40 Years and Many Requests Later...

Could this be Nati Cano coming out of the kitchen of La Fonda, the celebrated Mexican restaurant he founded in 1969 as a first-class showcase for mariachi music? Could this stocky, disheveled figure belong to the man who has played for presidents on both sides of the border, performed in classy concert halls with symphony orchestras and toured with artists of the caliber of Miguel Aceves Mejia and Linda Ronstadt?

The man emerges in the semi-lighted dining room as tables are being set by his busy waiters, looking like the crew of a cruise ship in formal white jackets and bow ties. It’s the owner who looks like a laborer, his thin gray hair uncombed, wearing a green sweatshirt, loose jeans and huaraches.

“Me veo mal, pero vivo bien,” jokes Nati, as everybody knows him. “I look bad, but I live well.”

On this typical afternoon, Nati’s been busy carrying boxes and checking in deliveries, making sure his business gets what it orders. The week will only get busier as he prepares to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his Mariachi Los Camperos, La Fonda’s house band from the beginning. Ronstadt will help mark the occasion with a rare live performance during Los Camperos’ sold-out Christmas concert tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Warm and gentlemanly, Cano shows a visitor to a table in the closed restaurant. The customers will come soon, as they always have. But for now, La Fonda is filling with spirits as Cano reminisces about his life’s labor in this very building, a sturdy landmark on Wilshire Boulevard in a changing immigrant neighborhood near MacArthur Park.

Mariachi is Mexico’s foremost style of folk or country music, using trumpets, violins and guitars to create both sweet and spirited backing for powerful vocalists. But Cano was tired of the cheap cantinas where mariachis were forced to play for handouts, or the restaurants where careless musicians played sitting down because patrons were too busy talking or dancing to pay attention. As a child in Guadalajara, Mexico’s mariachi capital, Cano felt the sting of disrespect for music he learned from his father and his father’s father. They were three generations in a workingman’s mariachi with no name, roaming from bar to bar like pesky peddlers, shooed away from classier locations with a dismissive wave.

Of course it hurt, says Cano, who imitates the gesture with mock scorn etched on his features. But the painful feelings of discrimination also fueled his dream of creating a venue to elevate mariachi music to its rightful rank.

So in his restaurant, he put his mariachi on a platform facing the dining room. He points now to the original semicircular stage he built for performances, making the mariachi the main attraction. The dinner-theater concept was new then, but it has since been copied many times by other mariachis across Southern California.

“Nobody has been able to equal this place,” says Cano, proud of the many longtime employees who have stayed with him for as long as 30 years. “This place has charisma. It was built with a lot of love.”

La Fonda may seem like just another restaurant to motorists whizzing along Wilshire. But for generations it has stood as a mecca for good mariachi music, attracting tourists and locals who want a true taste of Mexican culture, immigrants who miss it, and Mexican Americans who recharge their roots from it.

Creating, and sustaining this cultural showcase have not been easy. But neither is the life of a mariachi. Says Cano, fond of citing sayings from his adopted country: “Como dicen en ingles? Freedom is not free.”

Natividad Cano was born in Ahuisculco, Jalisco, the third of eight children, the only mariachi in the brood. He studied the vihuela (a small mariachi rhythm guitar) under the tutelage of his stern father, who smacked the 7-year-old for mistakes and called him stupid. Two years later, he entered the Academia de Musica in Guadalajara to learn the violin, but he eventually dropped out to help his father support the family.

Working as a strolling mariachi at night was grueling, especially for a kid. When it got late and his father got tipsy, Cano would walk home alone, his vihuela strapped around his shoulder, his fists clutching clods of dirt to throw in the eyes of potential attackers.

Cano didn’t see much of a future in Mexico and made his way to L.A. in 1957 as member of the Mexicali-based Mariachi Chapala. But the young musician longed to be a part of the glorious shows at the Million Dollar Theatre, an ornate downtown movie palace that attracted the best singers from Mexico in those days. Soon after settling here, he won a coveted spot in Mariachi Aguila, the house band at the Million Dollar.

When the director died in a car crash in Mexico, Cano took his place. But on one condition, he told the group, which became Los Camperos in 1961: “I want to see the mariachi treated as an art form.”

