Google Video Doodle Celebrates Regional Mexican Musical Genre Mariachi, the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

Google celebrates a genre of Regional Mexican music Mariachi with a video Doodle on November 24, 2020. It is a quintessential element of Mexico’s rich cultural heritage: the musical genre of Mariachi.

What is Mariachi?

Mariachi is a genre of Regional Mexican music that goes back to at least the eighteenth century, developing over time in the countryside of different regions of western Mexico.

The typical mariachi group today comprises upwards of eight violins, two trumpets and a minimum of one guitar, including a high-pitched vihuela and an acoustic bass guitar called a guitarrón, and all players alternating singing lead and doing backup vocals.

From the nineteenth to twentieth century, relocations from rural territories into Guadalajara, alongside the Mexican government’s cultural promotion step by step re-marked it as Son style, with its elective name of “Mariachi” becoming used for the “urban” form.

Changes in the music incorporate impacts from other music, for example, polkas and waltzes, the expansion of trumpets, and the utilization of charro outfits by mariachi musicians. The musical style started to take on national prominence in the first half of the twentieth century, with its promotion at presidential introductions and on the radio during the 1920s.

In 2011, UNESCO perceived Mariachi as an Intangible Cultural Heritage, joining six different entries on the Mexican list of that category.

Song styles and instrumentals performed with mariachi incorporate rancheras, corridos, cumbias, boleros, ballads, sones, huapangos, jarabes, danzones, joropos, pasodobles, marches, polkas, waltzes, and chotís.

Most song lyrics are about machismo, love, betrayal, death, politics, revolutionary heroes, and country life.

Strangely, history isn’t 100% certain about the actual origin of “mariachi” or even of the exact source of the music we know today as mariachi. A few traditions place their roots in Jalisco, a state situated in western Mexico, particularly as the mariachi style depended on the previous genre of “son jalisciense.”

Notwithstanding its actual musical influences, mariachi is additionally known for its clothing. Most musicians of the genre — likewise called “mariachis” — wear a traditional outfit of the charro, a kind of horseman.

Starting in Western Mexico in the eighteenth century, a traditional mariachi band is made out of at least two violins, an acoustic guitar, an acoustic bass guitar called a guitarrón, and a vihuela – a guitar with a rounded back that produces high-pitched tones. Modern mariachi bands have added trumpets, a singer, and even an occasional harp.

Musicians wear traje de charro, the suit of a Mexican cowboy that comprises of tight, pants, a short jacket, and a wide-brimmed sombrero intricately decorated with embroidery and gold or silver buttons.

Mariachi is often played at weddings and birthday parties, as well as funerals. It can likewise be heard in plazas across Mexico and the US Southwest, from El Paso, Texas, to Los Angeles.

In 2011, UNESCO perceived mariachi as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, saying that: “Mariachi music transmits values of respect for the natural heritage of the regions of Mexico and local history in the Spanish language and the different Indian languages of Western Mexico.”

Google video Doodle for Celebrating Mariachi

On November 24, 2020, Google video Doodle observes Mariachi, the quintessential folk music of Mexico, and has become a symbol of the country’s culture.

The most recent Google Doodle is a short video exhibiting a little example of what makes mariachi, including instruments like the guitarrón, vihuela, and trumpet. The Google video Doodle is set to Cielito Lindo, a classic song regularly used as an approach to show a symbol of Mexican pride and community.

The Mariachi band is portrayed playing the staple instruments of the musical genre—including the guitarrón (a six-string bass), vihuela (a five-string guitar), violin, trumpet, and harp—and wearing traditional trajes de charro (charro suits).

To celebrate the obvious group of trumpets, guitars, and violins, Google committed a musical and animated Doodle on Tuesday to what exactly has become known as the sound Mexico. The Doodle includes a mariachi serenade of the classic song Cielito Lindo – generally interprets Spanish as a “Lovely Sweet One”.

Concerning why Google has chosen for this to be the day to celebrate mariachi, it has to do with UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — setting mariachi onto its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity around this time in 2011.