After nearly 50 years in the industry, California-based mariachi band leader José Hernández has earned his 12th Latin Grammy nomination for his band’s 2020 album Bailando Sones Y Huapangos.
His band Mariachi del Sol de Mexico was the first mariachi ensemble to be nominated for a Grammy.
Playing mariachi music with his siblings since he was 3 years old, Hernández moved with his family from Mexico to Pico Rivera in Los Angeles County when he was 4 years old. The Hernández family soon became a prominent presence in the art of mariachi in Southern California.
Starting his professional career by playing in the Disneyland band in the 1970s, Hernández has been primed to continue his family’s musical legacy—one spanning back to 1836, according to a genealogical expert detailing a book on the singer’s life.
The bar was set early on when Hernández’s father and older brother appeared playing the violin alongside Elvis Presley in his film, “Fun in Acapulco,” in 1963.
His father, Esteban Hernández, a famed mariachi musician in the United States in the 1940s, taught him much about the genre before Hernández made it his own—namely through blending different genres within mariachi compositions.
“I was called the antichrist of mariachi for stepping out of the traditional style,” Hernández told The Epoch Times.
Despite these criticisms, his unique mariachi albums with classical or jazz elements are renowned for their worldwide, cross-cultural appeal. Even late North Korean President Kim Jung Il played the band’s music nightly on the country’s airwaves a couple of decades ago.
At the time, Kim was “such a big fan” that he eventually invited the band to perform at his residence in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, a country embroiled in long-term political tension with the United States.
“The state department couldn’t even clear us to go [to North Korea] at the time,” Hernández said. “It was a big risk but it was worth it, [North Korea] loved us.”
Hernández first learned to integrate modern and classical melodies—including Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite”—at the Grove School of Music in Studio City.
Studying under instructors such as Nelson Riddle and Peter Matz, Hernández began introducing live orchestras into mariachi compositions, something unprecedented at the time.
“We’ve always been on the vanguard of the mariachi movement, of always doing things that are different,” he said.
This innovation also landed Hernández several major film score credits and even collaborations with other celebrated artists, including Linda Ronstadt, The Beach Boys, and Nat King Cole.
“No matter where we go, it’s pretty amazing to see how well the audience reacts to our group and the repertoire that we play,” Hernandez said.
The musician, now living in Orange County, hasn’t stopped there. Hernández has been sharing the beauty of mariachi with younger generations through his nonprofit, the Mariachi Heritage Society.
Founded in 1991, the nonprofit has been providing low-cost music lessons to children in underserved communities across Southern California, including in the counties of Orange, San Diego, and Los Angeles.
His desire to make mariachi more “accessible” extends to women as well. Years after success with his own band, the artist founded Reyna de Los Angeles, the genre’s first female-only mariachi band in America.
“[Mariachi] was all male-dominated before Reyna de Los Angeles,” he said.
The female group has since been nominated twice for their own Latin Grammys, and they’re also featured in the Smithsonian Institute’s Latino Culture History exhibition.
With his four children also being avid musicians, the Hernández family legacy continues for yet another generation.
