Culture
is what has provided working class Mexicans the resilience to sustain
themselves through centuries of neglect and abuse. The fortunate
immigrant communities in the U.S. are able to maintain and continue
traditions from their specific ancestral regions. Traditional culture
involves active participation from all ages and connect generations as
families negotiate dramatic changes to their lives and navigate their
future.
This brief video provides an intimate glimpse of a traditional huapango (musical
dance) held at the Marin City Recreational Center hosted by members of
the community from a region of Guanajuato, Mexico, with a rich tradition
of huapango arribeño and son huasteco. Thousands of
people from this region have settled in the Bay Area since the 1970’s
and began producing regular community dances in the past seven years.
This
song features Bay Area based group Tradición de la Sierra with elder
troubadour Pedro Sauceda Diaz visiting from San Luís Potosí. These
events often raise funds for causes related to their pueblo of Xichú,
Guanajuato, or to support community members in need. This event raised
funds for Los Cenzontles Academy at which many of their San Pablo,
Richmond and San Rafael Canal District based children have attended for
many years.
The musical form presented here, almost unknown to people from outside the region, is called huapango arribeño (highlands
huapango) that are played in three parts and can easily last 15 to 20
minutes depending on the poet and the dancers. The instrumentation is
two violin with two folk guitars - the jarana huasteca and the huapanguera.
This video, created by our production team, features Don Pedro reciting three decimas (ten
line poems) out of the five that form the first part of the song – in
other words, just a small part of the entire piece. But we wanted to
share this glimpse into this community gathering to demonstrate the
power of living cultural traditions that unify and fortify our diverse,
and often invisible, Mexican communities.