It would take time before others shared his vision.

The group was on tour in Lubbock, Texas, when they decided to stop at a local restaurant, where the host turned them away, recommending a place down the road with “Spanish prices.”

“I’m not asking for your prices,” Cano responded.

“Listen, buddy, we don’t serve Mexicans here,” retorted the host.

Cano was livid.

.

That night at the hotel, he couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned until a colleague urged him to let it go. .

“You know what we’re going to do?” said Cano. “We’re going to open a restaurant ourselves. One day, we’re going to have our own place.”

Back in L.A., Cano found his location, a burned-out business that had been an Indian restaurant. The band worked like a family to get it ready, he recalls, noting the special contribution of the late David Coronado, an original member of Los Camperos who helped get the restaurant ready even though he was dying of cancer. An oil portrait of Coronado hangs in a prominent place near the stage.

After 17 months of renovation and paying rent with no income, Cano opened La Fonda on April 12, 1969. On that day, a pipe sprang a leak.

Cano points to the edge of the stage, where he says he sat and cried during that uncertain time, wondering, “My God, what did I get myself into?” The following year, he had a heart ailment and spent a week in the hospital.

The risk paid off. Within a few short years, Los Camperos de Nati Cano were backing Mexico’s golden-voiced tenor Pedro Vargas in a legendary concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall, issued as a three-LP boxed set by RCA Victor in Mexico. During the 1980s, Cano would be at the forefront of a booming mariachi movement in the U.S., spearheaded by Ronstadt’s return to her Mexican American roots.

Los Camperos played on Ronstadt’s recordings of traditional songs, “Canciones de mi Padre” in 1987 and a sequel in 1991. The singer agreed to appear on the Camperos’ Christmas show this year as a tribute to Cano, whom she considers a mentor and coach, helping her capture the authentic feel of the genre.

“It took a lot of practice and encouragement and research and moral support, and I got that from Nati and Los Camperos,” says Ronstadt. “Nati was there when I needed him, and he was so modest about it. So to give honor to Nati is my privilege.”

Cano has been at the center of a debate over the future of mariachi music. He scorns efforts to modernize the field by playing show tunes or dancing with pelvic twists like Elvis Presley. He believes the music doesn’t need to go begging other styles to stay fresh. For proof, he leads a visitor to a cold and cramped storage room where Los Camperos are practicing under the direction of Jesus Guzman, a 13-year veteran of the group.

They sound intense in this narrow space with high ceilings, where Ronstadt remembers rehearsing. They open a medley from Michoacan with a celestial, a cappella chorus in the Tarasco language. Another medley of sones from Veracruz is composed of nearly lost songs brought back from Mexico by the group’s talented harpist, Sergio Alonso.

“The question is: Who are we and what are we giving the world?,” says Cano, an admitted traditionalist who stands up when a woman gets up from the table and when she returns.

“I’m not going to play ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ so I can be accepted by young people, or by the [Anglos]. Why should I look to other styles for renewal, when I still haven’t discovered all the music from Mexico I want to play?”

Cano doesn’t perform at La Fonda anymore, avoiding the late nights and the customers who expect him to share drinks at every table. Nowadays, he has to take care of himself.

After two childless marriages, Cano became a father for the first time when most men are becoming abuelitos. Andrea, his new spouse, is 43 years his junior and the stepdaughter of one of his musicians, guitarist Arturo Palacios.

Sure, it was a scandal. Everybody said it wouldn’t last. But Cano says Andrea has tamed him. And the girls, Alejandra, 4, and Natalia, 9 months, have stolen his heart.

“They’re my motivation to keep going,” says Cano, who lives with his family in Fillmore, near Magic Mountain, where he tends to his garden. “This is the start of my second life. I want to be with them all the time.”

Cano returns to the restaurant the following evening, with his wife and daughters. This time, he’s dressed in a dark business suit and tie, looking like lord of the manor.

Laurels and tributes are fine, he says. He’s had so many, including the National Heritage Fellowship bestowed in 1990 by the National Endowment for the Arts. But success in the arts requires constant progress and improvement.

“Como dicen en ingles? Don’t take it for granted.”