Tamborazo San-Marcos play party music. Drawing from several regional Mexican styles, the band synthesizes their own breed of high-energy brass music for the modern age. One song could be a cumbia, a dance song popular with younger audiences. Another could be a corrido, a traditional trail song. The corrido could be updated to the modern narcocorrido, taking those old cowboy songs and giving them a drug-trafficking theme. They could slow it down with a bolero, a song about romance and passion.
Tamborazo San-Marcos takes all of these classics and plays them without vocals. Occasionally, an audience member might ask them to step to the microphone and sing the words to the tune. But for the most part, people know the songs already, and can sing along if they want. The band prefers to shut up and let their instruments do the talking.
“Tamborazo style is an imitation of the marching band,” explains saxophonist Juan Guillen. “This goes back to Pancho Villa’s time, when the military bands started making up their own songs.”
Revolutionary ballads and songs about the rugged borderlands may have formed the style, but the tamborazo is also about exploring tender feelings. The song “Pagina Maacute;s” is about a man embarking on a new chapter of his life after a breakup with his girlfriend. An old favorite from Sinaloa titled “Los Viejitos,” tells of an elderly couple shaking their hips on the dance floor.
“Then the old lady falls over,” says keyboardist Juan Zacatecas with a laugh.
Counting seven members, Tamborazo San-Marcos includes cousins Juan and Miguel Guillen on saxophones; Javier Rodriguez on trombone; Sebastian Guillen on valve trombone; and Cesar Meza on trumpet. Juan Almanza Zacatecas holds down the rhythm on his keyboard, and Humberto Islas beats the drums.
The music is fast-paced, wild and fun. Saxophones shred the high register, the trombones provide the punch. The bass element, usually provided by a tuba or sousaphone, is supplemented by Zacatecas on the keys. Islas is a knockout on his spartan percussion layout: two metallic toms, a snare, and a stand holding various lengths of bells.
Most of the guys hail from Aguascalientes, in the heart of Mexico, where the annual San Marcos Fair is held for three or four weeks. Drawing millions of people, the festival is known best for its bullfighting and cockfighting events. People may come for the sports, but they stay for the music, provided by tamborazo bands playing on the streets.
It may come as a surprise to some locals that Tamborazo San-Marcos is not the only band of its kind in Reno. Group members admit there are at least six other such bands in the area. If they sweat the competition, it certainly doesn’t show on their faces or on their résumé. They’ve been together for nine years, and perform only when they feel like it. Weddings, charities and barbecues have served as the stage for Tamborazo San-Marcos, and that’s fine with them.
Many of the members come from musical families and hope to keep the tradition. Juan Guillen watched his father play guitar for many years before trying it himself. Now that he’s a father, he makes sure his daughter practices her clarinet. Zacatecas says he’d like his kids to get into the tamborazo style, but they’re young, and don’t speak Spanish, so they’re more inclined to get swept away with the newest pop flavor of the week.
Tamborazo San-Marcos don’t have anything to prove, to this generation or the next. They just want to keep you dancing until you fall on your ass.