Musicians from around the world will meet this Wednesday at the International Mariachi Meeting in Guadalajara to defend the most traditional Mexican regional genre and honor illustrious figures of the country, such as muralists.
The general director of the International Mariachi and Charrería Meeting, Carlos Mateos, told EFE that during the next editions they will continue with the tributes to illustrious figures of Mexican history, such as Diego Rivera or Frida Kahlo, to enrich the program of activities of this festival.
The event will take place from August 23 to September 4 in Jalisco, the state in western Mexico where the musical genre was born.
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“Our intention is to spread our culture through mariachi music, but also to spread our essence as people from Jalisco and Mexico. And what better way to show these illustrious men? We are already planning the staging for 2025,” he commented.
In the last concert of this meeting, the mariachis paid tribute to the muralist José Clemente Orozco with a symphony orchestra, theater and music.
The life and work of the painter inspired the staging ‘José Clemente Orozco. The man of fire’, which brought together 70 artists in a play with music composed especially for the occasion, the director of the play, Allen Vladimir, explained to EFE.
“I was not against any current, I spent years studying light and in our case (we thought): How can we transfer those images to music? You will see choreographies, but also some arias that express the feeling (that I had): I am an artist and the most important thing for me is to express,” he said.
He explained that the work is based on Vladimir’s research among his murals, but also on the painter’s own stories, on interviews and publications of people who were close to him or had something to say about him.
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On a stage that simulated the scaffolding for making murals, a performance group recalled passages from Orozco’s life from his childhood contact with the cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada, his classes with the painter Gerardo Murillo, ‘Dr. Atl’ or his time as a scathing cartoonist during the Mexican Revolution.
Dancers and student actors from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Guadalajara campus, brought the colors and movement that characterize Orozco’s painting to the stage to celebrate the legacy of Mexican culture.
The painting is “a poem and nothing more,” sang a tenor impersonating Orozco who “reproduced” his most iconic works painted in various venues in Mexico on a large screen in the middle of the stage.
The chords of Mariachi Nuevo Tecalitlán put the finishing touch to the staging in an ensemble with the Zapopan Symphony Orchestra, with the intense red of the fresco ‘El hombre de fuego’, Orozco’s most famous, as a backdrop.
Source: cronista