Sunday Music and Old Traditions

We prefer to call it tradition instead of saying our life is in a rut. The tradition for Sunday mornings is reading the Sunday edition of the LA Times while listening to five (5) CDs. Five is the format of our current CD player. Our collection of CDs is so large and disorganized that if I wanted to listen to a specific song, it might take me a while to find it. But that is not important since I like about 98% or more of the CDs we own. So anything Son chooses will be great. Today I got up later than usual, and Son’s selections were well into the third CD. After his five were heard, I was then privileged to pick the next five CDs.

The first CD I picked is one that some people might classify as elevator music, but I enjoy it because it has the traditional Mexican music done with symphonic twist.

I bought this CD in the early 1990s when a professor at Cal State Fullerton introduced me to Luis Cobos. Included with the folkloric songs is also the Moncayo themes of "Huapango" which I really love.


But, it was hearing some of the traditional folkloric dance music that brought some childhood memories. The nuns at St. Anthony’s School taught us some of the dances to perform for our parents at the end of the school year. As I was listening to “Las Chiapanecas” (literally, the women or girls from the state of Chiapas), it was easy to remember the right time to do the double clap, but harder to remember the steps that the nuns taught us for the dance. I was surprised that I could at least remember some of them—did not mean to imply that I could execute the dance, though. When “La Raspa” came on, I easily remembered the steps, but those steps required much more agility than “Las Chiapanecas.”




I wish that I had some photos of those programs at St. Anthony’s when my sister and I attended there, but I don’t. Last summer, however, I did take a few photos of articles that had appeared in the Robstown Record in 1949-1950. When I saw this group picture of children, I identified with them immediately. I recognized the stage where I had danced “Las Chiapanecas” two or three years before them.

 

Click on the photo to read the names of the children. The only boy in the photo went on to become a local/regional celebrity who had his own tv series of variety shows. He is now known as Johnny Canales instead of Juanito Canales.