Música Ranchera

Last night was a party for my niece's first communion. Her parents have finally finished remodeling, and the house is amazing. My husband and I used to live there, back when it was all of 400 square feet and it would sway in the wind. Now it's probably over 2000 square feet, fancy kitchen with granite counters, 2.5 bathrooms, stucco archways, gorgeous moldings, etc. Since my husband, his cousins and everyone in the family works in construction, they do really good work--it just takes a long time to get done when it's your own house. I started to feel a little bad about my crappy kitchen--back in 2003, I made the decision that it didn't matter if my 1924 kitchen with peeling linoleum and no dishwasher was crappy, because what was going to make me happy was achieving my CD and so that's what I spent most of 2004 doing. But occasionally there are pangs of wanting to get back into home improvement, since I also used to be a carpenter and love doing that stuff.

Anyway, last night they had a 15-piece mariachi band out in the back yard, and upon request I sang a few songs. What fun it is to belt out these standards--Sabor a Mi and Historia de un Amor. For years I tried to copy the yodel that you do in this music and now it comes easily, as well as the high belting--with no amplification, of course. They played for two hours and then my husband and some other guys pooled a not insignificant amount of money to pay for another hour (I wasn't entirely happy with that, but la vida es para vivir!). Poor mariachis were hoarse by midnight--and they still had another gig to hit! Afterwards, my husband was encouraging me to do more ranchera music. There were also the usual questions--was I Mexican? I said "No, but I've done my time--been married to a Mexican for 15 years!"