This scene was later Americanized, with the lead played by Christopher Walken. The new script swapped the setting for a studio, and the mariachis for cowbell. It was a big success for Saturday Night Live.
I say this with love, but mariachi bands only have two volumes: zero and maximum.
I didn’t say it was a bad way to torture your victim. Just a weird one.
Unless your victim is a beluga whale. They’re into it.
By the way, there’s this other kind of Mexican music that was super popular in the almost entirely Mexican neighborhood of South Gate, CA where I used to live that I can’t remember the name of, but it’s basically a man singing an operatic-style ballad while an oom-pah band plays a slow polka in the background.
Now that is torture to listen to.
Love Latino music … no matter what the hell is happening in the world, their music always sounds happy and hopeful.
I love playing Feliz Navidad just to be able to do the … AHAA!!! … in the middle of the song.
But I wouldn’t want to listen to it for ten hours.
See my edit. You might change your mind on Latino music.
I love it overall, but ugh.
Mexican music … it’s great for about five minutes but no longer … maybe an hour if you’re drunk.
It’s the horns that do it for me … the Mexican horn in music sounds fun for a minute or two but after that its like listening to Bluegrass or Old Old country where everyone is singing out their nose to a tune that will just never end (or else feels like it will never end).
But I’ve also attended a few Semana Santa (Holy Week) celebrations in Malaga Spain many years ago … it’s their Easter celebrations which features dozens of churches that go marching with their congregation through the city, led by a marching band with those same type of tinny Mexican horns - hundreds of them! All playing at the same time to the march of beating drums, surrounded by millions of people in crowded streets. For hours and hours all day and into the early hours of the morning.
It’s quite the sight and experience … Mexican horns, war drums, bloody Jesus on the cross, weeping Mother Mary, priests, women in black dresses, alter boys and girls and these guys …
My favorite was always the flaggelants.
Wow. Yeah, that wouldn’t be the most fun thing to watch.
And yeah, the horns get a bit much. Ranchera is the genre I was thinking of and it’s primarily a Norteño thing, which makes sense, because most of the neighbourhood was Norteño. I try not to judge people by their culture, but of all the world’s music you could have adopted as your own, you not only chose polka, but you slowed it way down and added lyrics?!
But then, as more than one Mexican friend has told me, “those are our rednecks.”
Find it hard to disagree:
That’s not some one-off, that’s a thing they wear and are into. And they try to go all-out with it. No offence meant but that’s like super rednecky.
Now I’m going to have to listen to Los Incas as a palate cleanser.
Edit: from what I’m reading, the horns can be put down to Pancho Villa loving march music.
