Afropop Worldwide continues our coverage of the 2006 Puertas de Las Americas Festival in Mexico with a talk with Gilberto Gutierrez, member of the esteemed Grupo Mono Blanco.  In this discussion, Gilberto shares his love of Vera Cruz: it’s people and music, introduces us to the Jarana, learn about fandango, the musical styles of son jarocho and zapateo and the African and Afro-Caribbean connection. Gilberto Gutierrez is in every sense of the word an innovator in the ‘do-it-yourself’ music tradition.

Interview with Gilberto Gutierrez of Mono Blanco
2006 Puertas de Las Americas Festival in Mexico
Transcribed by Marlon Bishop

Sean Barlow: Tell us, Gilberto, a little bit of your story – where you were born, how you came in to music.

Gilberto Gutierrez: I was born on a farm in Veracruz in 1958, you know,  the cow and chicken and pigs. My family are farmers. All of my family play music or sing – my grandma, my grandpa, father, mom. I grew up listening to music all the time. My homeland is very green. Its very festive. When I was 15, I said goodbye to my father because my mother and father separated. I came to Mexico City by myself. I was alone, I looked for a job. In Veracruz, people don’t go to the , I didn’t even think about doing that, so I went to Mexico City . When I was in Mexico City two years later, I listened to music from , and I had an idea to do music, asking myself “What about my music.” I thought about my tradition in my homeland, well, and in that moment I felt music in my heart, music in my mind, I want to make music. “I am a musician.” Later I bought my first instrument.

SB: Which is what?

GG: It’s a jarana, a traditional instrument from Veracruz. It was not easy, because in Mexico City you can buy guitar, charango, cuarto venezolano, but no jarana. I went to my homeland to find a jarana. I had a new intention, I went to old musicians and recorded them with a very old machine. I played music all the time, with my brother and Juan Pasco – who is a Mexican American who lives in Mexico, and this is the base of Mono Blanco. So in 1977, Mono Blanco was born in Mexico City . The history now is very long. In that moment, when I began to play my music, nobody was interested in the music. My father asked, why do you play this music, there’s no money in it? You need to work.” I am lucky, because two years later I had a lot of work with my group. In 1979, Arkady Hidalgo, a very old musician from Veracruz , came to Mono Blanco. In 1980 we did Arkady Hidalgo with Mono Blanco.

SB: You recorded an album?

GG: In 1980, our first album. At that time, the secretary of Public Education began a cultural project. They sent groups from different disciplines – dance, music, classical music, poetry – and they contracted Mono Blanco and we went to play in all of at the schools for teachers. This is interesting because the teaching students receive a lot of cultural information, and later they show it to the students. But we had some money at that time, we played 8 concerts a week. We took planes to the North, to the South, in the whole country. For three years we continued, we played 8 months of the year. When I had enough money, we would go to Veracruz all the time. We have an old car and a recording machine. We visited a lot of musicians to learn with them. We visit friends of Arkady Hidalgo , but people he hadn’t seen for 50 years. We went to many places in Hidalgo to find these people, sometimes they had already died.

SB: What kind of music were these old timers playing?

GG:  They played jarana, or guitara de son, but all of this is son jorocho, all of this. Our tradition. I learned the music, the poems, the different instruments, the different places. Our tradition has people from the riverside, people from the highlands, the mountains, Indian people from different ethnicities – Popolucas, Sanawas. People’s different disciplines – carpenters, fishermen, cowboys. They play music with a different feeling, you know. I learnt from them. Later we went with the kids to do workshops, because they have no chance to learn. The transmission from generation to generation is broken nowadays. We did a lot of workshops, and later did some fandangos, which are parties for our music.

SB: Describe a fandango, what is it?

GG: Fandango… well, its like a ritual. There is a wood box, plywood sides. Really this is an instrument. When people go up they do percussion while they dance, zapateo, but its percussion. The musician comes to play, but usually its not Mono Blanco or another group, but peoples who come to play together,  because they are friends.  Maybe its 2,4,6,8 musicians. Maybe a harp, maybe a violin, maybe not. It’s a…

SB: Community thing.

GG: Yeah a community thing. People come to dance, people come to sing, people come to improvise lyrics. Women dance. In our tradition, we have two kinds of styles of songs. One style is only for women, and the other for both women and men. So the fandango is all night, people play, dance, drink, eat. When you want to make a fandango, its only for weddings, for birthdays, for celebrations for remembering a person that died in your family a long time ago. Or to celebrate for the saints – San Jose, San Pablo . We are Catholics and in our traditions, every town has a patron Saint. We make a fandango to celebrate San Pablo, San Jose , the Virgin of Guadalupe. All year long.

SB: It sounds like a lot of fun.

GG: Yeah. San Juan, San Pedro, San Antonio, San Jose . The most famous in Veracruz is for the Virgin de la Candelaria, and for the Virgin de Guadalupe.

SB: That’s saint, santo?  I’m going to pause for a second because this window is blinding me… I want to go to Veracruz, everyone is telling me its great.

GG: Yeah, well we are there if you want.

SB: OK. So lets talk a little bit about your instrument.

GG: My instrument is jarana. I like to play jarana, its an instrument that’s special for playing rhythms and harmonies. I made a special jarana for me, because the traditional one has 5 courses. My jarana has 3 courses – its triple 9 strings for 3 notes. The traditional one has 8 strings for 5 notes. The jarana is like the Baroque guitar, we have a different size, its small. It has a special construction because its made from one piece of wood. It has a different sound, its very strong. Because when we play, in our tradition, we play outside. Its very humid and hot, and you’re wet. So to make it from one piece of wood makes it very strong. But we play tambourine too, and I dance as well, I like to dance on stage, zapateo.

