Mexican-American Dancers Jump On The `Banda' Wagon

PORTLAND - Every Saturday night dance halls in the Willamette Valley fill up with guys in cowboy gear. They dip their partners way, way low, twirl their 10-gallon hats and shuffle their boots to down-home tunes.

But these dancers come from the city as well as the fields, and the music isn't honky-tonk. A mix of trumpets and tubas blares from the bandstand, and the singer laments, "Los machos tambien lloran" - men also cry.

The music is banda (say it baahn-daa), a traditional sound from Mexico's central Pacific coast updated with brisk beats and keyboards. Since the new style was invented a few years ago, it has captivated Mexican-Americans from Chicago to Los Angeles. And now in the Northwest, concert promoters are competing for the banda dollar, and local musical groups have abandoned other formats to jump on the banda wagon.

The young farm workers and college students crowding dances in the region are caught up in the dance crazes that go along with banda - the sensual and athletic quebradita and zapateado. To some, banda is the in thing; to others, it's a roots thing.

To those outside the loop, the Mexican dance scene looks like an underground phenomenon.

But to thousands of Northwest fans, banda is mainstream - fun for the whole family. Parents bring 7-year-olds to the same dances at which teenagers and middle-aged couples kick and swing next to each other on the floor. The only difference is the fortysomethings don't dip as far back to the floor.

"Estuvo padre," (it was cool) Belen Ayala, a sophomore at Oregon City Senior High School, said, tugging at her red hot-pants, after a dance that attracted 250 people to Portland's Melody Ballroom recently.

Ayala's shorts and a pair of black boots are part of the banda uniform, but on that night the cherubic-faced dancer inadvertently left behind the most important element: a leather strap or bandanna dangling from a pocket or belt and, in vertical writing, advertising roots in a Mexican state. During the dance at Melody, Maria Vargas, 42, spent the evening making occasional sales from her table of fringed vests, bandannas and sashes, and cowboy hats.

"For me, the music is something folkloric from my country," says Vargas, who grew up listening to old-style banda.

Like many Oregon banda dancers, Ayala learned quebradita from someone who recently moved here from California. Her friend and teacher is Rodolfo Sanchez, 22, who wears black leather with white fringe.

They may take dancing seriously, but Ayala and Sanchez - who both moved to this country from Colima, a small state on Mexico's Pacific coast - go to the dances for fun.

However, for many people born in the United States of Mexican descent but who don't necessarily understand Spanish, banda offers more than just a fun night out.

"The music is another thing I love about my culture, along with food and other traditions," says Mary Gonzalez, 18, a Portland Community College/Rock Creek student and occasional quebradita dancer. Her parents came to the United States from Zacatecas.

Whether it's the promise of a good time or cultural pride that sells tickets, banda is hot in Oregon this year. Managers at armories and clubs in Gresham, Woodburn, Hillsboro and Portland report regular crowds of 200 to 1,000, with men paying up to $15 to see local bands. Traditionally, at dances in Latin America, women pay a reduced or no cover charge.

Thousands turn out when Mexican banda groups come through every few months. About 2,500 people ($30 ticket price for the men) saw Banda Los Kapri and three other bands from Mexico in the Salem Armory earlier this fall.

The concert was put on by Baldomero Andrade, owner of Promociones Tropical and Oregon's most established Mexican music promoter, who has been doing shows since 1988. While Andrade flies in Mexican bands for concerts, promoters have plenty of local talent to work with.

"There must be more than 20 banda groups in the area," says Javier Carbajal of Las Lindas in Woodburn, where there's barely room to breathe at live banda shows on weekends.

Juan Garza, who represents a number of Mexican bands, says he's having trouble booking engagements for his Tex-Mex and Norteno groups that don't have a banda repertoire.

Banda el Sol was a cumbia band that recently switched formats to please its banda-hungry audience, says bass player Eusebio Juarez, after the Melody Ballroom show. He is one of five brothers in the band.

Even Mexican romantic pop megastars Los Bukis have felt the pressure and added a banda song to their latest album. The Latin divisions of big record labels have all signed banda acts.

Despite unabated banda fever in the West, Southwest and Chicago, John Lannert, who covers Latin music for Billboard magazine, is pessimistic about the genre's future. Other than Mexican act Banda Machos - the biggest name in banda - he says banda groups aren't making it onto the main Latin charts where romantic, pop and rock in Spanish dominate. He believes that banda will stay popular among Mexicans but not break into Puerto Rican and Cuban-dominated markets on the East Coast, much less cross over into non-Hispanic markets.