Audio Postcard: Someone Else's Serenade

Ok, before you get depressed by the title of this audio postcard, let me say that it is actually a recording of one of my most contented moments in Mexico. It came after I was feeling pretty rotten yesterday, on both the physical and loneliness scale. Nothing like being sick and alone in a country that has been nothing but sick and alone for two weeks.

But things were looking up by nightfall. I was feeling better, and working through my tapes from Son Jarocho camp. After a few hours, when I took off my headphones around midnight, I was surprised to hear a sound that had been familiar to me back in Mexico City, but is exceedingly rare here in Son Jarocho country. Mariachis were playing somewhere in the open air.

I climbed up onto my roof, where the sound was easier to trace. The mariachis were about half a mile away, standing in front of the well-lit yellow church of San José. The most I could see were their silhouettes strumming and sombreros bobbing. I scanned the nearby balconies and rooftops, hoping to spot the lucky recipient of their serenade, but no luck. No problem, I thought; that made it all the easier to pretend it was me.

Prepare to sigh

Pedro Infante sings a goosebump-inducing serenade in "Escuela de Vagabundos" (1955).