Experiencing a foreign culture / attending a concert

 

© by Mark Dempsey

Through a series of coincidences, we got some tickets to see Mexican Mariachi star Pepe Aguilar and his family in concert at the Golden 1 Center–a basketball arena transformed into a horse show arena, complete with dirt floor and fencing. The show's title: Pepe Aguilar presenta Jaripeo: Hasta Los Huesos.

Jaripeos consist of bull riding, caballos bailadores (dancing horses), and live music. Although I’ve even read science fiction about off-planet adventures, not in my wildest imagination did I ever conceive of an event where people would ride dancing horses while singing, never mind a jaripeo. Could this be “culture shock”?

The “hasta los huesos” phrase in the event title means “to the bone,” as in “bad to the bone.” The consistent theme of this jaripeo was Mexico’s Day of the Dead when the living remember their dead ancestors and relatives with celebrations and honor them with altars containing food and drink they enjoyed when alive. While not that unusual in world cultures–Confucian traditions also honor ancestors with celebrations and altars–the Mexican tradition has lots of skeletons and skulls.

At one end, the arena had a stage populated by roughly 20 musicians. Centered on that stage, lit from within, were large models of skulls with the names of the principal performers inscribed on their foreheads. The announcer (ringmaster?) of the jaripeo was a man dressed in a skeleton costume, complete with a sombrero, and virtually all of the many dancers who accompanied the vocalists were costumed as skeletons.

The performers themselves wore costumes that recall bullfighters' “suit of lights”- replete with embroidery and glowing sequins. Some dancers even wore costumes with LEDs, and one of the final “dancing” acts included two twelve-foot-tall LED-lit skeletons who danced with one another as the music played.

So Mexicans aren’t nearly as squeamish about death as gringos. They dance with it; they play with it; they acknowledge it and keep it consciously in their environment rather than denying it. Mexico truly has a different culture.

The first two riders who circled the arena held a Mexican flag and an American flag, while the skeleton-master-of-ceremonies cried “¡Viva Mexico!” The largely Hispanic crowd echoed this statement with gusto.

The principal entertainers rode into the arena on horseback, microphone in hand, singing. The horses they rode were exquisitely groomed. Their hooves were polished, and their manes flowed gracefully down, often below their neck. We joked that some manes had a perm–they were wavy-haired.

The horses were also exquisitely trained. As their riders sang they danced and pranced to the music. Most of the music was mariachi, or mariachi-adjacent, sung with such passion and gusto that I found tears welling up in my eyes. It’s music from the heart.

Between bouts of music and emotion, non-vocalists entertained. One was a lariat artist, who brought plain, LED-lit, and on-fire ropes to whisk around. Another was a clown parodying a bullfighter with a stuffed animal bull.

Believe it or not, the concert, excuse me “jaripeo,” also included a bull-riding contest, exactly like rodeos. Not your typical concert...!

All-in-all, we certainly got more than we bargained for in entertainment, and a lesson worth remembering about how limited imagination is. This discovery might be encouraging in a discouraging world. Perhaps how we’ve imagined things to be is not the end of imagining. Perhaps there’s a counterpoint to the notion that things are never so bad they can’t get worse, to which I say “¡Viva Mexico!”

For those who want video of a jaripeo:

–Mark Dempsey is married to a Hispanic woman (who is in the US legally, even if she weren’t married) and is grateful to have her as a constant reminder that things don’t always have to be done the American way. He’s also mindful that going to a concert unmasked is dangerous. See this graph of recent test positivity:

…so he wore his KN-95 mask