Your truest friends are the ones who show up when you are in need, at the drop of a hat.
Viva el Arte de Santa Barbara, the nonprofit educational concert series that brings Latin American ensembles to perform free for the community, certainly has a friend in Cambalache and its leader César Castro. The LA-based son jarocho group was called last minute to open Viva’s season after the previously scheduled group Cimarron cancelled a recent tour due to health issues in the band.
The group will perform in Santa Barbara, Isla Vista, and Guadalupe over the weekend of Sept. 16 through 18, with the Guadalupe show on Sept. 17 in the evening. Castro said the group is excited to perform and respectfully take Cimarron’s place as season opener.
“I’m preparing some verses honoring Cimarron and wishing the best for Carlos Rojas’ health,” Castro said. “We’re conscious of that, because we know him, and this isn’t just a job for us, it’s a commitment.”
But according to Castro, that’s what jarocho music is all about. You have to be ready for a fandango any day, any time, he said. Castro was born and raised in Veracruz, Mexico, where a fandango is a party that gets people together to sing, dance, eat, and enjoy each other’s company.
It’s a powerful social event in Veracruz, he said, and he and the group actually teach the fandango as a practice. Getting people to sing and dance together can be a challenge if their culture has forgotten it. But jarocho music is very rhythmic, and a group like Cambalache won’t take no for an answer.
“It’s very vibrant and happy,” Castro said. “There’s an African influence in how we share the harmonic space and how we are communicating.”
What Castro tries to do with Cambalache—which translates to “exchange”—is share ideas and his culture. Castro doesn’t just talk the talk, he definitely walks the walk. He is also a luthier, and makes the instruments he plays, like the jarana.
His bandmates also play his instruments as well. His wife, Xochi Flores-Castro, plays the jarana and the zapateado in the band too. Playing with his wife is “natural,” he said, just like how he grew up playing music with his family.
“It’s very social,” he said. “And today in our urbanized society we are losing that. So, instead of going out and catching Pokémon, we get together with the jarana and catch some verses and songs, sharing stories, and practicing our musicianship.”
Castro and Cambalache have been a big part of the resurgence of jarocho music, and its emergence into the American musical melting pot. He is an inveterate performer, but also a teacher. He teaches the various styles of music, with a focus on jarocho, but he also has apprentice luthiers under his tutelage as well.
It’s all part of the mission to keep the experiences that were central to his life going, so they are a part of the next generation’s lives.
“We invite everyone to participate and we teach them how to feel it, when to get loud, and how to get engaged,” he said. “People are just ready to be a part of something.
“Sometimes, when we migrate, we forget that culture is something of value that makes us rich, because we are too busy with work,” he added. “But what about those moments we can just get together and play and think together? That’s something I think people are just naturally ready for.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne likes the sound of a fandango. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 8-15, 2016.
