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Post by the Scribe on Nov 28, 2022 8:18:18 GMT
Nati Cano, mariachi legend of LA was 81
www.laobserved.com/archive/2014/10/nati_cano_mariachi_legend.php
By Kevin Roderick | October 4, 2014 9:20 AM
Tom Pich Photo web.archive.org/web/20190425220058/https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/portraits?page=1
Natividad Cano, the founder of Los Camperos de Nati Cano — probably the most famous mariachi band to be based in Los Angeles — died Friday at age 81. Born in the Mexican state of Jalisco, Cano came to Los Angeles in 1960 and joined Mariachi Aguila, which was the house band at the Million Dollar Theatre. Cano succeeded the founder, renamed the group Los Camperos, and in 1967 opened La Fonda on Wilshire Boulevard near MacArthur Park in part to provide the Camperos with a performing venue. Los Camperos has performed for presidents, mentored many young mariachi musicians, including at schools in LA, and collaborated with Linda Ronstadt on her Spanish language songs. “So many musicians and dancers got their start from working with Nati,” said Javier Verdin, a folklorista and co-founder of Ballet Folklorico Ollin.
Tribute to Nati Cano at the Ford Theatre
www.kcet.org/shows/live_at_the_ford/nati-cano/
City News Service
www.dailynews.com/arts-and-entertainment/20141004/mariachi-pioneer-nati-cano-dies
Vivelohoy
www.vivelohoy.com/entretenimiento/8421562/murio-don-nati-cano-fundador-de-mariachi-los-camperos
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Post by the Scribe on Nov 28, 2022 8:21:42 GMT
The Mountain News – WA Stories from Backstage – Linda Ronstadt and Los Camperos de Nati Cano
themountainnewswa.net/2012/09/23/stories-from-backstage-linda-ronstadt-and-los-camperos-de-nati-cano/
Posted on September 23, 2012 by brucesmith49
By Bruce A. Smith
October, 2008 – The Paramount Theater, Seattle
Attending one of Linda Ronstadt’s Tex-Mex concerts is like driving through the night to Mexico on Spring Break. When you start off everything looks familiar and everyone is speaking English, but when the sun rises you’re in ol’ Mey-he-co and the only folks you understand are your buddies in the back seat of the car.
It’s the same with Linda and her mariachi camperos, led by the ageless and renown Nati Cano. It’s all-Espanol-all-the-time, although Ms. Ronstadt did chat a bit en Inglés between a few songs. But basically you were on your own to scrape by on whatever high school Spanish was left over in your memory bank. There was never even a hint of Blue Bayou all night long.
Fortunately, I was graced with the company of Mary McCann, an on-air personality from KPLU, the NPR jazz station in Tacoma, and it turned out that Mary once hailed from Arizona and was needing a fix of authentic Mey-he-co big-time. With her grasp of the lingo she was able to keep me apprised of most of the details. However, I do think she missed a few of the jokes told by the Nati Cano Mariachis because she wasn’t laughing as loud as the rest of the audience, which must have been at least two-thirds Espanol-fluent.
That said, Ronstadt’s “A Romantic Evening in Old Mexico,” was delicious. You were there in the old country, fully, and surrounded by great music, folk dancers and Cano’s nine Mariachis. In fact, Los Camperos de Nati Cano opened the show and held forth for several numbers before Linda strolled on stage.
Linda told us her show was based on the ballads she learned in her Tucson backyard growing up as a kid, joining in family sing-alongs. I assume her folks were Mexican, at least her padre, and I wished she would have explained her family heritage a bit more fully. Maybe she did, but I no hablo Espanol bueno enough to catch it on the fly.
I was also astonished at her vocal power. In her range, she was awesome, as strong as any performer I have ever heard on stage. However, her song selection did challenge her at times in the upper registers; nevertheless, I was generally satisfied with what she offered.
A special treat was listening to the vocal firepower that the Mariachis delivered both in solos and duets with Ms. Ronstadt. Those guys rocked, but in the duets you could tell the senorita knew a few tricks they have yet to learn.
The show was short, only 80 minutes or so, and there was no encore. But sonically and psychologically Linda transported you to the old country, fully immersing her listeners in the ranchera music of Northern Mexico.
For me, besides chair-dancing to a couple salsa numbers, I even began to get the hang of the Espanol. By the end of the show mi corazon was filled con l’amore pour la luna, or something like that.
