Talented Hernandez has mariachi in his blood

Friday, Sept. 7, 2001 | 8:41 a.m.

Mariachi music flows through the veins of Jose Hernandez.

The 43-year-old native of Mexico is a fifth-generation mariachi musician who at age 3 began singing with family members.

On Saturday Hernandez and his Los Angeles group, Mariachi Sol de Mexico, will perform Saturday at the 11th annual Las Vegas International Mariachi Festival at Mandalay Bay.

Other featured groups at the festival include Mariachi Mexico de Pepe Villa, from Mexico City; Mariachi Los Reyes de Mexico de Francisco Gonzalez, from Guadalajara, Mexico; and the Ballet Folklorico San Juan, from Tucson, Ariz.

Special guests will be pop singers Jose Luis "La Puma" Rodriguez of Venezuela and Ana Barbara of Mexico.

Hernandez, whose family has been performing the traditional music of Mexico for 125 years, is often described as an innovator who doesn't always adhere to tradition.

He sometimes crosses over into other genres, infusing Broadway production numbers, pop songs and other varieties with the mariachi sound.

"Traditionalists were bothered in the beginning," Hernandez said, speaking by phone from a recording studio in Los Angeles. "Nobody else was doing it, and when you are the first for anything you become a target.

"But now (crossover mariachi) is a whole genre in itself. The recording industry is going that way."

He said mariachi now includes not only the traditional sounds, but incorporates the sounds of big-band music by such artists as Glenn Miller, and even country, such as the fiddle music of Charlie Daniels.

"We will record with anyone, now," Hernandez said.

Hernandez's latest CD, "Tequila con Limon," was nominated for a Latin Grammy earlier this year.

The nomination reveals that Hernandez is ahead of his time.

"Six of the songs on the CD were recorded 20 years ago," Hernandez said. "They just were never out on the market. We used cellos and French horns and other instruments in addition to traditional mariachi instruments."

Mariachi Sol de Mexico has a number of firsts to boast about this year.

The band recently returned from concerts in North Korea and China.

"It was incredible," Hernandez said. "It is true what they say, that music doesn't have a mother tongue.

"The North Korean musicians are very much into classical music, but they were in awe of the musicianship of mariachi music. They had never seen that before."

Hernandez was born in Mexico but raised in Los Angeles. He began singing professionally at age 15, working with his father and five older brothers.

Although Hernandez plays all of the traditional mariachi instruments -- violin, trumpet, vihuela (similar to a guitar), guitarron (an oversized bass guitar) and guitar -- he has had no formal music lessons. His father taught him the basics and the rest he learned by watching and doing.

"I went to school for arranging and producing," he said.

Hernandez learned by performing with some of the most creative minds in the music industry, among them Henry Mancini.

"From him I learned how to orchestrate for bigger-sounding groups and it gave me the opportunity to learn to embellish (mariachi) with cellos, oboes and other nontraditional instruments."

Hernandez may be one of the busiest men in the music business.

In addition an exhaustive touring schedule and cutting his own CDs, he is beginning to produce other artists and to write scores for films.

He recently completed a project for the film "A Beautiful Mind" co-starring Ed Harris and Russell Crowe. One of Harris' most recent films was "Enemy at the Gate," in which he played the role of a German sniper in World War II.

"I've been doing quite a few pop concerts with different orchestras," he said. "And I wrote a concerto, 22-minute piece for a symphony in mariachi. I hope to record, in a couple of years, a whole symphonic mariachi -- maybe go to England and perform with the Royal Philharmonic."

In 1992 Hernandez founded Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles, an all-female mariachi group that still performs.

In 1990 Hernandez formed the nonprofit Mariachi Heritage Society, a program designed to provide mariachi classes in public schools. More than 4,500 students at eight Los Angeles schools have taken advantage of the program.

Hernandez is looking forward to the Las Vegas event. He has not missed a Mariachi Festival here since they began in 1990.

"It is such an honor to step on those great stages that so many artists dream about," he said.