A 300-Year-Old Party the Locals Once Called "Music of Drunks" Is Now Filling Dance Floors From Tokyo to Berlin

Keypoints:

• Son jarocho, a Veracruz folk tradition dating back roughly 300 years, is spreading to cities worldwide
• The genre blends African, Indigenous, and Spanish influences from Mexico's first colonial port
• It fell out of favor in the 1960s and 70s, dismissed as low-brow music
• The caSon Cultural Center in Veracruz, marking its 25th anniversary, hosts a monthly all-night fandango
• The style is now played in Mexico City, Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, and across Europe

In the port city of Veracruz, a musical tradition nearly as old as the city's Spanish colonial roots is drawing crowds again after decades of being written off. Son jarocho, the genre behind "La Bamba," emerged from the multiethnic population that grew up along Mexico's Gulf Coast after Hernán Cortés established Veracruz as the country's first port in the early 1500s, blending African, Indigenous, and Spanish musical traditions into something distinctly regional.

The music hasn't always been embraced at home. Instrument maker and son jarocho fixture Gilberto Gutierrez remembers the genre's low point in the 1960s and 70s, when "they said it was the music of drunken people." 

Musicians either put their instruments away entirely or left for Mexico City to find other work, a period that nearly erased a tradition rooted in community celebrations called fandangos, all-night gatherings built around live jaranas, tap-dancing footwork on a wooden platform called a tarima, and food cooked by the community itself.

Gutierrez founded the caSon Cultural Center in Veracruz, which now hosts a monthly Saturday-night fandango and celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The classes it offers in jarocho music and dance fill up fast, and the crowd isn't only older generations holding onto tradition. Paloma Rizo, a 28-year-old teacher who picked up the jarana earlier this year, put the appeal simply: "You simply feel it, you live it."

The genre's reach now stretches well past Veracruz. Son jarocho is played today in Mexico City, Argentina, Spain, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, France, and Tokyo, alongside US cities with large Latino populations like Los Angeles and New York. As listeners worldwide increasingly reach for acoustic authenticity over polished, genre-blended pop, a 300-year-old community tradition once dismissed as disreputable is finding an audience it never had before.