Can Mariachi Survive?

I’d like to thank Agustin Gurza for his insightful and accurate description of mariachi music today and its increasing and unfortunate movement toward embracing pop music--especially American Top 40 (“Mariachi on the Downbeat,” June 21).

The awful truth is that mariachi music, which once represented a culture and people to the whole world, has begun to lose its art and soul in an effort to make it more palatable to the masses who have come to expect and prefer the druglike fast high from predigested semi-art over the nourishment that can only come from true heartfelt creativity.

I hope the performers in this weekend’s concert are less concerned with providing their audience with instant gratification than with honest emotion and dignity so that Jose Alfredo Jimenez, Amalia Mendoza and Silvestre Vargas can look down on the Hollywood Bowl and smile instead of laugh.

JUAN HALCON

Los Angeles

I’m surprised that Gurza failed to mention the origin of the word “mariachi.” It’s a Mexicanization of the French (and English) word “marriage,” and was attached to the trumpets-violins groups that became a tradition of entertainment at Mexican weddings.

For this reason alone, (pure) mariachi is not dead and never will be.

OLIVER BERLINER