La Victoria is a three-piece ensemble from Los Angelos that plays Mexican popular tunes. The group consists of three young women, all of them attractive, who sing in close harmony while playing their instruments: the songs are performed in arrangements for violin, rhythm guitar, and a big bass guitar that provides a sort oom-pah-pah underpinning to the music. (Mariachi music, often, sounds like a demented polka.) The group was advertised as a mariachi band but, of course, this was untrue. In fact, one of the girls indicated apologetically at the outset that a true mariachi band would include "about twenty trumpets and thirty violins." I have heard mariachi bands in Mexico City and they exude an aura of suave menace. Further, the musicians play at ear-splitting volume -- the trumpets, in particular, can be deafening. These young women, of course, were not menacing at all and their songs were very tastefully, and, one might say, even respectfully presented -- with a few exceptions, the musicians treated the music with kid gloves. Much of the singing was very beautiful. The woman playing the rhythm guitar, in particular, had the ability to insert a kind of choked sob in her rendition of songs that were, apparently, very well-known to the Hispanic people in the audience. All of the harmonies were exceptionally well-managed and the woman playing the fiddle maintained perfect pitch as she nimbly performed the little dance-like melodies that ornament these songs. Her singing was also highly expressive. The larger woman playing the bass guitar sang in lower register, belting out her tunes with great enthusiasm. Some of the Mexican-Americans in the audience sang along with the trio, shouted encouragement to them, and danced in the aisles. The show was about one hour long, including gallop-like dance tune as an encore (at the request of the Latinos in the audience), and, also, featured a tango, some soulful ballads, and two songs performed in English, one by Carol King and the other Willie Nelson's "Crazy."
A curious aspect of this concert was my strong sense of deja vu. From the moment, the young women appeared on stage in their matching black dresses and black high-heels, I knew that I had seen them perform before. But I was (and am) completely unable to recall where and when I had earlier heard them play. As they performed, I looked up and saw the disco ball above the proscenium arch of the Paramount stage. The mirror-ball hangs just above the strange little oval cartouche of a seal balancing a tiny globe on his nose. The Paramount Theater's interior is a Moorish fantasy with fairy-tale balconies and strange funereal urns perched around the perimeter of the hall. The arched ceiling is blue and sprinkled with little flickering lights to simulate stars and fluffy clouds sometimes are projected overhead, rolling across the night sky. The women on stage stood between two tall red velvet curtains, against a black flat, and the seats from which the audience was watching them were also scarlet. As I watched the concert, I experienced the feeling that I was in a David Lynch film -- the people around me were mostly grotesque with old age and the Latinos in the corner shouted out as if they were watching a bull-fight and it was odd to see these young, statuesque women performing for a group of elderly white people enlivened only slightly by a couple dozen immigrants with their squalling children. Before the concert, a man and a woman spoke. The woman said a few words and, then, the man, an old fellow in baggy pants, talked about how he had once lived in El Paso and this music that we were about to hear was so much from the heart, "Corazon" he said. His pants fell about his loins in such a way that his genitals were clearly visible under the loose black fabric. Then, the music began and, with it, the conviction that I had always been here, that this music was everlasting, that I would remain in this hall with its Moorish turrets and red velvet curtains and ivory balconies forever more.
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