado. Zapateado is a fundamental element of the fandango which is a gathering of musicians, singers, and dancers in son jarocho culture.”

Those are the educated takes. My uneducated take is that it is the best thing in music ever.