Los Sones de Mexico band member Lorena Iniguez rests her feet on her tarima, a wooden platform that she uses to make sounds, next to the jaw bone of a donkey during a rehearsal Thursday at the Music Building. The jaw is either played by played hitting it with a bone or running another bone across the teeth to make noise. The bones and the tarima are two of the about 50 instruments that the band plays during the course of a show.
A student collaboration with one of the most respected Mexican bands in the world hit the Music Building Auditorium stage Thursday night, and not only exposed audience members to Mexican folk music, but musical styles from around the world.
The Grammy-nominated Sones de Mexico, a six-piece ensemble from Chicago, performed with the MSU Graduate Brass Quintet on Thursday to celebrate the 20th anniversary of MSU’s Julian Samora Research Institute.
The institute has been promoting Latin American culture at MSU for two decades, and Ricardo Lorenz, an associate professor of composition at the College of Music who brought the group to campus, said Sones de Mexico maintain the institute’s idea of exposing people to the Latin world.
“(The music) is a particular way of looking at life, the way any other music of the world is,” Lorenz said. “Through the music you get to know the culture that creates it.”
Sones de Mexico explores the diverse music of Mexico, the band’s music director Victor Pichardo said, because many people outside of the country only know a few Mexican styles.
“There is not one style of music that represents Mexico,” Pichardo said. “Our goal is to give the people of the world the vision that Mexico has more than just mariachi.”
The band has been known to use a variety of instruments from across the globe, including xylophones, guitars, a harp, a reed flute, Mexican drums, such as the teponaztli, and the skull of a donkey, which is used as a rattle.
Band members switch among as many as 50 instruments throughout the course of a show, and Pichardo said performers can play 10 different instruments in one night.
“Every song has its own personality,” Pichardo said. “You play the same song with a flute instead of a violin and it’s very different. It takes a different personality.”
Music performance graduate student and MSU Graduate Brass Quintet french horn player Audrey Destito performed alongside the ensemble for the first time in a rehearsal Thursday afternoon, and said it was difficult to adapt to a style she’s never played before.
“This music is pretty different from anything we have ever had to play because we pretty much play classical music,” Destito said. “It has been pretty tricky getting it all together.”
Despite learning a different style, Destito said she enjoyed playing Mexican folk music more than what she usually plays.
“It has been a lot more fun than a lot of classic music because classical music tends to be very serious,” she said. “We’re looking to be interacting with the audience, which is different than we usually do.”
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
