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WTBU DJ Matt Garamella of Time Signatures spoke to Mireya Ramos and Shae Fiol of Mariachi Flor de Toloache to preview their sold out show at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA on March 30. The show is part of the museum’s RISE concert series.<\/span><\/p>\n Matt Garamella: According to your facebook page, you have an album coming out in June! Can you tell us a little about what we can expect to hear?<\/b><\/p>\n Shae Fiol: You can expect to hear a lot more original songs, and we are going to continue on our path of doing fusion, which will be traditional mariachi as well as our own signature New York style mariachi, which can include some folk, rock, jazz, R&B \u2013 maybe not so much R&B \u2013 but definitely our blend of music. So, a blend of genres, rather.<\/span><\/p>\n MG: Your band is made up of musicians from all around the world. I am curious; how did you all come to meet each other?<\/b><\/p>\n MR: First, Shae and I had already been playing prior to this band. I was playing violin and singing backup vocals for her music. After that, through other bands, I was freelancing a lot and playing with different kinds of bands, or side stuff \u2013 salsa, hip-hop, R&B, deejaying, whatever, you name it. Whoever needed me to play, I was there. So through different scenes, I met a lot of different women who were doing similar things to what I was with their instruments. And I would see them and be like, \u201cOh, do you want to join this band?\u201d But also, some were the first ever musician friends we had.<\/span><\/p>\n MG: Was the multiculturalism of your group intentional or did it just happen by chance?<\/b><\/p>\n MR: \u00a0Definitely a little bit of both. The entirety of my goal was to come up with a different idea that I wanted to express; something different in mariachi, because I\u2019m mixed myself, so I was raised with a lot of different kinds of music in a mix of mariachi, jazz, and salsa, reggae, reggaeton, and everything we hear in Puerto Rico. So, I think that organically, it would happen anyway, but also there weren\u2019t a lot of female mariachi players or singers or people that know mariachi tradition in New York. Part of the goal was to do something different with the tradition.<\/span><\/p>\n MG: Can you explain the joyful, high-pitched cheers at the beginning of many mariachi songs? I believe they are called gritos.<\/b><\/p>\n MR: Well yeah, Shae is an expert.<\/span><\/p>\n SF: No, I am definitely not an expert, but I appreciate that Mireya. We do a workshop that we call a grito workshop because, as you know, it is a very important part of, not just mariachi, but also other genres of Mexican music. It has a special place. There is all kinds of gritos, so we definitely teach one at our show. We call it the classic, because it\u2019s a little bit of a cry and a laugh, and it\u2019s also the one that you hear most often \u2013 most frequently in music and you would know it if you heard it. It\u2019s definitely another form of expression \u2013 it\u2019s another way to get out how you\u2019re feeling. A lot of times when we\u2019re playing, we encourage people, if they have never heard a grito, to use the grito they just learned to express how they feel in the moment when they hear something that resonates with them or feel something to express themselves with a grito.<\/span><\/p>\n MG: I had no idea it was so expressive. So it sounds almost like a mantra of sorts, like everyone has their own.<\/b><\/p>\n SF: I think, for me, I don\u2019t have my own. I\u2019m a little bit like a mockingbird; I hear something and I sing it back. But I think over time, you maybe have your own grito sound. There\u2019s also ones you can put your own flair on. The more you listen to mariachi, the more you will start to be able to pick out different sounds that repeat. You know, like, \u201cOh, I heard that one before,\u201d or different shapes that they make when you hear them. <\/span><\/p>\n MG: Have you encountered any criticisms for being an all-female mariachi group?<\/b><\/p>\n SF: Yes, we have for various reasons. First off, the simple fact that we\u2019re women dressed in mariachi uniform, they assume that we don\u2019t know how to play our instruments, or don\u2019t sound good, or we are amateurs, or whatever. And then the other reason is because we wear pants, which is not the traditional uniform of the women in mariachi. Women use very long, straight skirts with the same ornaments. But instead, we wear pants and our own take on the suit and we get criticized for that. You know, we get comments on Facebook all the time on our page and on YouTube. But then also, when people do hear us, some people don\u2019t like when we play, because we don\u2019t sound exactly like the traditional mariachi, and therefore we shouldn\u2019t be called mariachi. Most of these criticisms come from the simple fact that we are women, because you know if a male mariachi for example, was doing some of the same repertoire that we are doing, they would be highly celebrated because they are doing something new. But because we are women, it\u2019s like \u201cNo, that\u2019s not allowed.\u201d So yeah, we definitely get criticized, but like any tradition, when there is a change, people are going to resist. But there are some people that love it. People are actually thankful, and they are amazed by the fact that they didn\u2019t know mariachi could go that way or that we could mix these genres together and sound that cool. And the fact that we\u2019re keeping the tradition alive but in a different form or different expression, people are thankful for that.<\/span><\/p>\n MG: And for my last question, are there any mariachi groups or artists in general that have strongly influenced your music? <\/b><\/p>\n SF: Let\u2019s see\u2026 Definitely the Linda Ronstadt album <\/span>Canciones de mi Padre.<\/span><\/i> Not because she is an American born, but it happened to be accessible for me. I\u2019m pretty sure I heard that album before I was a Linda Ronstadt fan. She is kind of a crossover artist. She wasn\u2019t doing what we are doing, because she wasn\u2019t mixing genres. She just did straight-ahead traditional mariachi, but she also sang in her own way. You can hear her influences in the way she sings. Also, I wasn\u2019t that exposed to mariachi until I joined the group, and Mireya is one of my influences. And Mireya\u2019s mom also curates what we perform, and her dad too listens and sings mariachi, so I spend a lot of time with Mireya\u2019s family, listening to all the music that her family listens to. Some of the women artists that I really, really loved besides Linda Ronstadt was Maria Lourdes. I remember one summer when I was living with Mireya\u2019s family, I listened to that album a lot, and there were incredible vocals and arrangements. I consider her one of my faves. And Lola Beltran.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n