Wares Page

Mail Order Sales Department for
Los californios^® and related folk arts products

Recording | Music Books of Sheet Music Transcriptions | San Diego Friends of Old-Time Music Store

Flowers of Our Lost Romance — Recording

Los Californios® Flowers of Our Lost Romance Album Cover

Los californios^® have recorded their first album, which includes 60 minutes of beautiful early California dances and songs sung in the original archaic Spanish. Click above on title to read the album notes and words to the songs.

DVD cover for The Remuda

Two pieces from this CD are part of the music used in The Remuda, a DVD film by J & S Productions about the evolution of the buckaroo beginning in California over 200 years ago. Other musicians featured in this movie include Pedro Marquez, Ian Tyson and Dave Stamey.

For a video clip produced by the Lively Arts History Association using this recording for the audio, click here.

Music from this CD was also used for a Latino USA program reporting on the descendents of Spanish and Mexican-era Californians and their efforts to preserve a genealogical identity.

Click on album cover (right) for the album notes and words for the songs.

Music Books of Sheet Music Transcriptions

Music of Early California | Songs from Rancho Camulos | El ciego Melquíades Rodríguez

Music of Early California — Songs and Dance Tunes

Research by Los californios^® has resulted in a growing number of original transcriptions and arrangements of songs and dance tunes, many from the Edison wax cylinders recorded by Charles Fletcher Lummis. This is available as a comb-bound book containing 402 pages of music transcribed over a period of ten years, mostly from primary sources, and arranged with chord indications in common folk music keys. Lead and harmony lines (segunda) are included for most pieces in the traditional style, and an index to the pieces is included. Most of these pieces have not been readily available to a general audience for over a hundred years. These transcriptions finally make this music once again accessible and available for performers and scholars. Click above for specific titles.

Songs from Rancho Camulos

Just released, this publication focuses on the repertoire of the del Valle family of Rancho Camulos, located near Magic Mountain, north of Los Angeles. This is the first segment of the tunes in our larger work to be broken out by the area where they were collected.

El ciego Melquíades

The Fiddle Tunes of Melquíades Rodríguez,
a tejano fiddler of yesterday

This Texas-Mexican fiddler recorded in San Antonio, Texas from 1935 until about 1950. His popular and lively style of fiddle-based dance music was about to succumb to the post World War II trend for louder and flashier sounds. As the fiddle was replaced by the accordion in Tex-Mex music, these fiddle tunes faded from the popular scene.

Discover for yourself the delights of playing the repertoire of this Mexican and tejano heritage. Click on book cover illustration (right) for further description and specific titles.

The San Diego Friends of Old-Time Music Store

Books on Folk Arts, Native American and Folk Arts

Hopi Kachina Dolls

Check out the gift shop on your way out, and discover some amazing reading on such things as New Mexican folk culture, an historic edition of Walter Starkie’s classic two-volume work on Spanish music (including the rare accompanying recordings), and Polly Schaafsma’s authoritative and delightful 1994 book: Kachinas in the Pueblo World. And, as if that weren’t enough to encourage you to linger, take a peek at the folk art artifects (Lummis’ preferred spelling) including Hopi Kachina dolls and other native American folk art. Click here to enter gift shop.

Los californios^® is a registered trademark belonging to San Diego Friends of Old-Time Music, Inc.,
a California non-profit corporation.

Contact Los californios^® at info@loscalifornios.com.