The cover was, of course, written as a homage to Michael Jackson, whose funeral took place in Los Angeles yesterday.

“Since I couldn’t be in Los Angeles to pay my respects, this is how I will thank the man who inspired my first awkward gabacha dance moves,” writes the former Los Angeles resident in a blog post entitled “Guillermo Jean”.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

For the hardcore Cafe Tacuba fans out there, here is the uncut material from the 15-minute interview that I did with two of the band members – Emmanuel “Meme” del Real Díaz and Enrique ‘Quique’ Rangel Arroyo – last Saturday night, just before they played a sold-out gig to more than 55,000 fans.

Both of them were pretty nervous because it was a big gig in their home town, but they said some really interesting things about Mexico City and their international appeal. Ultimately, they still see themselves as chilangos singing about chilangolandia.

This and more footage went into the final cut I made for the Los Angeles Times, which also includes footage from the concert, and that you can see here on La Plaza or pasted below.

– Deborah Bonello, MexicoReporter.com

This is probably the least exciting location from which I have filed a dispatch. My sofa, in my third-floor apartment, my snowball-like foot propped up on a couple of cushions as I look out onto the cloudy Mexico City panorama this morning.

What happened? Well, it’s all Cafe Tacuba’s fault really.

I interviewed two of the members – “Meme” and “Quique” – of one of Mexico’s most successful rock bands early Saturday evening at the Foro Sol, one of the city’s biggest venues with a capacity of 55,000.

Emmanuel “Meme” del Real Díaz and Enrique ‘Quique’ Rangel Arroyo were both really nervous, as they were about to step out in front of their massive home town audience for a marathon four hour set.

Anyway, it’s always a buzz interviewing creative and passionate people, so I was set for the gig which started at 8 pm. The atmosphere was intoxicating, and not just because of the beers and the mixers being sold by waiters passing continuously through the crowds.

Cafe Tacuba are from Mexico City and – as is evident from the sold-out show – loved by Mexico City. They still live here and that in part contributes to the “chilango-ness” of their sound. But more to come of that later in a interview with the band, which I’m still editing.

The band came on at around 8:30 pm to chants of “pa pa pa pa weyeweyooooo”, which is from the song “el baile y el salon” (hear it here). The energy that they put into the show was incredible, with vocalist Rubén Isaac Albarrán Ortega, who currently goes by the name of “Ixaya Mazatzin Tleyotl” (he changes his name for every album) wheeling around like a spinning top, his long curly hair spinning out around him like a skirt. And when he wasn’t spinning he was jumping, or running, or dancing.

Standing in a crowd of 55,000 bouncing Chilangos (what they call “Londoners” or “Angelinos” here in Mexico City – the city natives) is no small thing, and the song “Chilangabanda” (“banda” means gang) had special meaning.

Which explains why I was hopping and skipping my way to the toilets. I was elated. Too elated. My ankle gave way, and I fell to my knees. Even after a few beers, the pain was excruciating.

Which brings me back to why I am filing this dispatch from my sofa.

Pinche Cafe Tacuba.

Lida is an accomplished author and journalist who has lived in Mexico City for the last 15 years. He has written a number of books, which you can read about here on his website.

David Lida. Photo by Federico Gama

The following is a short chapter about a dollar-a-dance hostess known as a fichera in Mexico City.

Paty
The Villa Rica is a low-lit bar with amber lighting, wood-paneled walls and a jukebox that doesn’t have a single song recorded after 1980. It is an example of what are known as antros de ficheras, and I have never seen them outside of Mexico City.

A fichera is a woman who, despite what is usually a boiler-shaped body, dresses in a short skirt and a snug blouse, and sells her company to a male clientele. Most of a fichera’s clients are after nothing more than her sympathetic presence: a woman he can flirt with who will not rebuff his advances; a woman to whom he can recount the various misadventures and misunderstandings of his life; a woman with whom he can dance to the familiar ballads on the jukebox. Ficheras earn no salary, but are given tips as well as a percentage of the price of the drinks the customers order for them; hence, most have cast-iron constitutions and, as they say in Mexico City, toman como cosacos (drink like Cossacks).

Some ficheras are game for further adventures; if the customer pays an exit fee to the management, she will accompany him to a nearby hotel. Still, most customers prefer companionship; ficheras are closer to geishas than to prostitutes.

