More Southwest Fiddle Tunes

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.