Los Vega brings 300-year-old Mexican son jarocho to Montreal Jazz Festival stage
The Mexican family ensemble, rooted in Veracruz tradition, performs this week celebrating music that blends indigenous, African, and Spanish roots.
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Los Vega brings son jarocho — a 300-year-old Mexican musical tradition — to the Festival international Nuits d'Afrique this week, performing a music rooted equally in indigenous, West African, and Andalusian Spanish traditions.
Sinuhé Padilla Isunza, a member of the ensemble, explains the tradition's origins. "Son jarocho is traditional music from the Sotavento region, in the south of the Gulf of Mexico," he said in an interview. "It's a mixture of indigenous, West African and Andalusian roots from southern Spain," taking its modern form in Mexico's colonial colonies.
The family group traces its lineage to Andrés Vega Delfín, a legendary musician of the son jarocho revival born in 1931, who died two years ago at 93. About 25 years ago, his grandchildren began performing under the Los Vega name. Today the ensemble includes cousins and members of the fifth generation of the family.
Los Vega plays in the fandango style — a celebration made through music, dance, poetry, and food, where the distinction between performer and audience dissolves. "In a fandango, it's not necessary to be a musician or dancer: you simply have to be part of the ritual," Padilla Isunza said. Onstage, there is no predetermined setlist. "We never know what song we're going to play, how long it will take," he said. "It depends on what the public needs — sometimes they want intimacy, sometimes they need to wake up and dance."
The group performs with traditional instruments including the jarana, the guitarra de son (also called requinto jarocho), and the leona, which serves as the bass. One song they play, "La Bamba," was composed in 1683 — the same version Ritchie Valens later recorded in 1959.
