The Fine Art of Mariachi : POP MUSIC REVIEW : Fifth Annual Festival Celebrates Bolero Tradition, Female Musicians

Can “Mariachi USA” and the mariachis themselves get any better than this? Saturday’s masterful production at the Hollywood Bowl demonstrated that those involved with the annual event keep rising to the occasion and taking mariachi music to new heights.

Marking its fifth year, the festival has expanded to two nights, and on Saturday the near-capacity audience witnessed a nonstop, spectacular display of a music that is increasingly being treated as a fine art rather than easy-to-digest music for the masses.

Musically, the show was more romantically oriented than previous more festive editions, but it wasn’t more mellow. In an ambitious tribute to the golden era of Mexico’s bolero trios of the 1940s and ‘50s, an army of musicians from all of the show’s participating mariachis joined the Mariachi USA Symphony and the MUSA Ballet.

Preceding that bolero set came Mariachi Sol de Mexico, led by the festival’s musical director, Jose Hernandez, and clearly the crowd’s favorite. Confirming its unofficial status as the finest mariachi in the United States, Sol de Mexico offered another impressive performance.

Typifying its experimental approach, the group did its mandatory rendition of “New York, New York,” and, in the spirit of the last year’s rap segment, featured a group member dancing like a poor-man’s John Travolta, moonwalking like Michael Jackson and duck-stepping like Chuck Berry. Hardly pure mariachi, but the joke was short enough to not further antagonize the traditionalists who claim that Hernandez goes too far and endangers the essence of mariachi.

But the most interesting part of “Mariachi USA ‘94” was the singers, who could easily support a whole separate festival. Saturday’s show was a seedbed of potential ranchera stars, starting with the Mariachi Heritage Society students, whose Rosalva Lepe, 14; sister Ana Maria, 10, and high-pitched brother Jose Luis, 6, earned the evening’s first standing ovation. The Long Beach threesome indicated that mariachi is going to stay around for a while.

Well-regarded Monica Trevino, a singer and violinist for Mariachi Los Camperos, made a successful solo singing debut backed by Orange County’s Mariachi Tlaquepaque. Acclaimed ranchera singer Aida Cuevas, backed by Mariachi America, stopped the show with a ranchera medley that left the sense that “The Voice of Mexico” might be at her peak.

In fact, “MUSA ‘94” had an unusually strong female flavor. Besides Trevino and Cuevas, the powerful all-female Mariachi La Reyna de Los Angeles boldly destroyed the notion that women have no place in the mariachi world. Showing confidence, skills and aggressiveness, theirs was the best performance by a female orchestra in recent memory.