“What do we do in a band?” sings an orchestra of up to 40 women. That song, of their own authorship, is like an anthem that represents them in every performance, whether in a theater in Mexico City, abroad or at a town festival.
“Creating new paths full of music and lyrics”, the band responds in the same song.
It is the Women of the Florido Wind orchestra, formed in Santa María Tlahuitoltepec, a municipality located in the Sierra Mixe of Oaxaca, a land with a long musical tradition and philharmonic orchestras.
The opening of a tradition
But what was not traditional a few years ago in the town is that there was a band made up entirely of women.
“What is not ‘normal’ is that suddenly a woman picks up an instrument and goes to play at her town’s festival or goes to music classes. “That’s because of how they trained us women,”
Leticia Gallardo, director and founder of Viento Florido, says in an interview.
Since its founding in 2009, the band has overturned prejudices inside and outside its community and has positioned itself as a reference for girls and women in the creation and direction of music, a segment in which the female population remains very underrepresented in our country. .
Teacher Leticia Gallardo trained in the seventies of the last century at the Center for Musical Training and Development of Mixe Culture, of which her father was one of the founders. This is how she learned music without gender restrictions, until in adolescence and adulthood she realized that The same conditions or opportunities did not exist for women.
It was not until the eighties that they began to include women in bands, but in parts that, it was thought, were reserved for them, such as the clarinet or brass. In 2006 was when women began to take up the tuba, trombone and trumpet and the Santa Cecilia municipal band (patron saint of musicians) was formed, until it dissolved in 2009. But in November of that same year, women from different backgrounds and from neighboring communities who speak the “ayuujk” language (which means “flowery word”) They create Viento Florido as an independent organization.
Viento Florido began to play at community festivals, the first obstacle was the people’s disbelief.
“They told us ‘these are not going to last, they are not going to be able to, they are not going to last all the days of the parties that have to be played, or the late nights, or the way of transportation, or the food’”,
remembers teacher Leticia.
They not only had to overcome the assigned gender role as a woman, of only fulfilling household functions, but also demonstrate that they could do much more than that.
“A woman can cook, a woman can wash, but can’t she create music? Can’t she direct? That part is something that is difficult for society to accept,” says Leticia Gallardo.
The National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) found that, in 2014, 126 thousand Mexicans were musicians, but out of every hundred, only seven were womenand ten years before, only six out of every hundred females were dedicated to music.
Besides, only 2% of all musicians spoke an indigenous languageaccording to Inegi.
But 14 years later, Viento Florido has opened a path in regional music and has taken it beyond its community, to several states of the republic and even abroad, such as Chile, New York, France or the Netherlands. They have also collaborated with national and foreign groups and artists. In fact, on December 9 they will perform at the Palacio de Bellas Artes with the Chilean-Mexican artist Mon Laferte.
For many years, it was impossible for women from indigenous communities to dream of these spaces. So all this that is being achieved is due to the sum of the efforts of each companion, of what each one has been able to risk, of each one who has been able to bet here, that she wants a different reality,”
explains the teacher.
Flowery Wind and renewal
But perhaps Viento Florido’s most important achievement is inspiring more women to enter music. “This generation comes from many girls who once saw the band and said: ‘I want to be in this band, I want to play with them.‘I want to present myself the way they present themselves.’ Parents also come and tell me: ‘I want my daughter to be in this band, because I want her to have a different vision of what she is going to do with her life,’” says Leticia.
The band currently has two albums: Women and Florid wind: tribute to traditional Oaxacan composersand they have already recorded a third with compositions by 14 women, and they will promote it in 2024.
Leticia Gallardo affirms that the band has served as a development for women in her community, as a personal complement to create art, even if they do not dedicate themselves to music professionally, and also to train more women in music, as directors and composers.
His wish is that people not only talk about Florido Wind, but that more women organize and more groups emerge that give space to their talent.
The women who are in Viento Florido, we enjoy it and when we make music, we feel good, we forget everything and we get into the music.”
That’s what women do in a band.
Francisco Mucino