Both a traditionalist and a visionary, Nati Cano has both mirrored and shaped the history of mariachi music. Mr. Cano was born in 1933 into a family of mariachi musicians of Ahuisculco, Jalisco, a small, rural town much like the many other west Mexican communities that gave life to mariachi tradition. His career took him first to nearby Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city, and then further away to Los Angeles, one of the most populous and influential cities of “greater Mexico.” In Los Angeles, he and the group he founded and directed nearly 46 years ago, Los Camperos, emerged as a major driving force of the mariachi music tradition in the United States, and to a certain extent, in Mexico as well.

The repertoire Los Camperos played during the early years was a mix of older rhythms of the son jalisciense, songs from the 1950s and earlier and contemporary pieces marked by the more complex harmonies of American and Mexican commercial popular music. For the enduring hard-driving sones, the emotion-packed canciones was a great attraction. This blending of old and new mariachi sounds was part of Mr. Cano’s musical and social agenda. His life goal has been to bring greater acceptance, understanding, and respect to the mariachi tradition as a whole, and to reach the widest possible audience with his music. His uncompromising position has been to preserve the essential “mariachi sound,” in his words, as the baseline of the tradition.

Mr. Cano is both an NEA and USArtists Fellow.