The folk music of Veracruz rocks Santa Ana

Unless you’re from Veracruz, Mexico, or a historian of Mexican music, the songs emanating from the Mexican Cultural Center in Santa Ana might be something of a mystery. Although Latin American in flavor, the melodies and rhythms aren’t typical folkloric music, mariachi or trios romanticos.

The dozen or so musicians are playing son jarocho, a 400-year-old Mexican genre that blends indigenous, Spanish and African styles into foot-stomping, hand-clapping songs often with ad-libbed lyrics.

Five years ago, several Santa Ana High School students formed the band Son del Centro after becoming intrigued by a genre that even their immigrant parents knew little about.

Since then, Son del Centro has become one of a handful of bands in Southern California to specialize in the son jarocho style, giving the musicians a part in preserving a Mexican tradition that has struggled to survive outside the rural sections of Veracruz.

In doing so, the band has also added to Mexican culture in Santa Ana, which is often in surprisingly short supply despite the large immigrant population, many locals say.

“We could have played the guitar. We could have had a [rock] band. But coming together to learn son jarocho was more than that,” said Luis Sarmiento, one of the founding members of Son del Centro. “We are preserving a culture and building community.”

The nonprofit group, which now includes college students and professionals, also appears on weekends in plazas in downtown Santa Ana, at the farmers market, at immigrant festivities and immigrant rights demonstrations. Its earnings -- from concerts and CD sales -- pay a good chunk of the Mexican Cultural Center’s monthly $7,000 rent.

None of the band members are from Veracruz, but that doesn’t really matter, said Robert Garfias, an ethnomusicologist at UC Irvine, adding that groups such as Son del Centro were helping to lead a revival of son jarocho.

“There is a renaissance of the music from Veracruz,” he said. Young people “are no doubt still playing mariachi, but son jarocho is for those who want to get a little closer to the roots of Mexico. It’s less flashy than mariachi and less stereotypical. There’s a certain purity and beauty to it.”

The group plays with several instruments from Veracruz, including the jarana, a small guitar-shaped, eight-string instrument that plays rhythm; the requinto, a small, six-string guitar-like instrument that plays melody; and the leona, a bass guitar. Percussion includes a tambourine and the beating of a box, which is not a part of traditional son jarocho.

In some numbers, women in folkloric dresses dance in front of the musicians.

Ad-libbed lyrics invoke the social justice activism found in Woody Guthrie songs, though they are sung in an elegant Spanish analogous to the formal English found in the King James Bible. The most famous son jarocho song, “La Bamba,” is more than 300 years old and remade in a rock ‘n’ roll version by Ritchie Valens in 1958.

The band members’ desire to preserve the style led them to teach it to others for free at the Mexican Cultural Center, with weekly classes for children and adults.

It also took them back to the roots of son jarocho in Veracruz, where they have established friendships with Mexican musicians and invited visitors to Santa Ana.

Their passion has them playing concerts throughout Southern California, including a nearly sold-out show earlier this month for a Day of the Dead celebration at the 700-seat Yost Theatre in Santa Ana.

The band’s rhythmic beat drew a crowd of people mostly in their 20s but included nostalgic, older onlookers who praised the group for bring- ing Mexican culture to Santa Ana.

Merchant Sam Romero and downtown store owners have long questioned the city’s focus on turning itself into an art district. They want more Mexican-themed activities, and Romero said he hoped events such as the Son del Centro concert would be a springboard for others.

Filling the Yost Theatre “is like a homecoming,” Romero said. “For so many years, I have wanted to see more cultural events like this in our downtown.”

The next day, Son del Centro was again drawing people downtown as it performed in a festival commemorating Day of the Dead. More than 1,000 people went downtown to hear the music and view homemade altars -- including photographs, letters and favorites foods -- that honored the departed.

“We really like playing the music, but for us, it’s also about activism, educating people about our culture. It really is a bond between us,” said Jesus Gutierrez, an engineer who began performing with the band because he wanted to be part of community activism.

Juan Ruiz, 21, a student at Cal Poly Pomona, recently learned to play the jarana at the suggestion of a friend.

“I just never stopped coming,” he said. “I fell in love with the whole package. It was the music, a lost art form and a community.”

--

jennifer.delson@latimes.com