Celebrating Mexican Culture at 28th Annual Santa Barbara Mariachi Festival 

The 28th Annual Santa Barbara Mariachi Festival was a celebration of the Mexican spirit, and party to honor a unique culture that, as the festival’s headliner Angeles Ochoa sang Saturday night, has no equal. “Como Mexico, no hay dos,” Ochoa sang, meaning, “There’s no place like Mexico.”

The Santa Barbara Bowl was filled with mariachi music all of Saturday night, as bands kept the crowd alternating between dancing in the aisles with joyful cumbias and swaying in their seats to sorrowful ballads. The annual festival, held during  Santa Barbara’s Fiesta Week, serves both as a chance to enjoy top-notch traditional mariachi, and as a fundraiser for the nonprofit organization’s scholarship initiative for local high school students.

The 12-piece band Mariachi Divas de Cindy Shea — the first female mariachi group to ever win a Grammy  — started the festival with a tribute to Mexican folk songs such as “Cielito Lindo (Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay),” and Jenny Rivera’s “Qué Me Vas a Dar,” a lovesick classic in which the narrator sardonically asks their former flame, “If I come back, what do you have to give me?”

Cindy Shea’s Divas got the crowd moving (and the drinks flowing) with medley of Selena’s “Como la Flor,””Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” and “Baila Esta Cumbia,” setting the tone for the night before the next performer, Mariachi Herencia de México.

Mariachi Herencia de México’s blaring trumpets, swelling strings, and thumping rhythm section represented new generation of younger mariachi performers, ranging in age from 19 to 32, and brought together from Jalisco, Michoacan, Veracruz, Puebla, and California.

Herencia de México put a new spin on old mariachi numbers such as “Cucurrucucú Paloma (Coo-coo Dove),” a Mexican huapango-style song about a lovesick man drinking, longing for a lost lover, and wishing to hear their voice in the song of a mourning dove. Vocalist Fernanda Casasola crooned the dramatic lyrics, which floated above the trumpets, violins, and guitars.

One of the highlights of the night was a frantic harp solo — one that could rival any guitar solo at the bowl — by Herencia de México Eduardo Colin, who lit the crowd up during the instrumental section of “El Gavilán (The Hawk).”  

Mariachi Herencia de México stayed on stage to back the mariachi legacy Leonardo Aguilar, son of famous Mexican singer Pepe Aguilar, and grandson of singer-actor Antonio Aguilar. The latest son of “La Dinastía Aguilar” (The Aguilar Dynasty) dazzled with both new and old favorites, performed with the typical mariachi machismo, boastful banter, and passionate anecdotes about family, love, and Mexican pride.

“We’re united, like family,” Aguilar said to cheers from the crowd. “How lucky we are to have Mexican parents!”

Following Aguilar, the Leyedos de Mariachi (Legends of Mariachi) took the stage to give a taste of the golden age of Mexican music, with multi-layered big-band harmonies and more than a dozen players, all locked together through years of experience. The soaring choruses were peppered with “gritos,” high-pitched yells from both the stage and the crowd.

As the night winded down, Ochoa led the crowd in singalongs of some of the biggest hits in her 35-year career. She welcomed all the previous festival performers on the stage to perform a grand finale, a magical medley with an orchestra of 21 violins, nine trumpets, nine guitars and vihuelas, three guitarrónes, and three harps.

It was mariachi on its largest scale, a collective sound proudly celebrating decades of Mexican musical history, brought together on stage in one of the most breathtaking open-air venues on the West Coast. Now nearing its third decade, the Santa Barbara Mariachi Festival continues to delight audiences with a true-to-Mexico mariachi experience.