Dedicated educators across the U.S. are bringing mariachi to young musicians, and creating an exciting future for music.
Once again, my travels have put you, the reader, in my thoughts, and my recent trip to Texas inspired me to share more about a sound that has been a big part of my life—one that many musicians and guitarists appreciate for its musical stylings. I’m speaking of one of the more popular ensembles of Mexico, mariachi!
I could write an article on each of the instruments used in a mariachi ensemble, but for now, I want to briefly mention them before focusing more on the impact of this music, with a look at some of the amazing educators bringing it to young musicians.
Although a mariachi ensemble (not a mariachi “band”—you wouldn’t say orchestra “band”) can have variations of the instruments used to make up the grouping, the following configuration is most common. In the armonía or rhythm section, you will have any or all of the following: a nylon-string guitar, Mexican vihuela, guitarra de golpe, guitarrón, and Jalisciense harp. The melodies are played by a violin section, and a trumpet plays countermelodies. I’ll circle back on the armonía instruments in later articles, but right now, I want to talk about music education.
I have the privilege and honor of working alongside some of the most devoted teachers around the United States: music educators. Whether for band, orchestra, choir, or mariachi, these are the people who are bonding with our children, staying late for rehearsals, and going to competitions or performances through weekends and summers. Their long hours and dedication are truly unmatched—one could argue sports coaches do the same, but unlike most sports, music has no season. It continues all year long.
“Their long hours and dedication are truly unmatched … Music has no season. It continues all year long.”
I could highlight dozens of educators who have helped mariachi grow in schools, from Richard Carranza, former chancellor of New York City Schools; to Albuquerque Public Schools’ fine arts director Gina Rasinski; to Katie Dudley, who is growing a program on a shoestring budget in Waukegan, Illinois’ public schools. But in Fort Worth, Texas, there are two leaders who are infectious in their ability to impact students from middle school to post-secondary: Ramon Niño and Wendy Martinez.
Often having had to fight battles to succeed, Niño and Martinez managed to find great support from their high school’s principal and the school’s director of fine arts. Niño and Martinez’s ensemble, Mariachi Espuelas de Plata, has performed across the country, from Carnegie Hall to Nashville to Hershey, Pennsylvania, as well as with top professional mariachi ensembles. Last year, legendary jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval joined them on stage for a performance in San Antonio. I’ve been proud to help them introduce new programs at universities like Texas Christian University and Texas Wesleyan University’s Mariachi Oro Azul, through my budget-friendly La Tradición string-instrument line. To see the eager response of college students, many of whom have never played in a mariachi, is truly amazing.
I asked Ricardo E. Rodriguez, dean of Texas Wesleyan’s School of Arts and Sciences, for his thoughts on their mariachi program. “The presence of Ramon Niño and Wendy Martinez has not only provided a basic music foundation for the Mariachi Oro Azul, but they have established a culture of family and inclusiveness as well as the recognition that music crosses all boundaries,” Rodriguez says.
While we have seen hints of mariachi in popular music in the past with songs like Blondie’s “The Tide Is High” and its mariachi trumpet stylings, the wave is larger and stronger than ever now. More and more, I’m noticing that labels are signing Black and Latino artists to genres like country music, a genre where their presences on main stages have been relatively rare. I get calls from artists looking for mariachi musicians to play on their tracks, and hybrid versions of mariachi are popping up on the stage at the Grand Ole Opry with acts like Stephanie Urbina Jones & the Honky Tonk Mariachi. I see these as the knock-on effects of the programs and teachers that have helped introduce mariachi into learning spaces.
The roots and influences that help shape music’s future start at home and in the classroom. Opening students up to forms of music from other cultures helps enrich not just their lives, but ours, too. Thank god for our music teachers, and those who support them.
Thanks to its abundant use, it’s easy to forget what luthiers have known since the early days of modern guitar building: maple is a top-notch tonewood.
There have been many celebrated tonewoods throughout the history of lutherie. In the electric-guitar domain, ash, alder, and mahogany have been traditional choices. For acoustics, the famed Brazilian rosewood and Adirondack spruce have prevailed.
However, as regulations tightened and supplies dwindled, many legacy acoustic builders, such as Martin and Gibson, moved onto Indian rosewood and Sitka spruce. Because of this, from the late ’60s on, these woods continued to transform the industry standard. But our community has seemingly lost sight of a highly viable wood—the same wood that Stradivarius used to make some of the finest bowed instruments, and the same wood that has produced among the world’s most articulate Spanish-style guitars: maple.
“Builders such as John D’Angelico and Jimmy D’Aquisto followed in that tradition, inspiring makers such as Bob Benedetto and John Monteleone who continued using maple as a primary tonewood.”
