Tombstone Trumpet
Company
Presents
The " El Mariachi "
Miguel Martinez Signature Model Trumpet
Named for the Famous Miguel Martinez,
Considered to be the greatest Mariachi Trumpet
Player of all time!!
His name is engraved on the bell of the trumpet in
honor of his many accomplishments in Mariachi
music, including Playing, Composing, Songwriting
and Teaching Mariachi Music!
Miguel
Martinez
WHEN I WAS invited to interview Mexican composer, arranger and performer
Miguel Martínez, I was giddy with anticipation. Martínez's notoriety as one of
the chief architects of mariachi music as we now know it kicked into high gear
with his original solo trumpet work with Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán at the
dawn of the 1940s. Before Martínez, most mariachis played a simple, predictable
folk music, primarily showcasing only string instruments such as harp, guitar,
guitarrón, vihuela (a small, high-pitched guitar) and violin. Martínez's
exquisite horn blowing changed all that.
The 1940s initiated the
Golden Age of mariachi music, when phonograph, cinema and radio helped launch
the regional music of Jalisco to international fame. For the next two decades,
immortal stars of traditional Mexican ranchera music emerged, including Jorge
Negrete and Pedro Infante. As heard in more than 120 Mexican films--many now
considered classics--Martínez's improvised solo trumpet counterpoint became a
trademark sound behind the voices of Negrete, Infante and dozens of other stars,
affirming his standing as the leader of innovative sounds.
At 75, Martínez is
still considered one of the giants of Mexican music. He continues to practice
his trumpet daily and recently finished composing a huapango--a folk song
type from the Huastecan region of Mexico--dedicated to the city of San José,
which will be performed at this weekend's fifth annual San José International
Mariachi Festival and Conference.
"I wanted to
dedicate a song to San Jose for all the attention and hospitality the people
have given me," he says in Spanish with a winning smile. Although his home
base is in Tlanepantla, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Martínez is currently
an artist in residence at Villa Montalvo, and he is working on new compositions
and teaching special classes at San Jose State University, including this
weekend's workshops.
MARTÍNEZ FIRST became fascinated with music when he was 12 years old. At
that time, in the 1930s, there were very few mariachis in Mexico City. There
was, however, one group in his neighborhood that would stroll from cantina to
cantina performing for any patron who would pay. "I would stand outside the
door and listen, because they wouldn't let me in," he recalls. "When
they noticed my interest, they told me to learn the trumpet because it was a
novelty in the mariachi."
Unfortunately, that
novelty act didn't fare well in the beginning. In many cases, the mariachis that
Martínez played with had trouble getting hired because they had a
trumpet player. And if they did get a gig, it was often because every other
mariachi in town was booked, and then Martínez would frequently be asked not to
play.
"It was an
experiment in a period that was uncertain," he says. "It [the
evolution] could have just as easily gone the other way." Fortunately, it
didn't, and Martínez's trumpet playing sparked a new generation of sound that
defines mariachi music today: a pair of horns lending its staccato lines to a
melodic weave of strings, guitar, vihuela and voices.
Now, Martínez says, he
is looking ahead to the next generation for someone to add a new rung to the
ladder of mariachi's evolution, but he has yet to find such a person.
Some argue that
mariachis such as Mariachi Sol de México de José Hernández are part of that
next generation, but Jonathan Clark, an instructor/historian of mariachi at
San Jose State University, is not convinced.
"Relatively few
mariachi recordings are being made today, and most of those can be classified as
'cover' versions of old standards, simple permutations of traditional formulas,
or fusions based on inspiration from other genres," he says. "None of
the aforementioned is true innovation."
Indeed, the mariachi
scene in the United States presently has more vitality than in Mexico. There is
only one yearly event in Mexico comparable to the mariachi festivals and
workshops held in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Colorado, and it
was only three years back that the "Encuentro Internacional del
Mariachi" was founded in Guadalajara.
"The bulk of what
people ask for are old songs from the golden era," Clark says. "It's
amazing how many incarnations there are of these old songs. They are the bread
and butter, the meat and potatoes, of mariachi music today. Even pop singers are
doing contemporary versions of mariachi standards."
ALTHOUGH THE 1940s and '50s may have been the golden age of mariachi and
the period in which many songs became standards, Martínez cites the '50s and
'60s--the heyday of Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán--as his favorite era. At that
time, Mariachi Vargas was traveling worldwide, says Martínez, who remembers
performing for Winston Churchill, Aly Khan and Luis Mariano, among others. He
even performed at the White House for President Eisenhower.
Miguel Martínez is considered the greatest mariachi trumpet player of all
time. In the early 1940s, he became the first trumpeter to join Mariachi
Vargas de Tecalitlán, the group he would play with for almost three decades,
and where he would set the standard by which all future solo mariachi trumpet
performances would be compared. During an absence from Vargas in the early
1950s, Martínez joined the newly-organized Mariachi México de Pepe Villa,
where he popularized the modality of two trumpets in mariachi music.
In addition to being the most influential instrumentalist in the history of
mariachi music, Miguel Martínez is an important composer and songwriter. His
instrumental compositions include mariachi standards like Café Colón, Teatro
Principal, La Chuparrosa, Las Cotorras, Capetillo, and Azul Cielo. His songs
have been recorded by Pedro Infante, Lola Beltrán, Javier Solís, Charro
Avitia, Hermanas Padilla, and Hermanas Huerta, among others. With an
illustrious career spanning over half a century, the legendary Miguel
Martínez continues to perform and is a frequent clinician at mariachi
festivals and conferences.