NPR: 'Our Soul Music Is Mariachi Music': Houston's Mexican Mass
  • a1437053a1437053
    Posts: 198
    http://www.npr.org/2014/01/03/259389094/our-soul-is-mariachi-music-houstons-mexican-mass

    But just because Vatican II invited mariachis into church didn't mean they were always welcome. Some parishioners didn't think cantina music belonged in the Order of Mass alongside the Kyrie eleison, Gloria and Alleluia. They said it was loud and undignified.
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    Ay carumba!
  • R J StoveR J Stove
    Posts: 302
    Hey, anybody else remember Fr. Guido Haazen's briefly hip Missa Luba? There was a bestselling Philips LP recording made of it circa 1965, and somehow or other - if memory serves me; of course I'm open to correction - it was tied in with the government of newly-independent Katanga (i.e. the good guys, insofar as the Congolese struggle ever had any good guys). I can't imagine a thoroughgoing Marxist dictatorship ever countenancing, as the Missa Luba disc countenanced, a choir named after Belgium's King Baudouin. Its combination of Latin texts and Zulu Dawn-style percussion was certainly shocking when I first heard it (not till 1987 in my case, I hasten to add), but it sounds fairly tame to my ears now. Naturally it has turned up on YouTube (as what music does not, sooner or later)? Judge for yourselves. Perhaps I should write an article about the work one day.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToNb-02n3KY
    Thanked by 1JulieColl
  • Priestboi
    Posts: 155
    I quite like the missa Luba *gasp, but as a concert piece. The mariachi music is beautiful, but not suitable for sacred worship imho. Even here in South Africa there are various traditions, strangely the Methodist SATB style is popular among the African population as sacred music
    Thanked by 1Daniel Bennett Page
  • Priestboi
    Posts: 155
    Here is an example from the choir I sang in....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68tlqjefgKs there is some call and response too
    Thanked by 2JulieColl canadash
  • R J StoveR J Stove
    Posts: 302
    From slightly later than the Missa Luba came African Sanctus, by David Fanshawe, who died in 2010 at no great age. An obituary of him is here (I don't know the work at all):

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/7890995/David-Fanshawe.html
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    It's fun to hear these in a concert setting, and the musicality is superb, but I believe, though I can't prove it, that there is a universal instinct that allows people, even at the youngest age, to distinguish the profane from the sacred.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    I like Fanshawe's collage, know it well. It's actually more compelling to me than Luba or Criolla. But I wouldn't/couldn't endorse any for liturgy here in the states. I'm still wistful for the universal MISSA GAIA, tho' ;-)
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    ermergehrd, fernsher's erfercern serncters ers ermerzing
    ERMEHRZERNG!!

    (speeling altered above to show my enthusiasm)

    just once (and only once) I want to hear it used in an actual (Latin, of course, but probably Novus Ordo) Mass. (And really, only once. And only with people who know they shouldn't go home and try it themselves.)
    Thanked by 1melofluent
  • ryandryand
    Posts: 1,640
    .
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