How to start your own mexican band

Earlier I described how I ended up listening to mostly Mexican music in the last few months. Okay, not all of it is Mexican, my favorite spanish-language rap-band, AKWID is from South Central L.A., and as I wrote below, Intocable is tejano. I also have learned to enjoy bachata, which is Dominican flavored latin music. (I still have to learn to appreciate salsa or mambo music, too dancy...)

So, you want to start your own grupo? Well, you are in luck, here are the steps:
Step One-Choose your name--my favorite is to pick a noun, pluralize it, and add "del norte" to it. Examples are: Los Rieleros Del Norte, Los Huracanes del Norte, and Los Tigres del Norte. This helps people realize that you will be playing mostly norteño music. But don't worry, you can still do cumbias and even a little ranchera...
Step Two-Wear the same clothes--In Mexico, it is not only cool, but expected that you will be wearing the SAME outfits.

Step Three-Choose your instruments-This would normally be hard in a North-American pop band. So you spent 8 years in band? TOO Bad!!! Band instruments SUCK! Well, not so in grupera music. Keep that saxophone, clarinet, sousaphone (primary bass instrument, it appears, honestly!), baritone, trombone, trumpet, or crash symbols. Do you want symbols, snare AND bass drum? Then you have to employ THREE percussionists! Oh yeah, and the sexiest instrument is the accordian. You heard me, the accordian. If you play the button accordian, then you are even more ranchera! I watched this one video (okay, I bought a DVD as well...) where there were 16 people in the band. Oh yeah, you can have a guitar, but you MUST have a bajo-sexto...

So, there it is, steps one two and three. Be sure to mix things up with cumbia, ranchera, grupera, norteño (or tejano if you're on this side of the Rio Grande).

Enjoy!


--gh