At the birth of what would become the modern flattop guitar, classical builders routinely used maple to produce concert-level musical instruments. But as time has passed, maple has fallen to the “B-list” of tonewoods, where it doesn’t belong. Maple is an excellent tonewood that even has many advantages over other wood options.
Maple is readily available, especially when compared to its tonewood counterparts. Unfortunately, this domestic availability made it a go-to wood for many builders, including those who’ve misused it in lower quality instruments. Although this may have negatively impacted maple’s reputation, its accessibility is still advantageous, and maple still stands as an effective tonewood for builders with high musical standards. Unlike the exclusivity associated with some tonewoods, any luthier could have the luxury of building with mapleA testament to its quality, maple still remains a standard choice for archtop guitar makers. In the past, this included makers such as Gibson, who introduced the Lloyd Loar Master Series instruments that included the F-5 mandolin and the L-5 guitar which set the pace for the entire archtop world. Soon after, builders such as John D’Angelico and Jimmy D’Aquisto followed in that tradition, inspiring makers such as Bob Benedetto and John Monteleone who continued using maple as a primary tonewood.Recently, maple is seeing a resurgence in its use for quality guitar making and is becoming more accepted by consumers. This is mainly due to the high prices associated with typical tonewoods, like Brazilian rosewood, and the difficulty associated with transporting such exotic woods overseas. I’m a builder who loves to use woods like Brazilian, but some of the best instruments I have ever played were constructed from maple.
Maple is among the most beautiful-looking tonewoods, with some absolutely stunning variations, such as flame, bird’s eye, blister and quilted figures. Even though I am not a fan of quilted maple—due to its lower strength-to-weight ratio—I find most other options to be suitable for guitar making that I would play any day.
Galloup G-9CE, made with Michigan hard maple, finished in a hand-rubbed sunburst with nitrocellulose finish.
Maple also comes in many different densities and stiffnesses. Softer maples can range from wood so soft you can cut with your fingernail to varieties that can surpass in hardness some Indian rosewood, and hard maple can routinely surpass the strength-to-weight of other hardwoods. Remember, though, that regardless of whether it’s hard or soft, the species does not always dictate its sufficiency due to orthotropic characteristics. Boutique builders such as myself understand this principle, and we will carefully peruse woods that meet our criteria. I have had many sets of Brazilian rosewood pass through my hands that I would not deem musically acceptable, and I have also seen maple (generally hard maple) exceed the performance of such Brazilian rosewood sets. In fact, the next guitar I build for myself will be constructed out of figured hard maple I’ve had for twenty-some years that has proven to not only be musically competitive, but sonically outperform other options at many levels.
Another premier fact about maple is its sustainability. While it has to be managed like any other tonewood, there is an abundant supply of respectable, domestically harvested maple available.
Abundant availability coupled with new sonic rating systems will certainly contribute to a resurgence in maple. However, customer acceptability is a concern, and many guitar buyers are drawn to darker tone woods for back and sides. I have made many natural-finish, or “blonde,” guitars that did not sell well in the market. But when I made the same guitar and tinted the maple back and sides with a dark stain, they performed 60 percent better in sales. This is clear proof that the guitar-buying public buys with their eyes. (Maybe next time, give that maple guitar a little extra play time before discarding it as your final option.)
The bottom line is this: maple is a completely viable tonewood, and I am eager to see it employed to construct quality-level instruments and once again become a premier option. Additionally, I am hopeful that the market is uncovering what us wood junkies have known for decades—maple is just a great option, and a prime candidate for making great sounding, concert-level guitars.
You can reduce your fears about shipping your instrument by taking the right steps to protect it in transit.
Even if you own only one instrument, if you’re an active guitar player, chances are good that sooner or later you’ll have to pack your guitar for shipment. Although it’s hard for some packers to realize, the dangers of shipping your guitar by UPS or FedEx are essentially the same as putting your guitar on an airline’s luggage conveyor belt when you fly.
Of course, thousands of guitars are safely shipped and flown in airline baggage holds every day with no protection besides a hardshell case. But a significant percentage are damaged, too, so the tips you’ll read here will improve your odds. And even when a guitar is in its case and the case is in a sturdy cardboard box, shipping a guitar is risky business. Is shipping a guitar or flying with it riskier than it used to be? You bet. Is there anything you can do to improve your guitar’s odds of survival that doesn’t cost a fortune? Absolutely.
Although caved-in guitar tops and splintered sides do occur sometimes when an acoustic guitar is shipped, the chances of that type of damage when the instrument is in a sturdy hardshell case, especially when the case is boxed, are actually quite slim. And by far, the most common shipping damage to guitars is shared equally by solidbody electrics, which probably tells you that I’m referring to the dreaded cracks that appear around the base of the headstock. This is so common that it’s sometimes called the “airline break.”
