Travel The World With Opus Electives
Destination #3: Mexico
Mariachi is a Mexican musical genre. This style of music includes instruments such as the violin, viola, trumpet, guitar, voice, vihuela, and guitarrón. Mariachi is sung and performed in large ensembles, just like the one we have here at SMYO and Opus camp.
The Vihuela is one of the instruments within a mariachi ensemble. It is a small, deep-bodied rhythm guitar. The vihuela fills in the rhythmic patterns outlined by the guitarrón. Unlike the guitar, the vihuela is used primarily for the rhythmic function - its convex back and high-pitched strings amplify its percussive qualities, while its short neck makes it hard to play melodies. It features reentrant tuning, which means the strings are not in order from lowest to highest pitch. This enhances its percussive quality.
Photo credit: https://www.samash.com/h-jimenez-el-quetzal-vihuela-hlv2xxxxx-p
The guitarrón is a large Mexican six-string acoustic bass. It was developed from the sixteenth-century Spanish "bajo de uña". The guitarrón is usually played by doubling notes at the octave. Its large size is needed to amplify the deep bass notes, that act as the sonic foundation of every mariachi song. A mariachi can not perform without a guitarrón. In early mariachi groups, the harp was often used to provide this rhythmic function (the harp also has low notes!), but as the groups became more mobile, the guitarrón tended to replace the harp because it was easier to transport.
Photo credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/514747432382781832/?autologin=true
Click above to watch video!