It
is still early in the year, but now is a good time to learn tunes for those
jams in May (you’ll be able to put them to good use at the Topanga Banjo Fiddle
Contest and Festival). Check out my column from last May (2010) about the
background of this style of music and two classic tunes from the repertoire.
Every
spring, I teach an afterschool fiddle class at a local school so that students
can perform at various Cinco de Mayo festivals and school fund
raisers. For our neighborhood schools, these May festivals are the most
important fundraisers of the year, so it is a big deal if students can provide
the entertainment.
In this column, I cover two tunes that students will
learn this year, one from the playing of the Gu-Achi Fiddlers of Arizona and
the other from Cleofes Ortiz of New Mexico. This is not Mariachi, which is a
more recent commercial style.
Ali Oidak
Polka is the first track on the Gu-Achi
Fiddlers CD, entitled “Old Time O'odham Fiddle Music”. It also has been reissued on the
Smithsonian Folkways compilation “Borderlands:
From Conjunto to Chicken Scratch”, which focuses on traditional music from
Arizona to the Rio Grande valley of Texas. Very typical for the Gu-Achi
Fiddlers, it is a somewhat crooked little melody that is easier learned by ear
than from sheet music.
Our second tune for the column is called “Mi Suegra Aprieta Mis Botas”. I base the
transcription on footage from the PBS documentary about Cleofes Ortiz “Violinista de Nuevo Mexico”.
Cleofes
Ortiz was born in 1910 on Pajarito Plateau near Rowe, New Mexico, and began
playing for dances in his teens. He stopped playing in the 1920s until he was rediscovered 50 years later. Who knows under what
under names you may encounter this straightforward melody, I’m sure it has
traveled around, but this is the title Ortiz used. Nothing crooked here and
very suitable for a dance. Indeed, the band in the PBS documentary played it
for a social dance in New Mexico.
The Southwest Fiddlers will play more tunes of that
style in the Eucalyptus Grove at the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Festival on May 15
and there should be plenty of jamming.