What confuses many people is that, despite the fact that their guitar arrived at its destination with a cracked neck, the shipping box shows no damage whatsoever. Along with the mystery of how the crack could have occurred is the added misery of realizing that filing a damage claim with the carrier is usually fruitless, because there’s no sign of mishandling. And repairing the cracks are only part of the pain, for even with the best possible repair yielding a good-as-new result, the guitar’s value has been diminished.
“No matter what the speed your guitar’s case is traveling, the best insurance you can give your instrument for safe arrival is to limit the distance its headstock can travel when the case comes to an abrupt halt.”
If you think of it as a whiplash injury, the cause of the cracks to your guitar’s headstock is easy to understand. Your guitar’s case, or the shipping box containing the case, was traveling at significant speed, but then its movement was stopped abruptly. Maybe it was dropped, or maybe it was on a conveyor system and a jam halted everything instantaneously. The damage occurred because the headstock had room to move within the case, and so it did—resulting in a crack where the headstock curves down at the nut. This is much the same injury as when your guitar is knocked off its stand and falls face-first on the floor. Even nice carpeting won’t save your guitar from headstock cracks for the same reason.
Especially when fitted with cast, enclosed tuners with metal buttons, a guitar’s headstock is a heavy object, and its momentum is simply more than a typical narrow mahogany guitar neck can withstand. A set of metal button Gotoh 510 tuners, for instance, weigh approximately half a pound. That’s about a third of the total weight of a typical mahogany neck on an acoustic flattop. And, of course, the cracks almost always appear around the nut, where the neck is narrowest and where there’s a significant angle. This can also happen when a guitar, in its hardshell case, is left standing vertically on end. If the case is knocked over and the guitar lands face-first, that short drop is sometimes enough to crack a headstock because the barrel of the neck has far less room to move within the case compared to the headstock.
I could natter on for pages about how the dramatic increase in shipping traffic in recent years has resulted in far larger, longer, and faster conveyance systems for both airlines and shipping companies. But no matter what the speed your guitar’s case is traveling, the best insurance you can give your instrument for safe arrival is to limit the distance its headstock can travel when the case comes to an abrupt halt. You can add stiff padding behind the headstock, which functions similar to the headrest in a car, and supplement that with additional padding over the face of the headstock that is slightly compressed when the case is closed. The objective is to make sure that all of your guitar stops moving at the same time when the case is dropped or tossed.
Loosening the string tension is also helpful, but there’s no need to make the strings totally slack. Just tune it down a couple of steps. Packing your guitar in its case in a shipping box doesn’t relieve you of the need to pack the headstock as outlined above, because the same whiplash dangers still apply.
Perhaps the greatest advantage to carefully packing your guitar before flying with it or shipping it is that you’ll sleep easier when it’s in transit.
Chris Martin makes a case for striped ebony.
For many years, guitar manufacturers had the luxury of not using certain woods if they didn’t like the way they looked. It used to be that if a felled ebony tree was striped, it would be left to rot. Today, that is simply not an option, nor should it be. The choice to use striped ebony in making guitars has become an important one for us at Martin. Striped ebony is an ethically sourced tonewood that sounds great, is aesthetically pleasing, and, perhaps most importantly, is an environmentally smart option.
Some guitarists might be surprised to learn that striped ebony can come from the same genus and species as solid-black African or Gabon ebony, Diospyros crassiflora; the only difference is the streaks in the grain. When it comes to striped ebony, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We have tried staining it to resemble the jet-black color most guitar players are familiar with, but the stains haven’t proven to be durable—inevitably, the streaks continue to shine through. In comparison to leaving the wood unstained, it just dulls the appearance and is nowhere near as beautiful. So, here at Martin, we are embracing the stripes that give a unique character to each instrument.
While cosmetics are very important, they mean nothing if the guitar’s sound is altered—tone and structure come first. In the case of an ebony fretboard, there is no difference in its contribution to the overall sound whether it is streaked or solid black. Fretboards are an integral part of the guitar’s sound and feel, and ones made of ebony create an excellent attack followed by a long, smooth sustain compared to other fretboard materials, regardless of their outward appearance.
In the case of an ebony fretboard, there is no difference in its contribution to the overall sound, whether it is streaked or solid black.
What makes striped ebony a sustainable option is how the harvesting of it involves the utilization of all parts of the tree. The streaks appear due to the species’ light-colored heartwood; by using the lighter color, we can use more of the harvested wood. Using all color variations allows for more lumber from the tree to be transformed into guitar parts. This keeps the harvesters and mills from scrapping more material and puts more money into their supply chain. Less wood scrapped means fewer trees are cut down.
