Mariachi USA’s Usual Fare, Plus Some Surprises

Eleven years after its inception, the annual Mariachi USA Festival at the Hollywood Bowl presents a serious challenge to its producers.

How do you keep a marathon show of this kind fresh, especially when the musical genre is characterized by a relative sameness of instrumentation and repertoire?

Producer and emcee Rodri Rodriguez overcame the challenge well in Saturday’s edition of the festival. Although the vigorous four-hour-plus show relied mostly on proven crowd pleasers, it still managed to offer a few surprises.

The revelation of the evening was the debut performance by Mariachi Mujer 2000, an 11-piece female ensemble co-founded by six former members of the Reyna de Los Angeles mariachi. The moniker is corny, but the group more than made up for that lapse with its array of powerful vocalists and keen ear for eclectic material.

Previous ensembles of the kind have demonstrated that the combination of female vocal harmonies and sweeping strings can sound celestial at times. Mujer 2000 took this aesthetic a step further with a modern sensibility that leaned toward the mainstream. The segment’s high point was “Dejame,” an exhilarating tidbit of vintage Latin pop, complete with crackling horn riffs and funky bass lines.

Returning from last year’s bill, mariachi Timothy Pollard was in rare form throughout his brief, three-song appearance. Hamming it up with some spontaneous tap-dancing, Pollard threw red roses to women in the audience during his impassioned delivery of “Loco.”

A more traditional approach was delivered by Jalisco’s Mariachi Guadalajara and Arizona’s Mariachi Cobre. Guadalajara explored the permutations of the bolero as it traveled between Cuba and Mexico on a medley of romantic songs. The group’s seven-part violin section gave the number an old-fashioned, nostalgic tinge. Cobre also looked back in time with an arresting homage to Mexico’s legendary vocal group Los Tres Ases.

Perhaps the evening’s chief disappointment came courtesy of the Los Angeles-based Mariachi Imperial, if only because the group repeated its trademark medleys of Vicente Fernandez and Juan Gabriel songs. The Gabriel segment in particular has grown tiresome because it relies on a humorless parody of the Mexican singer’s effeminate ways. Because it placed an emphasis on mockery instead of musicality, Imperial was unable to duplicate the sheer magic of Gabriel anthems such as the majestic “Te Sigo Amando.”