Photo by Jerry Bowen
The Peña Adobe in Vacaville, CA.
Photo by Jerry Bowen The Peña Adobe in Vacaville, CA. |
Los californios®, based in San Diego,
California, play and sing the secular music of California from the days when our state was part of
Spain and then Mexico. These sweet, melodic pieces include waltzes and polkas used for dancing, and songs
about love and rancho life, often with comic lyrics. Although the music includes elements of
Spanish music, it also includes influences from European and American folk music — as
trading ships often visited the coast of Alta California, from the indigenous peoples of
California, and from the diverse heritages of the early Mexican settlers.
Los californios® is a self-supporting project of
San Diego Friends of
Old-Time Music, a California non-profit educational corporation.
This project works to expose California audiences to their own historic musical
heritage; to research, document and transcribe social music and dances from
eighteenth and nineteenth century Spanish-speaking Californians; and to teach and distribute
this information to a wide audience of musicians, dancers and enthusiasts through
workshops, performances, articles and papers presented at educational conferences, and
music classes at
Sherman Heights Community Center. Los californios® received a People in Preservation
Award from Save Our Heritage
Organisation for these accomplishments.
Los californios® include:
Janet Martini,
accordion and vocals |
 At San Pasqual Battlefield State Monument. |
 |
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 to see the cover, and to read the album notes
and words to songs.
reporting on the descendents of Spanish and Mexican-era Californians and their efforts to preserve a genealogical identity. Music Clip |
| Two pieces from this CD are also 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. |  |
Nuestras Herencias, Folklórico dance program at Royce Hall, UCLA
David Swarens, Janet Martini, Vykki Mende Gray
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.
Olvera Street
In the era of Alta (Upper) California, the 5000 or so settlers lived far apart, spread between San Diego and Sonoma. So when friends and relatives gathered at a rancho for a holiday or visit, it was an occasion for many days of singing, dancing and celebrating.
The californio music all but died out after the
era of the ranchos ended, but songs performed by the last generations of californios were
recorded on wax cylinders by
journalist and folklorist Charles Fletcher Lummis, mostly between 1904 and 1907. Lummis published a
portfolio of 14 pieces from his recordings in 1923.
Over time a number of groups continued in efforts to preserve this California heritage: the
Padua Hills Theatre
(The Mexican Players) in Claremont, the José Arias
Troubadours, Eugene Plummer with his dance group, the folk dance community with dance
collectors and teachers like Lucille Czarnowski and Albert Pill, Gabriel Ruíz and his group of
musicians and dancers, the A la California Club (later calling itself Los Californios),
the In the late 1930s
Sidney Robertson Cowell undertook a project to document
Northern California Folk Music and included a number of recordings and photographs of people preserving
this tradition of music, including informants like:
Lottie Espinosa,
Hilda Duarte Brown and Walter Sebree, and
Jessie de Soto performing Spanish-language songs from
California; and
The Boys of St. Joseph’s Seminary,
women from the Asistencia at Pala
(Pala Indian Reservation), and
the
Choristers of St. Anthony’s Seminary
performing music from California’s Spanish-era missions.
In 1989 a group of San Diego folk musicians, organized by Lee Birch and calling itself
Los californios®, began playing this music and learning these dances. David Swarens
knew of Lummis’ original recordings housed at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles (a museum that
Lummis had helped to found in 1914) and the group was able to obtain funding through San Diego’s
Old Town State Park in order to
obtain tape recordings from the original wax cylinders.
Since those humble beginnings, these San Diego musicians have been privileged to conduct original
research in this field, and to meet and interview a number of the people who have made contributions
to preserving this heritage. The group’s educational mission continues to be extended in many
different ways. Their original transcriptions from the Lummis recordings and other recorded sources
are a source of joy for many a Californian rediscovering Mexican California, their delightful
performances at historic sites and museums on both sides of the border with Mexico enchant people of
all ages, their scholarly presentations at universities and for historic academicians are widely
applauded, and their popular recording
Flowers of Our Lost Romance
is available at a growing number of venues.
For more information about the preservation of Spanish-Language Social Music of the 19th Century in Southern California, follow this link.
Historical photograph by Irene Welch Garner.
Photo by Bill Thorpe
Los californios® play and sing at many historic festivals around Southern and Central California. Their authentic period clothing and music entertain audiences wherever they perform, including their frequent appearances at such places as:
Los californios® artistic director, Vykki Mende Gray, also teaches californio and Mariachi music at Sherman Heights Community Center. She is the author of a book exploring another aspect of traditional music in California: Kenny Hall’s Music Book: Old-Time Music for Fiddle and Mandolin, published by Mel Bay Publications.
With Yesteryears Dancers at California State University, Dominguez Hills
Photo by Charles
Fletcher Lummis, of Charles Fletcher Lummis
“Always your friend |
Charles Fletcher Lummis (1859-1928) was born in
Massachusetts, but came to be an avid promoter of the American Southwest. He walked from Ohio to Los
Angeles in 143 days, and published a journal of his trip, A Tramp Across the Continent, in
1892. In addition to the celebrated Edison wax cylinder recordings
that he made to preserve historic Spanish-language secular songs of California and Native American music
of the Southwest, Lummis helped found the Landmarks Club in 1897 to restore the California missions, founded
the Sequoia League in 1901 to protect America’s native people, and helped create the
Southwest Museum in 1914. Lummis
was an editor for the Los Angeles Times and wrote many other books including The Land of Poco
Tiempo (1893).
El Alisal, Lummis’ Los
Angeles home and gardens, is now the headquarters of the
Historical Society of Southern
California and is open to the public.
For more information about Lummis and his Edison wax cylinder recordings, go to lummis.loscalifornios.net. |
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The Roots Music Listening Room: The Lou Curtiss Sound Library Folk Arts Rare Records Descendants of Old Town California Mission Studies Association California Mission Studies Association American Folklife Center, Library of Congress: The Lively Arts History Association Los Californianos — Statewide descendants organization |
Photo by Paula Strong From left: David Swarens, Janet
Martini, Vykki Mende Gray |
Photo by Bill Thorpe From left: David Swarens, Janet Martini, |
New World Baroque Orchestra International Hispanic Music Study Group Shadows of the Past Californios — Fred Smoot’s Informative Page Bob Flesher’s Banjo Rogues California History Online — from the Library of Congress William John Summers’ studies of California Mission Music The Barrel Organ at Mission San Juan Bautista El coro hispano de San Francisco More great music sources from greatcalifornia.com |
Pirates anyone?
18th Century Pirate Dances at Fiesta del Río,
a celebration of the Tijuana Estuary and its history, in Imperial Beach, California