Goosebumps coated his entire body as he stood backstage of Los Angeles’s Million Dollar Theater listening to the sound of his future. When his brother’s introductory trumpet solo segued into accompaniment for mariachi-style singer Amalia Mendoza’s velvety vocals – belting out “Cuando Nadie Te Quiera” – as she stepped on stage, the nine-year-old knew what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
He would become a mariachi.
“It just touched me,” recalls Jose Hernandez, more than 40 years later but no less in love with the mariachi art. “That’s the first time I felt the true emotion of the music.”
Sitting in Hernandez’s Newport Beach living room on a recent Friday morning, it’s easy to picture him as a boy, ready to take the world by storm, with a smooth voice, shiny trumpet and traje de charro (the traditional mariachi suit). The more he talks about growing up as a fifth-generation mariachi and everything he’s done since that day at the Million Dollar Theater, the more that childhood energy and passion shows through.
Through his Mariachi Sol de Mexico, a full mariachi ensemble (now at 13 members) that he founded in 1981, Hernandez has performed for four U.S. presidents – Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush – and then-presidential candidate Barack Obama; recorded film scores for several Hollywood films, including Seabiscuit and Don Juan DeMarco; toured to anywhere from Spain to North Korea; and been nominated twice for a Grammy. Yet when the 50-year-old mariachi plays recorded tracks off of his latest album − a tribute to Mexican love song crooner José José scheduled for release in August – and sings along softly, as I listen through headphones, it’s like he’s hearing them for the first time, with all the innocent exuberance of his youth.
With mariachis in Hernandez’s family tracing back to Jalisco, Mexico (the mariachi birthplace) in 1879 and his five older brothers, father and pretty much everyone else he knew being mariachis, there was little chance he would be anything else.
“Without really knowing how to sing, I started singing,” Hernandez says. “It was just a gift. I think my family has that gift.”
When he was about four, his family moved from Mexico to East Los Angeles. There, outside his home in the projects, homeless people would ask him to sing for them. He’d charge them a quarter.
At 10, he expanded to instruments: the trumpet. After expressing interest in the trumpet to his father, he was enrolled in band at school, where he learned on a rented school trumpet. He rounded out his mariachi musical education by learning United States military songs, classical and jazz music in band. After high school, Hernandez attended the Grove School of Music in Los Angeles to learn composition and arranging.
While the other mariachis of his time were having the craft passed down solely by ear, Hernandez was learning by ear and in the classroom. His formal musical education is part of what helped set Hernandez and his group apart from the other mariachis, particularly during their early performances.
Unlike other mariachis of the ‘80s, which were performing the usual repertoire of traditional mariachi tunes like “Volver Volver,” Sol de Mexico came out with more modernized selections by mixing in traditional songs with their English versions and performing American songs like “New York, New York,” mariachi-style. Plus, while other mariachis were wearing the more traditional black-with-silver, or other dark-colored, suits, Sol went white with silver accents. It got audiences and mariachis alike to take note.
Due to his music education, Hernandez became one of the first mariachis to arrange and compose for full symphony orchestras; historically, mariachi directors hired classical musicians to write their group’s symphonic arrangements, Hernandez says. He often writes his own lyrics to original pieces as well.
“That’s why I feel very strongly about music education,” he says. “Through my foundation [benefiting students at L.A. inner city schools], we’re able to teach kids to read music and learn mariachi at the same time.”
Even though none of Hernandez’s own children have chosen the life of a mariachi (yet), they have inherited their father’s passion for it and music in general. His oldest, Karina, 23, was a member of Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles – an all-female professional mariachi group formed by Hernandez in 1994 – before returning to school in pursuit of a teaching degree; Melody, 17, sang ranchera music as a small child and now sings in a teen, pop-dance, girl group, Runway MMC; and eight-year-old twins, Crystal and Christian, each are already playing a couple of instruments. Christian knows the trumpet and has expressed some interest in following in his father’s footsteps.
“Mariachi is like the Mexican flag, it makes Mexicans feel proud of who they are any place in the world,” Hernandez says.
See Mariachi Sol de Mexico live August 2 at the OC Fair & Event Center’s Pacific Amphitheatre (ocfair.com for more information) or catch one of their regular performances – including around Mother’s Day – at Jose Hernandez’s Cielito Lindo Restaurant in South El Monte (www.elcielitolindo.com). For more information on Sol de Mexico or to locate a mariachi group for booking, visit soldemexicoonline.com or (626) 279-1700.
