‘A People’s History of Kansas City’

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Mariachi music has a long, rich history. It’s one that has many male heroes, but that is not who we’re going to talk about today. Suzanne Hogan of member station KCUR has the story of a group of women who carved out their own place in the genre. She digs into it in the podcast, “A People’s History Of Kansas City.” Take a listen.

SUZANNE HOGAN, BYLINE: Mariachi music is deep and heartfelt. It’s the music of Mexico. And for a short stint during the 1980s, Mariachi Estrella, a group of seven trailblazing women in Kansas, were a force who broke the mold in a male-dominated music scene.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MARIACHI ESTRELLA: (Singing in Spanish).

CHRISTINA LOYA: Women took this deeply patriarchal institution and kind of created their own space in it.

HOGAN: Christina Loya wrote her thesis about Mariachi Estrella. It’s about her great-aunts, who played in the group, and about other women in her family, how gender roles and expectations have shifted throughout generations of Mexican American women’s lives and how Mariachi Estrella was a part of this shift.

LOYA: Even in mariachi music, it’s very masculine, and these women came in and disrupted that, you know? Whether intentionally or not, it’s very subversive and very powerful.

HOGAN: It all started in a neighborhood in Topeka, Kan., called Oakland, home to a large and vibrant Mexican American population for generations. The neighborhood got its start at the turn of the 20th century, when a large wave of Mexican immigrants started coming into eastern Kansas due to political and economic upheaval caused by the Mexican Revolution. At its center point is Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, where Mariachi Estrella first started as a choir group in the late 1970s. Violin player Teresa Cuevas had just divorced and was in her 50s at the time.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERESA CUEVAS: The music was a part of me that made me feel like myself.

HOGAN: Cuevas spoke to KCUR in an interview…