2020-09-09

Jesús "Chuy"  Guzmán

Jesús "Chuy" Guzmán (Los Angeles, California)

Originally from San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, México, Jesús (Chuy) Guzmán is the musical director of the acclaimed Los Angeles-based Mariachi Los Camperos. Born in 1964 and passionate about playing violin since age six, Jesús, known by the nickname “Chuy,” moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s determined to be part of Los Camperos, a mariachi group he had admired since he was a little boy. Former Los Camperos musical director Nati Cano invited Chuy to join the group in 1988 and has been the musical director of the group since 1992. Los Camperos’ abundant accolades, including multiple Grammy awards and nominations and highly praised performances on premier concert stages such as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Getty Center, can easily obscure the fact that its leaders come from humble roots, deep within a mariachi tradition shaped by family and community. In 2018, they provided the musical accompaniment for the New York debut of the world’s first mariachi opera, Cruzar la Cara de la Luna (“To Cross the Face of the Moon”) by the New York City Opera. In 2019, Smithsonian Folkways released De Ayer para Siempre. 

Interviewed by Raquel Paraíso, 09/09/2020.

Raquel Paraíso

Music; United States; Covid-19 Pandemic

Los Angeles, California

Musicians in America during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Society for Ethnomusicology