Many men like to visit ficheras when they are feeling low. Mexican males, the weight of machismo on their shoulders, are emotionally diffident and cannot express their feelings to the people with whom they are supposedly intimate; a fichera is a convenient receptacle for their sorrows and shames. There is a particular fichera at the Villa Rica named Paty that I like to visit, but not to recount my anguish. Like Sheherazade, Paty has a thousand and one stories, and listening to her invariably makes whatever troubles I may have recede in the rearview mirror.

Paty wears enormous eyelashes and thick makeup, changes her hair color on a regular basis, and flaunts her enormous breasts with low-cut blouses. About five feet tall, she tends to sport nine-inch heels. Her smile is wide, perpetual and, as far as I can tell, genuine. She has been working at the Villa Rica since 1985, her anno horribilus, when not only did the earthquake leave her and her family homeless, but her husband was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (a disease she refers to as “European”). Her salary as a waitress in the coffee shop at Sanborn’s wasn’t enough to sustain them and her two children, so she began her career as a fichera.

One of Paty’s regular clients is an ancient Spaniard who owns the Hotel Toledo down the street where the ficheras take their customers. He only likes to watch – Paty assures me hasn’t had an erection in the 20 years she has known him – so he takes her to swingers’ clubs, where men are not allowed to enter unaccompanied by women.

“But he makes me take off my clothes, and in those places if you’re naked, you have to let anyone do what they want. You can’t say no. Even when you have your clothes on, they still get handsy with you – with their fingers and everything.” She made a face like she had sipped spoiled milk. “Having sex is better because at least they’ve got a condom on. That guy’s fingers …” She uses the Mexican’s universal expletive for disgust: “Guácala. I couldn’t sleep that night.”
Another man, who always dressed in a suit and tie, would take her to a four-star hotel. Before entering, he would buy a bunch of roses on the corner. He would ask Paty to strip and eat the rose petals. “And that was that. He never got naked; he always kept his boxers on. He’d let me have whatever I wanted from the minibar and would pay me more than three times the going rate.”

After losing the 2006 presidential elections, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who had resigned his post as mayor of Mexico City to launch his campaign) arranged mass demonstrations on Avenida Juárez and Paseo de la Reforma, the two biggest streets near the Villa Rica. Getting around that part of the city became close to impossible, and nearly all the bar’s customers disappeared. Paty, who usually earns about $45 a night, was coming home with less than ten. “The other night a guy came and bought me 40 tequilas,” she said one night while the protests were in full swing. Not knowing when the next time a big spender would arrive, she drank them all. “After all that, I vomited through my nose, but at least I made some money.”

Paty didn’t blame López Obrador for her hard luck. “It’s God’s will,” she said. “In the Bible you’ve got the years of the fat cows and the years of the skinny cows. Right now it’s skinny time. God squeezes us but he doesn’t strangle us.” She put her hand on my thigh. “You want to go to the Señorial steam baths? They remodeled them. You don’t know how beautiful they came out. We can go to a private room. They have cable TV with a porno channel.”

As Johnson writes: “Lara’s brand of electronica-rock, on display in his new, critically praised album “Soy Sauce,” draws liberally on his country’s musical culture, sampling mariachi horns and incorporating solos by Café Tacuba lead guitarist Joselo Rangel. But he doesn’t feel obliged to wrap himself in the national banner, as previous generations of Mexican musicians often felt compelled to do.”

Lara is getting ready to play Coachella this weekend in the U.S, where he is listed in small print, which – as he says in the video – gives him a thrill as in the past he has gone to festivals to see the bands in small print. They’re always the more interesting ones, right? I mean, Paul McCartney?

Anyway, just wanted to send out a thanks to Camilo to letting me into his home and not being camera shy. And good luck with the gig – you’ll rock it!

Lara’s Facebook page.

Please click here to watch the film.

In Plaza Garibaldi, female musicians muscle in on the men.

(This article appeared in The News, Mexico on Saturday November 17th. They’re yet to launch a website. See below for a video of the band singing)

Dusk falls on a regular Thursday night in Mexico City’s Plaza de Garibaldi and the capital’s multitude of mariachi prepare for another night’s work.

