City dances to Mariachi tunes

When Flor De Toloache, a NY based all women Mariachi band took to the stage at the American Centre in Kolkata, the audience couldn’t help but break into impromptu jigs. Maya, Jackie, Veronica, Eva, Luisa, Anna, Shae and Mireya took fusion to another level by blending jazz, salsa and well, Bolly beats to traditional Mariachi.
We got Mireya, Shae and Maya to share their experiences with us.
Give us a little background of Mariachi music.
Mireya: Mariachi is a very male-dominated Mexican genre. But recently, it has become popular in the other countries as there has been a lot of Mexican immigration and lots of Mexican classic films are now being made. So guess, we just came around at the right time.
Whats’ with the face painting?
Shae: There’s this event in Mexico, the day of the dead, which is now very popular in the other states as well. It's akin to the American Haloween. So we get a lot of calls to perform during this festival. That’s why we started to paint our faces to get into the spirit of the festival. Its kind of a celebration of death, so we paint our faces like skeletons. We took some YouTube tutorials (laughs), and mostly all of us just clutter around one mirror and dip our paint brushes in the same paint boxes and go all wishy-wooshy on ourselves.
What’s the best part of an all-women band?
Shae: We played with men for a long time individually. So being in an all-women band is exhilarating. We get to do silly stuff, play dress-up and share stories as women. The first time we performed, it was New Year’s eve. We were so excited, we took more time to dress up than we did playing! We went to the salon, got our hair done and then when we started to perform, we were like, “Oops... we only know like three songs!” It was a really dark restaurant and people didn’t even get a good look at us!
What kind of music do you experiment with?
M: We do traditional Mariachi, but we also try to incorporate other regional stuff like jazz, salsa, bachata (from Dominican Republic), cumbia (from Latin America), Afro beats, soul music... In Amritsar, students performed giddha dance and we accompanied them by playing cumbia, because the rhythm was so similar.
S: Luisa here got so excited while trying to emulate the giddha steps that she fell and tore a ligament! And then Maya sang this Hindi song, while Jackie played the trumpet and I strummed along on the vihuela. So, now we also play Hindi songs, though we know just one (winks)!
So, Maya never taught you Hindi songs before?
M: Surprisingly, the whole time we were in India, we didn’t even know she could sing in Hindi! After she sang in Amritsar, we were like, “So you can sing in Hindi? How come you never told us?” and she went, “Oh Yeah, I know tons. You guys never asked!”
Maya, are you clued into Bollywood?
Yeah. I recently watched Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. Also, I really like Tabu.
Do you listen to Indian music? I have been listening to a lot of thumri and Rajasthani music recently. and I also get to hear loads of Bollywood songs that are doing the rounds.
How was it giving a tour of Chennai, your hometown, to your bandmates.
I had a hard time explaining the local cuisine to them. In New York, you go to Indian restaurant and you get only North Indian food. Siouth Indian is rare. So, we had loads of south Indian In Chennai and I had to explain to them what an idliis and what rava is, which was tough.
You share your name with Pt Ravi Shankar... Oh Yeah, that keeps coming up. People even ask me if I am related to him or L Shankar, the violin player, because I play the violin. But no, no relation whatsoever. Maybe I will start pretending to be his long-lost daughter... (laughs) so yeah, that keeps coming up often.