More Than Tequila: Mariachi Veritas Brings Diverse Musical Delight

If you ask a typical Harvard student what the best part of Harvard is, you’ll receive answers ranging from academics to athletics. But if you ask Lauren Yapp ’09 she will tell you that her best experience at Harvard has been mariachi. One of the few cultural musical groups on campus, Mariachi Veritas, of which Yapp is a member, attempts to enliven traditional mariachi, playing recent compositions and including female members, an accordion, and many non-Mexican members.

“We’re not a cliché,” Mariachi Veritas president Beatrice Viramontes ’08 says. “Whether looking at us as a cultural or a musical group, not many groups have so much diversity.” Many Mariachi Veritas members are also classical, jazz, and rock musicians who are involved in other musical groups on campus such as BachSoc and Kuumba. Only a few of the current group members had previous mariachi experience when they joined Mariachi Veritas.

In fact, despite being a Mexican band, there are only three Mexican-American members in the group. For the Mexican-American members, Mariachi Veritas is “a way to share our culture with the other members of the group and the Harvard community,” according to David Garcia ’09, who plays the guitarron, a Mexican bass. “We sing in Spanish, even though we don’t understand what we’re singing,” Yapp says. But according to Viramontes, understanding the language is secondary. “The music communicates what the song it trying to say,” she says.

Established in 2001, Mariachi Veritas has grown rapidly. It began as a little group who did small campus performances and didn’t even have traditional mariachi outfits. Mariachi Veritas now has 11 members, who can be seen wearing their black trajes with crimson sashes and a sombrero to complete the look.

As a group, Mariachi Veritas has performed in a variety of different arenas around campus. Selma Hayek sang vocals for them at Cultural Rhythms, and they have played for current Mexican President Felipe Calderon as well as former President Vicente Fox in the past two months. Last year, they attended the largest national Mariachi competition in San Antonio, where they placed third at the university level.

“People think the music is just simple and about tequila, but it’s very complicated and hard to perform well,” says Musical Director Nathaniel Naddaff-Hafrey ’08, who is a former Crimson arts associate. At a concert in Lowell Lecture Hall tomorrow, the group will be performing a variety of huapangos, sones, rancheras, and boleros, all of which have different rhythmic feels and tones. It will also feature a number of “all-star” guest singers of varied musical backgrounds, who will perform songs selected for their personal range and style, such as Sheldon K. X. Reid ’96, a current director of Kuumba, In order to further celebrate mariachi this weekend, they will screen “Compañeras” tonight, a documentary about the first all-female mariachi band in the United States, attended by the film’s co-director and producer Elizabeth Massie.

It is not just the music but also the musicians that make Mariachi Veritas members so proud of their organization. “Personalities in the group mesh really well,” Yapp says. “It’s a good group of people. It’s also a really relaxed group because even though we work very hard it’s something we do because we enjoy it.”

“Anyone with or without musical experience can appreciate the passion of mariachi,” Viramontes says. Although the Latino population at Harvard and in Boston has been very supportive, the members of Mariachi Veritas, who have struggled to receive funding from the Office of the Arts in the past, hope to gain greater recognition on campus for their contributions to music and culture at Harvard.

Mariachi Veritas has a positive outlook for the future. They have been recording recently and hope to release their first CD at the end of the semester. “We’ve had a really good year this year and although a lot of people are graduating, momentum will continue,” Yapp says.