Save this story Save Story Save this story When Sonia Marín sings a mariachi ballad, it feels like she’s reaching straight into your soul. She sings of heartbreak: hers, yours, everyone’s. Eyes closed beneath turquoise shadow, she lifts a hand toward the heavens, her violin pressed against her navy traje de charro .
Outside San Antonio’s Stable Hall music venue, the Texas sun beats down on Marín and her six bandmates. They’re standing shoulder to shoulder in matching hot-pink lipstick, instruments at the ready. “When I step onstage, I can feel like I’m going to make you fall in love with me, or perhaps cry, because that’s what the song is asking,” Marín says.
Sonia Marín performing with her band Mariachi Damas de Jalisco outside Stable Hall in San Antonio. “We spend up to $1200 on each traje de charro and it can take the dressmaker at least ten hours for them to make a single suit. We have a woman in San Antonio who makes them up for us,” she says.
Dolores Samaniego of Mariachi Damas de Jalisco. “They always expect at least one male mariachi to show up. It can still be a surprise for the audience to see an all-female band.”
Offstage, she’s quick to admit she’s pretty shy. Yet slipping on her traje , with its cropped, tailored jacket, high-necked shirt, and full-length skirt, brings a transformation worthy of Clark Kent, only with an oversized fuchsia bow rather than a cape. “When I put the traje on and join the women in the band, it’s empowering. It’s go time.”
Finding her place in mariachi took more than just a wardrobe change. With roots in 19th-century Jalisco, in western Mexico, the folk music had long been male-dominated. Women hoping to break into the genre contended with doubts about their musical ability and the age-old chorus that they’d be better off at home.
Yaretzy Mendoza Busto, Elizabeth Marie Sosa, Myriam Solalinde, Sonia Marin Duran, Dolores Samaniego Harvey, Gladys Coronado, and Alison Garcia of Mariachi Damas de Jalisco.
The culture shifted somewhat in the 1970s, when the introduction of mariachi programs in U.S. public schools, particularly in California and Texas, gave girls new opportunities to learn and perform. Even so, skilled female musicians often found themselves competing for just one or two coveted spots in an otherwise male lineup.
For many families, mariachi is the soundtrack to life’s milestones, from baby showers and communions to weddings and funerals. At 13, Marín found her calling at a family party. “A few days before the party, I said to my mom, I feel that something in my life is missing. So, we go to this party and the band walks in, and they’re kids my age, but they’re playing Vicente Fernández, who is my idol,” she recalls, referring to the Mexican singer and actor. “I remember seeing them play, turning to my dad and saying that’s what’s missing: I need to be a mariachi.”
Mariachi Damas de Jalisco’s formal black suits feature silver botonaduras , the decorative metal buttons associated with the gala version of the traje de charro .
It typically takes around an hour for Mariachi Damas de Jalisco to prepare for a performance.
She picked up the violin and cut her teeth in mixed-gender bands in San Antonio. “I was in a group with a male director, and it just didn’t feel great, so I left to build my own group.” In 2005, she founded Mariachi Damas de Jalisco. Since then, her music has taken her to Brazil during the FIFA World Cup and to South Korea to entertain the troops. Her band has also warmed up crowds at Dallas Cowboys games and performed at the Houston Rodeo.
For generations, it was the guys who called the tune in mariachi, singing about life and love from their perspective. Mariachi Damas de Jalisco are making room for songs made famous by women, violinist Elizabeth Sosa tells me. They’re adding pop into the mix, too.
Mariachi evolved from regional music traditions in western Mexico into a national symbol, helped by the reach of radio, recordings, and Mexican cinema from the 1930s onwards.
Mariachi Damas de Jalisco’s wardrobe includes a practical alternative to the traditional jacket for San Antonio’s extreme summer heat: a collarless shirt known as a camisola , adapted from the clothing charros wear while riding.
“We have a gig this weekend and we’re playing a mariachi version of Lady Gaga’s ‘Vanish into You.’ It’s about bringing in the contemporary so it appeals to a new audience, while honoring the traditions of mariachi.” Their songbook runs from the lovestruck pleas of Etta James’s “My Dearest Darling” and Linda Ronstadt’s “Los Laureles” to the bravado of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” a rousing breakup anthem.
When UNESCO added mariachi to its intangible cultural heritage list in 2011, it noted that the skills are “usually passed down from fathers to sons.” In Sosa’s family, that tradition has found its next generation in a daughter. Her father and grandfather were mariachi musicians, and playing is a way to carry their legacy forward while staying connected to her Mexican roots. “It makes me proud to be a Latina and be able to celebrate my culture through music,” she says.
Sunlight catches the rhinestone patterns running down the sides of her skirt: a dazzling tribute to the San Antonio Spurs. The design riffs on botonaduras , the rows of decorative sterling silver buttons that often adorn charro trousers and skirts at Mexican rodeos.
The traje de charro, inspired by traditional Mexican horsemen’s attire, became mariachi’s signature look in the early 20th century.
