Old music finds new voices

Virginia Stille can't decide on the right shade of lipstick. She doesn't want anything too garish, but the color must be bright enough to show up on stage.

"What about this one, Mom?" she calls from the makeup artist's chair.

Mom approves, and the stick of burnt sienna sweeps her lips. Just as she's about to surrender the chair, one of the stylists asks for a sample of her upcoming performance.

Now, that's something Virginia is not indecisive about.

She begins slowly: "Rebozo, Rebozos," and then she builds: "de Santa María." Her voice is sophisticated for such a young girl, and she doesn't falter in the a cappella version of "Aires del Mayab," a tribute to the Mayan Indian culture.

At 13 years old, Virginia has just won best of show at the seventh annual Mariachi Vargas Extravaganza in San Antonio, a town that knows its mariachi music.

She competed against hundreds of young people to win the title and is now preparing for an evening concert.

"I hope to keep on singing and one day do it professionally," Virginia says, smoothing her delicately embroidered dress. "I want to make it big."

Make it big singing mariachi? On this side of the border?

While it may be hard to imagine a mariachi minstrel giving Britney Spears a run for her money, this traditional music of Mexico is growing in popularity in the United States.

And it's happening among the most unlikely group of listeners.

No longer is mariachi music simply for first-generation Hispanics longing for memories of their homeland. Mariachi is hip with the youngsters here - in contrast to Mexican adolescents' feelings about the music.

As this music, born a century ago in the pueblos around Guanajuato, becomes old-fashioned and uncool among youngsters in its country of origin, Mexican-American teens are embracing it and moving it forward.

Many Mexican-American teens are attempting careers in this challenging genre. US colleges are beginning to offer courses - and even considering degrees - in mariachi music. And competitions, such as the one in San Antonio, are spreading across the country as more and more young Hispanics reach for their roots.

"A lot of the younger people in Mexico don't listen to mariachi music, or only do so when they've had too much to drink or are melancholy," says Gregorio Luke, the director of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, Calif.

Part of the problem within Mexico is the media's current focus on musical style rather than substance, he says. "The modern media [have] done a great deal to deteriorate the collective taste of the country.

"They basically look for people with visual appeal, and it doesn't really matter if they can sing well," he says. "But in the US, a whole generation of young people have not been exposed to the horrors of Mexican radio and television."

It's with this group of youngsters, raised on their parents' and grandparents' old mariachi records, that Mr. Luke sees the future of the music.

"With them, it hasn't gone out of fashion," he says. "And they are giving it a vitality not seen in Mexico for quite some time. They are changing the very syntax of the music."

But for those who are learning to play and sing, it's about so much more than form and function. It's about feeling.

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