Eighteen-year-old vocalist and musician Anaí Morales — who uses the stage name Anaí Adina — isn't your typical mariachi.
Her debut album “Esperame en el Cielo” (Wait for Me in Heaven) introduces classic motifs of love and heartbreak typically performed by much older, usually male musicians. She also includes songs about working in the fields, inspired by her upbringing in the Central Valley town of Delano, where Cesar Chavez began organizing workers in the fields more than a half-century ago.
Morales comes from a musical family. She and her sisters got their start at Mariachi Mestizo, an award-winning youth ensemble founded by her parents in Delano. The group has performed at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. (Her father, Juan Morales, has played in some of the most famous Mariachi groups in the United States, including Mariachi Sol de Mexico and Mariachi Los Camperos).
Morales herself has won a number of competitions for voice, violin, and trumpet — including the “Shining Star” award at the highly competitive “Battle of the Mariachis” in San Juan Capistrano.
Morales is starting at Harvard University this fall, where she took a break from orientation to talk to The California Report Magazine host Sasha Khokha. Here is an excerpt from that conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
On Mariachi’s influence on kids from the Central Valley:
Mariachi music in general is a very important part of Mexican culture; it's present in everything that I do. I think mariachi in a community like Delano — which has a lot of Mexican immigrants and Filipino culture — gives kids a creative outlet and keeps them out of the gang violence that's present in the community.
It’s also nurturing to their cultural backgrounds, I think. A lot of kids enroll in the [mariachi] studio because their grandparents or their parents want them to play that music, or their grandparents and parents were mariachis, so it has a familial vibe to it.