SB: Zapateo is a style?

GG: Yes, its called zapateo because shoe is zapato. You have special shoes for dance.

SB: Is there any of that on your album?

GG: Yeah, there’s an example here.

SB: What song numbers are they?

GG: This is the green album. La Tousa – music from people in the countryside. Usually we’re talking about animals, but we’re making metaphors about humans and animals. “La Morena” is another song, this a woman with brown skin. Comes from “Mora”, from , from . “Chumbé” is my composition, its my song I composed. “ El Toro Sacamandú”. This is a very old song, its traditional, it has strong African roots. Our music is a mix of Spanish roots, African roots, and Amerindian roots. This song “Toro Sacamandu” can be heard in , in , in the Afro-Caribbean.

SB: Tell us a little more about that. Our show is all about Africa and its roots all around the world. Is it my understanding that Veracruz was the place where most black slaves were brought?

GG:  Yeah yeah. In the colonial time, the Spanish brought a lot of people from Africa as slaves. From , from that part of Africa . When we play together with people from , they say “This music is like Senegalese music.” The rhythms.. the kora sounds like the harp. We have strong African and Afro-Caribbean roots, because Veracruz has traded for a long time with Cuba, Venezuela, Puerto Rico.

SB: Can you say the word harp again.

GG: Harp harp.

SB: So tell me this, so Africans came in number to Veracruz. Why aren’t there more black people in Veracruz , or are there?

GG: In this time? Veracruz is a mix. Sometimes you can see people like in Senegal and Camaroon… But most people are mixed. Because the African males married with Indian women so his sons could be free. In fact, jarocho is the name that the Spanish people gave to people mixed with Indians and African people. In Spanish they say there is “society of castes”, there’s a different name for every mix: Black and Indian, Indian and Spanish, Spanish and Chinese, all have a different name. Jarocho is the name for African-Indian mix. Now in Veracruz… Do you remember Gisela my wife? She’s a mix of black and Indian, black in color but Indian hair. There is a lot of mix in Vera Cruz.

SB: That’s interesting. How do you hear the black influence in the music, did they bring instruments…ways of playing?

GG: Well, in zapateo, we make the same rhythm as the djembe. But Africa is not only drums, they have string instruments, the kora, which is like a harp. I think maybe the music of the kora was changed to the harp in Veracruz . When I listen to music in or , they play music that is very similar to our music, no? Sometimes we play together with the kora. Harp and kora. Its easy to communicate, because there’s the same roots.

SB: Why don’t we keep going describing the album and the song with the Indian African mix.

GG: The ethnomusicologists, they have a explanation for exactly why “La Morena” sounds like an African root. In the form, in the tuning style. This is not exactly Western. Sometimes we play between major and minor. People say this is very old idea from Africa, and they have instrument from that sounds similar to many instruments in Veracruz .

SB: This is the white album now, Stone Lips?

GG: In "Chicumbe", they play djembe. The musician is Babu from . Here in “Aguacero” there is djembe also.

SB: Which is the one that the rock people covered?

GG: "Se Acaba del Mundo". The Molotov covered it. They made this song because in 2000 – do you understand what “Se Acaba del Mundo” means? It’s the world is finished, the world is coming to an end. Number 3 is a love song, its very interesting. “El Son de Viento,” the “Windy Song” . This sounds like Cuban son, because in Veracruz we play son in a more Cuban style, because we have a relationship with them. This CD is the famous one of Mono Blanco.

SB: So overall you play son jorocho.

GG: Yes, I play son jorocho, but I explore other possibilities, because…

SB: Yeah, that’s good. So somebody told me that you are more responsible that anyone else for reviving son jorocho in Veracruz, that there’s a lot of young kids now doing it? Are you happy that the tradition is alive and young people are picking it up?

GG: Well, I didn’t go to school, only to elementary. My father said “OK no more school, you come to the ranch and work with the cows and horses. But I like this life because I was born there. But, I don’t have a good relationship with my father. When I was in Mexico City and I found music, he said “Why should you play music, no?’ When I had Mono Blanco, and we had some money, I had the idea, because I made it my profession, I’m going to work a lot of that. I learned to find money from the government to set up workshops in the countryside, make fandangos. Later, Mono Blanco made a tour in and then went back to the homeland to teach the kids and the young people. The young people can see that – “Mono Blanco gets to travel all the time”, and this was stimulating for the kids to play. Very fast…

SB: Quick learners?

GG: Yeah, they can come to play with Mono Blanco to different places in Veracruz, and they like that, you know. They feel good when they play, and people clap, and sometimes receive a little bit of money, no? But they have blood to play music. Before they didn’t play, because nobody said “This music is good.” But when they see Mono Blanco, they like to play. Our tradition is usually in families, specific families – The Utrera family, the Faria family, the Vega family, the Gutierez family. I went to these families to catch students, because they have strong roots in these families. I think for that, they like to play. I gave them good instruments. Before, when I went to look for my jarana, it wasn’t easy. But in 1981, I went to learn to make instruments with the old luthier in Veracruz . I had some money, so I went to live two months with him, to learn how to do it. Later I thought a lot of people how to do it. And now, a lot of people are making instruments, to sell. And they make money that way, its good for the economy. I make instruments too.

SB: Does Vera Cruz have a Carnaval?

GG: Yes, we have a Carnaval, its very famous in Mexico, its very popular. Its not a good Carnaval, in Veracruz city, its very commercial. In many places, in small towns, the Carnaval is better, more true to the idea of Carnaval, they make costumes and dance and music. But in Veracruz its no good, very commercial.

SB:  Ok I’ll remember that. Well I think we better wrap up. This is great, I’m so glad we connected.

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