As for the guys backstage, they didn’t have much to do once again as the Paramount Theater was dressed in simple black, with only a few overhead lights to give visual effects.
As for their sound, Linda Ronstadt delivered the goods, and that is what I carried from the show: her power and passion for the Canciones de Mi Padre.
© 2008, 2012 Bruce A. Smith
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Post by the Scribe on Nov 28, 2022 8:26:40 GMT
Linda Ronstadt "Tata Dios" W/Camperos de Nati Cano
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Post by the Scribe on Nov 28, 2022 8:33:05 GMT
TRIBUTE
Tribute to Natividad “Nati” Cano (1933-2014)
folkways.si.edu/nati-cano
by Daniel Sheehy
In over his 50-plus years as a bandleader and charismatic teacher, Natividad “Nati” Cano took the humble musical tradition he inherited from his family to the most prestigious concert stages in the United States and Mexico. Both a traditionalist and an innovator, his work with the renowned Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano changed lives, changed minds, and recalibrated american public opinion of this signature musical expression rooted firmly in the history and pueblo of Mexico. He passed away October 3, 2014, at the age of 81.
"I did it to preserve, to rescue so many beautiful songs. I never thought that we would be nominated for a Grammy. I did it as a tribute to Mexico, to its people, who are the ones who keep these beautiful songs alive. We only did what we were supposed to do and we are very proud." (Nati Cano in an interview following the 2009 GRAMMY awards).
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Video: Nati Cano's Mariachi los Camperos perform at the Viva el Mariachi Festival in Fresno, California, 2007.
The footprint of his work is regional, national, international, and lasting. His insistence on musical excellence and impeccable stage character raised the bar on mariachi musical performance. He took his group to performances in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Town Hall in Seattle, San Antonio’s Majestic Theatre, Berkeley’s Zellerbach Auditorium, and many more prestigious venues, opening doors for Mexican musicians of other styles. His dinner theater restaurant, La Fonda de Los Camperos, on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles exposed the best of mariachi music to hundreds of thousands of Americans of many backgrounds and was a model for countless other similar venues for Mexican musicians. His annual Mexican culture tour, “Fiesta Navidad,” continues more than a decade of performances throughout the United States. Cano’s collaboration with singer Linda Ronstadt (who publicly stated that Los Camperos was her favorite mariachi ensemble) on her milestone Canciones de Mi Padre recording and tour yielded a rebirth of public enthusiasm for mariachi music in the United States and beyond. Cano and Ronstadt continued their collaboration over the ensuing decades. The PBS production The Spirit of Mexico, featuring Cano’s group and Mariachi Vargas, took the tradition to tens of millions of Americans.
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Video: Mariachi los Camperos de Nati Cano demonstrate how to play bolero in the mariachi style.
In the 1980s and beyond, Cano turned his attention to mentoring young people. For nearly three decades, he led music workshops for youth throughout the American Southwest. His charisma and focus on character as well as artistic excellence touched literally hundreds of thousands of young people, transforming lives. Wherever he went, young children rushed to hug him, young people idolized him, and parents expressed their heartfelt gratitude for what he offered their children. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Cano the American government’s highest award in the folk and traditional arts, the National Heritage Fellowship award. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, published three recordings of his group resulting in one GRAMMY award, one GRAMMY nomination, and several other awards.
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Video: Nati Cano's Mariachi los Camperos performing Mexico lindo at the Smithsonian Folklife Fesitval 2004.
He was born in 1933 in the small village of Ahuisculco, Jalisco, in the west Mexican region where the mariachi originated in the 18th and 19th centuries. As a young boy, Cano enrolled at the Academia de Música in Guadalajara to study the violin, but he would return home to play with his father in local cantinas and cafes. In 1950, Cano traveled to the border town of Mexicali to join the Mariachi Chapala, and several years later he emigrated to Los Angeles, California. There he joined Mariachi Águila, the house ensemble at the famous Million Dollar Theatre, a major stopping point on the Mexican professional circuit. Upon the death of the group’s director, Cano became the new leader and renamed the band Los Camperos. From these humble beginnings, and for more than 50 years, Nati Cano took his legacy of Mexican culture to countless Americans across the United States, earning United States citizenship while opening doors of opportunity for Mexican musicians and other culture bearers, and permanently transforming social and cultural attitudes toward the potential of Mexican culture.
Daniel Sheehy is director and curator of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
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