Pueblo’s Tradition Kept in Harmony by Brassy Youths : Chapalan Priest’s Love of Music Reclaims Memories of Mexico

Five years ago on his first trip from Mexico to visit former members of his flock in Los Angeles, Father Raul Navarro was disappointed that there was no music to greet him.

Navarro, 72, a music lover and legendary figure in the lakeside town of Chapala, near Guadalajara, founded that community’s reknowned children’s banda de pueblo , or town band, an institution there since 1946.

In Los Angeles, he encouraged former members of the band--now grown men with children of their own--to carry on the tradition in their new homeland. Navarro also saw the musical tradition as a vehicle for maintaining the same values that had united Chapala.

A Regular Event

Now, on any given weekend, the Banda Ninos Heroes--made up of 25 musicians, ages 7 to 21--blares out its Mexican brass band repertoire at festivities across Southern California.

Their rousing delivery of traditional Mexican marches, ballads and rancheras can be heard at church and community celebrations, at private parties and at charreadas , Mexican-style rodeos. On Mother’s Day, beginning at sunrise, the band plays serenata at the home of each member’s mother. They usually do not finish before 3 p.m.

“We wanted a focus for our children, to keep them out of trouble,” said Jesus Fernandez, an active member of the community of Chapalans in Los Angeles, whose daughter was the first girl to play in the band.

“We’ve maintained this tradition to unite our community and to sow the seeds of our cultural roots. We want to share what we bring from our homeland,” he said.

Noting that the close-knit community of Chapalans, centered in East Los Angeles, also supports two soccer teams, acts as a mutual aid society and visits other Chapalan communities in the state, Fernandez said: “We are trying to continue what was taught to us--how to maintain (a sense of) community.”

Wherever the band plays--with its horns, trombones, clarinets and tubas blaring--there is merriment. “We Chapalans love to party,” Fernandez said.

Sometimes, playing a nostalgic tune that reminds their elders of strolls on warm summer nights in Chapala’s plaza, the band can bring tears to the eyes of its listeners.

“It’s a wonderful feeling,” said the band’s director, Manuel Luna, 30, who began playing in Chapala’s banda when he was 5 years old. Like two generations of band members before him, Luna went on to play music professionally. Since moving here eight years ago, Luna has earned a living in an auto parts factory.

Today, his family, like Father Navarro, is a bridge between two countries. Luna’s older brother directs the children’s band in Chapala.

Navarro’s annual summer visits to California have turned into town reunions as the band and hundreds of supporters accompany the priest on visits to communities of Chapalans in Santa Ana, Santa Barbara, Fresno and San Francisco.

“We see people we haven’t seen in a long time,” said Fernandez. The visits usually include a religious celebration, as well as picnics, parties and dances.

Music for Four Decades

In a recent telephone interview from his home in Mexico, Navarro recalled that he had begun the banda de ninos on Mother’s Day more than 40 years ago with a band of “14 raggedy kids.”

Five years ago, on the first of his annual trips here, Navarro was surprised to find thousands of Chapalans in Los Angeles. “I think they themselves were surprised (by their own number),” he said.

That’s when he made up his mind, he said, to foster the establishment of a children’s band in Los Angeles: “What better bond of unity?”

“I thought it important for awakening in the young a desire to excel, and for promoting good Mexican music in this region,” he said. Navarro also saw the band here as a vehicle for preserving traditions that help maintain “the integrity of families, of communities and of (religious) faith.”

Father Navarro said he always looks forward to his trips north. “It’s almost an entire month of non-stop partying,” he said. And Chapalans love to party.