Review:
Band showcases Mexico's finest
Charleston Gazette
Monday February 21, 2000

By Roger Lilly

Since Friends Of Old Time Music And Dance (FOOTMAD) first announced its impressive millennium concert series, Saturday night's Sones de Mexico performance was the show to which I most looked forward.

During the seven years I spent trying to get out of Texas, I developed a deep appreciation for the music of Mexico. I especially connected with the feel and flavor of the fandango, the musical fiesta. The atmosphere was always electric. The Mexican girls looked to be made of delicate flowers, the boys filled with bold shyness.

The music and the event held a rather large implied importance.

Sones de Mexico, a six-member ensemble from Chicago, hosted a wonderful Saturday evening fandango for a packed house at the Capitol Cultural Center Theater.

The group was quite proficient at playing more than 25 instruments, give or take a seashell or two. They started out with the slower, more deliberate music of Native American and Aztec influence. They quickly moved on to the up-tempo songs that featured African, Spanish and black Peruvian flavoring.

The music of Mexico is predictably unpredictable. You pretty much know what's going to take place as the song progresses. You just have no idea as to when or how.

The band may get stuck on a favored musical phrase to the point where you wonder if the record is skipping. Instrumental solos may last three seconds or three minutes. A falsetto voice may appear for no apparent reason. Tempos are only temporary, free to change at the drop of a straw hat. Tangents can attach themselves to any transition.

The music lends itself to the clapping of hands and the stomping of feet, which appealed to all the kids in attendance and the child in us all. Sones de Mexico are authentic interpreters of the overwhelming spirit and underlying despair of Mexican music and life.

They were especially well received when they played the Spanish-influenced mariachi songs. This is the music that all the bandits were jamming to before the Cisco Kid rode into town and busted up the party. "La Bamba," the most popular Mexican folk song, rocked the house. "Jarabe Nayarita" featured a daring dance with machetes that literally had the sparks flying.

Sones de Mexico plays musical homage to the diverse songs of all the different regions and states of Mexico. And they do so with humble reverence and polished professionalism.

FOOTMAD has once again presented Charleston with the very best that the world has to offer.