The band serenades us with a few more crowd-pleasers. The guitarrón, a stringed instrument once considered too hefty for a woman to play, drives the rhythm with deep, plucked notes while the trumpet adds plenty of brassy swagger. The impromptu performance is turning into quite the sidewalk fiesta, with passing motorists beeping their horns or rolling down their windows to holler their appreciation as the women play on.
All too quickly, though, the band must head off for the evening’s gig. Marín adjusts her ribboned headpiece. Finding few accessories made for female mariachi musicians, she learned to make them for herself and her band.
“When I started out, girls used to just wear ties in their hair, but it was a very masculine look. I wanted to add some rhinestones to make it sparkly,” says Marín. It now takes her between 30 to 40 minutes to make a band member’s hairpiece.
“You know, things have changed a tremendous amount since I started out,” she says. “I remember a guy once saying that all we knew how to do was shake our butts, but I didn’t get mad or discouraged. We’ve shown that we can do way more than that. We’re in America and can do anything we want.”
A short drive away, I arrive at the McNay Art Museum, founded by a woman and housed in a 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival mansion. I’m here to meet another all-female mariachi band, Mariachi Las Alteñas. In the mosaic-tiled courtyard, shaded by leafy palms, six musicians make a seriously stylish entrance in matching cherry-red suits traced with silver embroidery. Chandelier earrings dance at their earlobes. Each wears a white sombrero stitched with gold, its brim wide enough to shade both shoulders. Somehow, even as the afternoon temperature nudges into triple digits, they look nothing short of immaculate.
Mariachi Las Alteñas’ trajes de charro are made to the musicians’ bespoke measurements, with the group working with several different tailors in Guadalajara, Jalisco.
The heavier trajes de charro require careful handling, as the decorative pieces can come loose while the musicians walk.
Valerie Vargas founded the pioneering group in 2002, back when San Antonio’s all-female mariachi scene was still small. Today, she estimates that around five such groups are active in the city. “We had a little resistance when we started out,” she recalls. There were doubts that women could be as strong or talented as male mariachi musicians, and she was determined to prove otherwise.
Josephine Garcia Vargas holding her guitarrón. In the San Antonio heat, the jacket is always the final piece of her outfit to go on, she says.
An all-female lineup may have gotten them noticed, but their rigorous audition process, instrumental virtuosity, and professionalism keep the bookings coming thick and fast, she says. “We don’t want to be special just because we’re all female, but because we have high standards.” Mistake these women for a novelty act at your peril.
Looking the part takes dedication, too. Each member owns between three and six versions of the traje . “We have them made in Mexico, and as there are 14 women in the full group, it takes months to complete a new outfit. Our look is colorful, so we have red, teal, and coral versions.”
The ribbon-and-flower hairpieces worn by Mariachi Las Alteñas are made by the mother of the group’s director.
Getting ready for a performance takes about an hour: steaming the suit and white button-up shirt, slicking back hair and adding ribbons and flowers, then applying makeup to match the other women. Alexandra Cinta, in her early 20s and one of the group’s youngest members, wears a flutter of false eyelashes and sharp wings of black eyeliner. She says she takes at least twice as long to get ready, although she admits that includes daydreaming and scrolling TikTok.
The earrings worn by Mariachi Las Alteñas are selected to coordinate with the different colours of the group's performance suits.
Mariachi Las Alteñas took its all-female mariachi sound to SXSW in 2014, sharing the stage with a diverse lineup including Mexican jazz-rockers Troker and Russian rock band Mumiy Troll.
Mariachi Las Alteñas have a taste for crossover music, too. Bad Bunny and Guns N’ Roses can crop up on their set list. They’ve opened for country band Midland and joined Jordan Davis for a performance of “Singles You Up,” arranged by Taylor Swift’s musical director, David Cook.
Sometimes, it’s the pop stars taking their cue from mariachi. “I remember the morning that ‘Risk It All’ by Bruno Mars came out, and I was like, ‘He’s shouting out mariachi!’” trumpet player and vocalist Claudia-Renee Gonzalez recalls with a broad smile. The band responded with their own mariachi version. “It got everyone excited,” she says, as the courtyard fountain splashes behind her.
The name Mariachi Las Alteñas refers to women from Los Altos de Jalisco, the highland region of Jalisco, Mexico, associated with mariachi’S roots.
Everyone in the Mariachi Las Alteñas sings, alongside playing instruments such as the violin, trumpet, guitar, guitarrón, and vihuela.
In the shade of the courtyard’s arches, the women gather to chat, sombreros in hand, their matching red-and-white hair flowers bobbing as they turn toward one another. They have welcomed one another’s babies and even played at a bandmate’s wedding in this very courtyard.
That closeness carries into their performances. “There’s a sisterhood and a unity in our group,” Vargas says. “Having that chemistry onstage shines through to the audience. We make sure we’re always vibing onstage.” In San Antonio, a tradition long passed from fathers to sons is finding its future in the voices of daughters.
“Growing up, I had a teacher who was a female mariachi. But she was the only female mariachi that I had ever seen,” recalls Alexandra Cinta.
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Source: Lifestyle
