Now, all of that festive fever is being packaged in a tiny U.S. postage stamp, The Associated Press reports.
The US Postal Service has celebrated the release of a new series of stamps in honor of Mariachi. The first day of release party took place in New Mexico’s largest city as musicians and fans from around the world gathered for a weekend of concerts hosted by the 30th annual Mariachi Spectacular de Albuquerque.
The five graphic stamps were made by artist Rafael Lopez, who lives and works in both Mexico and San Diego.
Each features a solo performer dressed in traditional clothing with their musical instruments. While the clothing is ornate, the backgrounds are simple and bright, inspired by another Mexican craft—papel picado, the elaborate paper clip banners often put out for parties and other occasions.
While mystery surrounds the origins of the mariachi, Lopez said there is no doubt that the beats and rhythms that developed over centuries in small Mexican villages are now known around the world. There is something special about the festive nature of mariachi, Lopez said, and Latinos are proud of their ability to share that with other cultures.
Recognizing them now on stamps is a bonus, said Robert Palacios, executive director of the Las Cruces Mariachi International Conference, which takes place each November in the border city.
Palacios, 32, plays guitar and credits the music with keeping him out of trouble when he was in middle school.
“It turned things around for me,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to do and now 20 years later I am the director of the mariachi conference and I am just working to keep it alive. So it’s full circle for me, being a student and now being able to share that passion.”
Lopez said the effect of mariachi can be like magic, leaving people in a festive mood and turning strangers into quick friends. But he couldn’t explain whether it was the rhythm, the clothes, the singing, or everything combined.
“It’s a universal thing that mariachis have and it’s hard to explain,” he said during an interview from his studio in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
“We all need some time to relax and feel happy every now and then and this music does that,” he added. “So I think that’s something that makes us Latinos very proud to see something that started in this area of Mexico and suddenly became part of the culture of the Southwest, and became part of the culture of the Southwest as well. Before you know it, it’s global, it’s international.”
Lopez grew up in Mexico City with mariachi music. He plays the guitar, violin, and six-string guitar that provide the bass line for the mariachi band.
He knows where every member of the band needs to put their hand to create that special tune. This is reflected in the pictures on the postage stamps.
The images are also inspired by movie posters from Mexico’s golden age of cinema during the 1940s and 1950s and from travel posters by the US government in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
“I wanted to get that kind of nostalgia,” said Lopez, who also created a merengue character for the Latin Music Legend series and wrote a children’s book by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “I didn’t want it to look modern, but more like something we remember when we were kids.”
For the next generation, Palacios said he hopes this new wave of interest will spur more inspiration.
“This is a huge step for our culture, a beautiful step,” he said.