Tierra Caliente fiddler teaches in Cuernavaca
Serafín Ibarra performs in Cuernavaca
Serafín Ibarra, master fiddler of the Tierra Caliente (the states of Michoacán and Guerrero) is teaching this week in Cuernavaca at the Tradiciones Music School. While he shares his repertoire of sones and gustos with violin students, Jesús Peredo teaches guitarists how to accompany this style of music from the Balsas River Basin.
The traditional Mexican music course began today and will end Saturday, July 25 with an informal recital at the school site in downtown Cuernavaca (Rayon Street 26), in the Mexican state of Morelos. The school’s students offered a similar recital last Saturday after studying Huastecan music for a week.
Ibarra learned to play this unique style from his Great Uncle Miguel Ibarra, one of the region’s most venerated violinists in the first half of the 20th centgury. He also learned from another great uncle, Soledad Sánchez and the great master Juan Reynoso who received Mexico’s highest artistic award, the National Prize for Science and the Arts in 1997.
Ibarra, now considered one of the best son calentano violinists, has performed in Europe, South America, the United States, Canada and throughout Mexico. In 2003, Mexico’s National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) awarded him a grant to continue composing music in the traditional style of his forebears.
He currently is director of the calentano group Los Carácuaros and he also plays with the duo Los Virtuosos del Son with Peredo, director of Tradiciones, Escuela de Música.
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