Canción del Mariachi
Mariachi’s song! That is what it means in spanish.
It was in 1997, when our band, Donesis - the official band of OEU institute of Ophthalmology, KMC Manipal, was planning a concert to raise funds for deserving patients in our department through the ‘Sight Restoration Fund or the SRF’ (which in retinal parlance means SubRetinal Fluid). Donesis means abnormal movement of the structures in the eye (Phacodonesis means abnormal movement of the lens in the eye). That was the time, my dear friend, Dr Tanvir Alam (BigMan) played this song and asked if we could do it. Dr. Suman Thappa, now Professor and Head of Glaucoma surgery in TilGanga Eye Hospital was excited! So was our Bassist, Dr Rohan Daniel, another glaucoma surgeon now at Aravind Eye Hospital, Coimbatore and of course our dear drummer boy, Danny had nothing much to do anyway, but just to play a cabasa backing the guitar strums. But I was skeptical, the guitar work in the song was something I have never heard before, and the strumming, typical of Mariachi style of music, was so difficult. But BigMan Tanvir edged me on and I managed to pick it up. The song, originally sung by Antonio Banderas along with the famous band Los Lobos (one of my favorites too) was a huge hit and our concert at KMC Greens was a grand success!
In 2006 when I started my KZfaq channel, I started working on my first video and that was the solo of Cancion del Mariachi and after a few months of struggling with a basic home studio setup, I uploaded it on 31st May 2007, 13 years ago! (that video has over 190,000 views). My Sister, Dr. Anju S Raju had then asked me to do the vocals and make a complete version of the classic song. But I was not sure I could do it.
In this video, I also was lucky to be joined by my one and only fan - Chickoo! He gave me company and I guess he doesn’t have too many choices as far as music is concerned, other than listening to me :-). Thank you, my dear Chickoo!!
Gear used:
Yamaha APX Electro acoustic Guitar in.yamaha.com/en/products/mus...
Yamaha 4 string Bass TRBS 174 www.guitarfella.com/yamaha-tr...
Komplete Kontrol S49 MIDI keyboard and Komplete 10.0
www.native-instruments.com/en...
DAW - Cubase with UR44 Audio interface www.steinberg.net/en/products...
Captured on iPhone 11 Pro Max
Video edited on Adobe Premiere Pro 2018