Mariachi Star Nati Cano Dies at 81

 

Celebrated mariachi musician Nati Cano passed away on Friday, October 3rd, 2014. Nati Cano was the leader of Los Camperos, one of the top mariachi bands in the world, a Grammy-award winner and a 1990 NEA National Heritage Fellow.

Natividad Cano, better known as Nati Cano, was born on July 23, 1933, in the small village of Ahuisculco, in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. Cano’s family were jornaleros who played mariachi music in their free time. His grandfather, Catarino Cano, was a self-taught guitarrón player, and his father, Sotero Cano, was a multitalented musician who was skilled at playing all the mariachi stringed instruments. In 1939, Sotero began teaching his six-year-old son, Nati to play the vihuela. Two years later, Nati enrolled at the Academia de Música in Guadalajara to study the violin. After six years at the Academia, Nati left to join his father and help support his family by playing in local cantinas and cafes.

In 1950, Cano convinced his father to let him travel to the border town of Mexicali to join the Mariachi Chapala. Although he was the youngest musician in the group by at least 10 years, he quickly became the Mariachi’s musical arranger. He stayed with the Mariachi Chapala for seven years before migrating in 1960 to Los Angeles. There he joined Mariachi Aguila, the house ensemble at the famous Million Dollar Theatre, a major stopping point on the Mexican professional circuit. After the death of the group’s director, José Frías, Cano became the new leader and renamed the group Los Camperos (The Countrymen).

Cano and the original six members of Los Camperos settled in Los Angeles in 1967 and opened La Fonda restaurant, at which they performed regularly. La Fonda rapidly gained a reputation as an important center of Mexican culture in Los Angeles.

In the 1990s, Cano dedicated himself to sharing his musical knowledge with young people and to the cultivation of greater public understanding and respect for the music to which he devoted his life. In Los Angeles, he initiated “mariachi-in-education” programs at public schools and lent his name, expertise, and resources to the Hispanic Women’s Council’s Nati Cano Cultural Arts Awards in Latin performing arts. Cano donated his time at numerous concerts to benefit the Mexican American community. At the national level, he became a major figure as teacher, performer, competition judge, and benefactor in the growing number of mariachi festivals throughout the American Southwest.

Nati Cano’s Mariachi Los Camperos released two albums on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2002’s acclaimed Viva El Mariachi! and 2005’s ¡Llegaron Los Camperos!: Concert Favorites. Under Cano’s direction, Los Camperos was one of four mariachi ensembles to work with Linda Ronstadt on her Spanish-language album Canciones de mi Padre and toured extensively with the rock artist.

 

 

“GRAMMY winner Nati Cano was a remarkable musician and legendary figure in mariachi music,” said Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy. “A highly accomplished artist with a career that spanned more than seven decades, Cano was devoted to sharing traditional mariachi music to widespread audiences and was fiercely dedicated to the preservation of the genre. He learned to play the vihuela, a small five-stringed guitar, at the age of 6 and by the time he was 8, he was playing professionally in cantinas with family members.

In 1961, Cano became the leader of the Los Angeles-based group Mariachi los Camperos, who would go on to play top concert venues around the world and are widely considered one of the top mariachi ensembles in the country. He also lectured on ethnomusicology at UCLA, sharing his passion and love for his music and culture and ensuring its legacy. We have lost a uniquely gifted member of our creative community, and our sympathies go out to his family, his friends, and all who have been moved by his extraordinary and heartfelt talent.”