Soledad en masa

My Macbook arrived yesterday with everything that I ordered PLUS a free printer. That made my day. I’m so happy that I got a new printer with a laptop.

I’ve been looking into different blogging sites (chiefly Los Angeles and Boston) on the Metroblogging website and I found that almost all of them are boring in comparison to Los Angeles’. No site compares to Los Angeles in the number of daily posts or comments.

Los Angeles > all.

I’m going up to the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend. I get to see my paternal grandfather and uncles. I’m excited about going. I have books lined up to read on the the drives to and from San Francisco: The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene and El cartel by Jesus Blancornelas.

Watch this video and honestly tell me that you did not feel like dancing to Juan Gabriel’s amazing music.

This Tuesday I graduated from high school. I don’t feel sad or anything; I think that’s because I knew that on Wednesday I’d hang out with people from my high school and that Thursday night is Grad Nite, so I’d see almost everyone from my high school on Thursday. I have not cried, only smiled. I’m happy.

Yesterday I went to my friends’ graduation at South East High School and nearly began to choke up there, for some reason. They are all in my mariachi; I think it’s because I’ll miss them dearly when I am at Harvard. So it goes.

You can see the graduation photos here.

I have to attend a mariachi meeting at 12 to decide the future of Mariachi Espuela de Plata. Since most of us graduated, we have to talk about what’s going to happen to the mariachi after high school. I’m leaving to Harvard, Gladys is leaving to Humboldt State, and Angie Arciga will attend UC San Diego. The other five are staying in LA and attending community colleges (except for Thomas, who is going to Long Beach State), or in Jose’s case, finishing high school (he’s going to start his junior year at Warren High in Downey). Angie says she can commute every weekend to play with the mariachi, but I really believe she’ll stop doing that once she gets into the college life. I don’t blame her.

I haven’t found a replacement for myself and neither has Gladys. We know of a few people from Huntington Park High School, but they’re about to start their senior year. They will most likely leave soon, so it’s not worth it to ask them to join our mariachi group.

Eddie is filling in a lot with Mariachi Alma del Sol.

I think Juan will get really involved in work and might join the Armed Forces, like his older brother, or move to Washington and join a police force, like his older sister.

Thomas will get into school and work.

JJ will hopefully do well at ELACC and transfer to USC. He might join the USC Marching Band; he knows one of the assistant directors and plays the trumpet very well.

Who knows what the future holds for us. Only wait and see.

Summer is just around the corner, and with it comes new weather and, naturally, new music. Last summer I listened to a lot of Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán songs, which helped me enjoy that summer even more.

My summer soundtrack looks a bit like this:

“Palomas que andan volando” Antonio Aguilar
“Chapala” Vicente Fernández
“Palabra de rey” Vicente
“Hermosisimo lucero” Chalino Sánchez
“Pescadores de Ensenada” Chalino
“Contrabando en la frontera” Chalino
“Querido amigo” Saúl Viera “El gavilancillo”
“Máquina 501″ Los 4 de Arranque
“Durango, Durango” Francisco “Charro” Avitia
“El corrido de Santa Amália” Francisco “Charro” Avitia
“Mi casa nueva” Los Invasores de Nuevo León
“El Espinazo del Diablo” Los Tigres del Norte
And anything played/backed by a banda sinaloense. It’s classic summer music for me.

My question to you is: what is your summertime soundtrack?

Thanks to Cindylu for posing this question on her blog.

When I began junior high in 2000 at South Gate Middle School, I had no idea how much my life would change during those three years pivotal to my future. I was only mildly interested in joining the mariachi there; my parents pushed me to join so I could play with my paternal grandfather (the only grandfather I have known) and be the only one of his descendants who played mariachi music. I agreed to join South Gate Middle School’s Mariachi Juvenil Amanecer (I didn’t know we had a name until the 8th grade) and everything since then has been a whirlwind. I joined at the beginning of the sixth grade and made a few friends in the mariachi.

At the beginning, I mostly spoke to people older than me because I felt I fit in with them; I soon became pals with Marcos (who, to this day, is insanely cool), Christine, and others. I felt I somehow fit in with them. I also met JJ, who I thought was in the seventh grade, but was actually in the sixth grade, like me, but he was just tall. I kept it cool with them, played my music, and went home.

The mariachi instructor was Mr. Frank Lemus, who was in charge of the whole music department: marching band (of which I was a member; electric bass guitar for concerts and bass drum for parades), orchestra, jazz band (electric guitar and electric bass guitar, seventh and eighth grade), and mariachi (guitar, sixth through eighth grade); he was the only teacher I have ever had for three straight years and taught us well. He taught me a lot of how mariachis perform, what they should do, how the music should be performed, not played, and other little things which improved all of us a lot, both musically and personally.

Through the middle school mariachi, we had a lot of chances to experience mariachi outside the school; we performed once at Cielito Lindo, the restaurant of Mariachi Sol de México; a number of times in front of the LAUSD Board of Directors; at the Hollywood Bowl in 2003 for the Mariachi USA Festival (we were part of the opening act and I nearly fell off the stage), and was part of the 2003 Tucson International Mariachi Conference.

After attending Tucson (as we mariachi refer to it), I became a founding member of Mariachi Juvenil Espuela de Plata, one of three mariachi groups that have come out of Mr. Lemus’s mariachi programs at schools; the others are Mariachi Alma del Sol, which was formed by members of Mariachi Juvenil Amanecer 2000 graduates, and Mariachi Alma de Los Angeles, which formed out of Mr. Lemus’ mariachi program at some middle or high school he once taught in the El Sereno area of Los Angeles in the mid-1990s. There may be more mariachi groups, who knows. It’d be interesting to learn of more.

We graduated, left South Gate Middle School for South Gate High School in 2003, and by the end of the 2003-2004 school year, Mr. Lemus had been transferred to Huntington Park High School, where he started another mariachi, which did not flourish because high school students are too dogged and rebellious to sit down and practice at the level that Mr. Lemus always demanded of middle school students. South Gate High School was able to restart its mariachi group in 2004, but that venture ended in 2005 when the mariachi instructor decided to change to a school nearer to his home in Riverside, but Mariachi Espuela de Plata remained strong, maybe stronger.

Yesterday was the first time I saw Mr. Lemus in about three years; I had mariachi practice at Huntington Park High School with him and others who graduated from South Gate Middle School in 2003 because he wants to get all of us together for one final performance before we graduate high school and move on with our lives (college, work, etc.). We will perform tomorrow at the Radisson Hotel near USC (a member of tomorrow’s mariachi, Gaby Martinez, will live in next year while she attends USC) for a function put on by LAUSD District 6 to honor parents; the mainstay of most District 6 parent functions has been a mariachi group from the city of South Gate. We will all get together at Huntington Park High School in the morning tomorrow and leave to perform. We will be back in HP High by the time school ends, yet I have the feeling I (and everyone else) will stay after school and practice for hours, most likely.

It will be bittersweet, to say the least. This will probably be the last time I perform with most of the people in the mariachi, for most of the people at the function, and the last time I see Mr. Lemus, the man who heavily influenced me and allowed me to find something at once so personal and yet so public: mariachi music.