Los Vega. Photo by Jose Elias Nemer
SANTA BARBARA — ¡Viva el Arte de Santa Barbara! will present Los Vega performing at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 18 at Isla Vista School, 6875 El Colegio Road, Goleta, (805-893-5037); 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19 at Guadalupe City Hall Auditorium, 918 Obispo St., Guadalupe, (805-343-2939); and 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20 at the Marjorie Luke Theatre at Santa Barbara Jr. High, 721 E. Cota St., Santa Barbara, (805-884-4087, ext. 7).
The fifth generation family of artists perform jarocho music from Veracruz, Mexico. In a media release, ¡Viva el Arte de Santa Barbara! reports:
Carrying on a longstanding family tradition, Los Vega brings a fresh perspective to this distinctive style, playing jaranas (small guitars), percussion, vocals and zapateado (footwork).
For more than five generations the Vega family has contributed to traditional son jarocho, taking on the responsibility of keeping a musical expression alive through the generations. Son jarocho is a style of music with origins in music brought from Spain in the colonial period, melded with indiginous folk music, dynamic Afro — Caribbean beats and wise — cracking wordplay unique to the tropical Veracruz region on the Gulf of Mexico. It is music traditionally played on stringed instruments such as the jarana, a strummed guitar with eight to ten strings, three of which are double, and the requinto, a small four-stringed guitar, and is accompanied by intricate dance orzapateado, often performed on wooden platforms or tarimas.
The history of son jarocho mirrors the history of other traditional music, gaining in commercial success and national prominence in Mexico with the emergence of radio and recordings in the 1930s and 40s, becoming somewhat standardized, and then reemerging with the folk revival of the 1970s. The pillar of the Vega family, requintero Don Andres Vega, is a long standing member of legendary
Mono Blanco, the jarocho group credited with redirecting the music onto its rural roots and focusing on traditional performance settings, travelling to small towns and organizing fandangos, informal gatherings of musicians who collectively reinterpret son jarocho. By the end of the 1980s a full-fledged son jarocho revival was underway, and Mono Blanco performed worldwide, including in the 2009-10 season of ¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara!
Nine years ago the younger generation of the Vega family formed Los Vega Son Jarocho, performing from the broad repertroire of traditional jarocho music, often adding their own contemporary twist. The group has performed and conducted workshops across Mexico and the US at concerts, festivals and fandangos, and now at ¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara!
¡Viva el Arte de Santa Barbara! 2013-14 season will continue with the presentation of La Santa Cecilia (Jan. 10-12, 2014), Perla Batalla (Feb. 7-9, 2014) and Plena Libre (March 21-23, 2014).
Visit https://www.facebook.com/VivaelArteSB for more information.