At Martin, sustainability has been an essential part of our company for over 30 years. Each year, we donate money to programs for replanting trees—not just ebony, but many other species as well. We are currently tracking our carbon footprint and hope to be carbon-neutral in the next few years. For these reasons, we have been using the material Richlite for over 20 years as a sustainable substitution for ebony. It is a composite material that is produced in a carbon-neutral manufacturing facility, that has a consistent black appearance. Another option is katalox, a wood that is similar in density and tonal properties to ebony. It has a color that can range from dark red to deep violet, and is an excellent alternative to African ebony.
I think it is inevitable that all of us who make guitars and use ebony will have to be more judicious about where we use the limited supply of jet-black ebony available on the market today. I want to give Bob Taylor a shout-out for working on sustainable ebony, and hope that we as an industry can all move towards more viable materials.
After all, it may be the answer to an age-old adage: Don’t stripes go with everything?
For archtop lovers, there are few subjects more fascinating than the legacy of Orville Gibson.
One of my greatest inspirations as a guitar maker comes from my hope that the guitars I build will roam the planet long after I’m gone. Sometimes, when I’m on my some-hundredth hour of working on a guitar—sanding lacquer and chasing a flawless mirror finish—a vision of the instrument one hundred years from now will flash before my eyes. It’s a powerful reminder that along with a century of battle scars and music comes a certain beauty that only time will bring. With all the hustle and bustle of building brand-new guitars, sometimes I forget: I want to build guitars now, so that someday they will be old.
You see, old archtops are my favorite. Even if they’re not that great, I still find them beautiful. Every time I hold one in my hands, I think about how, once upon a time, it too was incomplete and being obsessed over by someone. Maybe by a factory worker whose name we’ll never know, or perhaps by one of the greatest luthiers of the early 20th century. Each of those luthiers plays a role in the history of archtops, which just so happens to hold some of my favorite stories. It’s a surprisingly not-super-long timeline that begins with a tale of innovation, tradition, mental illness, and mandolins. We only have to go back to the late 1800s to find the man responsible for planting the archtop seed, and I bet it’s a name you already know: Mr. Orville Gibson.
In the 1890s, Gibson was building guitars and mandolins with arched tops and backs, and as far as we know, he was the first to do so. Violins and cellos had been made that way for hundreds of years, but Gibson’s builds were where that construction style began for guitars and mandolins. In 1898, he achieved a patent for a number of his ideas on the construction of those instruments, including the concept of carving the top and back out of solid wood. He sold the patent (and his name), and in 1902, founded the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Co. in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His relationship with the company from thereon is unclear. Then, in 1907, he was admitted to a hospital for psychiatric treatment, an occurrence that would take place a number of times before his death in 1918.
Violins and cellos had been made that way for hundreds of years, but Gibson’s builds were where that construction style began for guitars and mandolins.
Yes, believe it or not—the world of music was forever changed by the work this man did inside of one decade, and it may or may not have cost him his sanity. With Gibson’s innovative creations as a blueprint, the company went on to produce archtops that unified the mandolin and guitar family as one. It was 1919 when the company hired a physics-obsessed musician who unlocked the acoustic potential of these instruments: Lloyd Loar. Through applying concepts used in violin building, such as f-holes and tap tuning, Loar elevated the world of archtops to a new level in 1922 with his design and creation of the L-5 guitar and F-5 mandolin. Loar left Gibson two years later to “pursue other interests.”
So, here’s the crazy part: During these first painfully short chapters, Gibson and Loar were responsible for the making of some of the most beautiful and magical-sounding instruments on the planet. I came upon a cluster of Gibson mandolins from the early 1900s at a music store, and I felt the magic before I knew what they were; I just looked at them and they started singing like angels. Trying to describe the experience would be like trying to cover the impact of Gibson and Loar in one column, but let’s just say I left that music store a different person than I arrived, along with a higher understanding of the word “otherworldly.” These are the kinds of instruments that make you a better builder or player just by being around them. They have souls.
The story of Gibson’s role in the archtop evolution certainly goes on from there, but it’s these first chapters and the unprecedented instruments that come with it that laid the wood-shaving-covered foundation today’s archtops are made on. From there, the daisy chain of inspiration continued as the archtop guitar developed in the hands and shops of more brilliant luthiers to come, such as John D’Angelico, Charles and Elmer Stromberg, Jimmy D’Aquisto, and Linda Manzer; but those are stories for another day. These are the heroes of the archtop world, and one of my many reasons for loving old archtops is because it reminds me of them. I want nothing more than to leave behind guitars that inspire others, the way many beautiful guitars left behind by my heroes have inspired me—battle scars and all.