Amidst the overwhelmingly male musicians strutting around the neglected Plaza in their skin-tight charro outfits is Mariachi Sonidos de America Feminil – a female group of musicians daring to brave the macho tradition of the mariachi.

Dressed in eye-catching black charro outfits with bright pink sashes tied at the waist and neck, the ensemble stands out in the sea of masculine rivals. Isabel Aguilar and her eight companeras and lone male member have been playing in Plaza de Garibaldi on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturday nights for the last six months and it hasn’t been easy.

“Mexican men are macho and Mexican male mariachi are more macho, so it’s very difficult,” explains 26-year old Aguilar, who plays the violin and sings.

She and her companions are one of the few female mariachi groups working in Mexico City, and each member of the band has a father, an uncle or a cousin who was a mariachi before them. But despite their currently scarcity in Plaza de Garibaldi, women in mariachi music have a surprisingly long, if largely unknown, history.

All-female mariachi bands in Mexico date back to as early as the 1940s, when Mariachi Las Coronelas formed in Mexico City. By the 1950s two more all-female groups emerged in Mexico’s capital: Mariachi Las Adelitas and Mariachi Michoacano and there are now other all-female groups in outside the capital in states such as Guadalajara, where Las Morenas de Mexico Lindo have been going for 15 years. But all-girl ensembles are more prolific in the United States, and the machismo that is so strong in Mexican culture could be to blame for that.

“Many men don’t believe that we, as women, can add much musically,” says Aguilar, who is infuriated by the hostility she so often encounters.

In addition, she says that many male mariachi assume that women working as musicians are ‘easy’ sexually because they work at late at night in an environment charged with what usually accompanies musicians – alcohol, romance and sex.

The female group has adapted the traditional pants of the traje de chorro into floor-length fitted skirts with traditional silver buttons running down the sides, so as to avoid wearing the tight-pants sported by their male rivals. The only male member of the band, Armando Hernandez, is sticking to protocol with his outfit but he says he gets plenty of stick from male colleagues for playing with the women.

And it’s not only men who can give the band a hard time.

“It’s difficult for us to serenade a man in our usual style because their wives get angry. If a man contracts us, their wives ask: ‘Why are you using women?,” says Aguilar.

Difficulties for the mariachi mujeres also seep into their personal lives, as is the case for many working women. Only two of the nine female musicians are married, none of them have children, and having relationships with Mexican men can be awkward. The group often works until the early hours of the morning, and many husbands and boyfriends don’t like the fact that their partners are surrounded by drunken men and male musicians.

Lizbeth Gabriel, aged 26, is one of the only two married members of the group. Her husband is also a musician, but they play in different plazas to avoid problems.

“We don’t play together because usually he’s jealous as because I’m a woman I get a lot of attention. Sometimes at parties [that he plays at] the women latch onto the mariachis. So to avoid problems he works there and I work here,” she explains.

Children are on the cards, but Gabriel acknowledges sharing time between a husband, a baby and her night-time occupation will be tricky.

“I have colleagues who have babies and they’re not here much because their babies need a lot of time.”

But despite the rough time that the female mariachis often get, Aguilar says that many of their male colleagues in the square are very supportive and that attitudes are improving.

Most of the mariachis approached by the News declined to comment on the girl-band, but Alfonso Duran, head of the band Mariachi Juvenil Huetamo, was happy to: “I’ve been here 30 years and I respect them a lot. They play their instruments and sing very well. And I don’t see the difference. Some of my colleagues complain that they’re women but often they’ve taught us how we should play. There are a lot of men working here who don’t even play the guitar, and they’re men. And these women study and practice and play very well!”

The talent of Mariachi Sonidos de America Feminil is being recognized elsewhere and the band recently returned from performing in a festival in Tlaxcala. As we walk away, they’re approached by a couple eager for a musical fix and they launch into their rendition of the mariachi classic La Madrugada, Isabel belting out the vocals to drown out the cacophony of male voices around her. Viva la revolucion – la lucha sige!

[blip.tv ?posts_id=456782&dest=16807]

Mariachi Sonidos de America Feminil are defying Mexican tradition. A female band of Mariachis, the group of women musicians are confronting the macho culture of the Mariachi to give it a feminine touch. The group plays every night of the weekend in Mexico’s Plaza de Garibaldi.

More to come from MexicoReporter.com on the mariachis…..