On Friday’s edition of Ozarks at Large, you heard about an upcoming Día de los Muertos celebration that’s happening at the Community Creative Center in Fayetteville. One of the elements of that celebration will include a performance from Trio Hermanitas Álvarez. Back in September, the sisters performed at the Fayetteville Public Library as part of our KUAF Live Sessions series and spoke with Ozarks at Large’s Sophia Nourani.
Sophia Nourani: So we heard about it a little bit already at The Medium, but maybe go into where you guys are from and how you started playing music.
Hermanitas Álvarez: Of course. We are originally from California, Los Angeles, California, but we did live about five years … Arriba Los Dodgers Clara, casi todos mis paisanos. But we did live in Mexico for about five years, and that’s where I started to learn guitar. It was just me. They were still babies. And then we went back to California and I still wanted to continue doing music. So we found a mariachi academy called Fuego Mariachi Academy. And it was all based on just kids. And then so that’s where we joined. They started learning more guitar. We started doing vocal lessons, violin, trumpet, and that’s how I started growing the music in us. And we were part of a lot of mariachi groups. We did our own and up till this day we still love it.
Sophia Nourani: And then you made your way over to Arkansas?
Hermanitas Álvarez: Yes.
Sophia Nourani: Maybe tell us a little bit about the songs that you played for us today.
Hermanitas Álvarez: The first song, we actually recorded a music video. It’s on our platforms, especially YouTube. It’s called Bésame Mucho by Trio Los Hermanos Álvarez. We have a couple of more music videos there so you guys can check that out. It’s a song. It’s a very famous song called Bésame Mucho. That song has been sung in many languages. This one was in Spanish, but this song is specific. We made a more style, like pop music and, but there’s like a lot of different versions of it. It’s a very traditional song. And our second song was What a Wonderful World. So I think a very famous song, and our last one was called De Madera and very, very traditional.
Sophia Nourani: Your harmonies were beautiful. I bet that takes a ton of practice.
Hermanitas Álvarez: Thank you so much. It did. It did. To get everything together and all the voices. But that’s what we learned.
Sophia Nourani: How is it performing as a family? What is that like? Sisters?
Hermanitas Álvarez: Yeah. Sister. Myself. So. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s pretty good, I think. As sisters, we have that bond together. And more than anything, we could tell each other what we need to improve on. Maybe with other people. It’s like, “Ah, should I tell them or should I not, because I might hurt their feelings.” And over here it’s, you know, we learn from it, right? But the way that we actually practice or put a song together, we realized that whenever we like, we want to take a song or something, and we all try to take it out together. It doesn’t really work because we all have different ideas. Or it’s like, “Ah, I like it this way better, or I like it that way.” So what we do is I try to give them. “Okay, you study this part, you study that part, I study my part and in our own.” And then we’ll bring it together and then bring our ideas and it works. So for our musicians out there, that’s a tip for you guys. Maybe it works.
Sophia Nourani: I love that. Thank you. So you talked about moving here to Arkansas. What is it like being a musician in Northwest Arkansas?
Hermanitas Álvarez: I think it’s very different from California, because in California, there’s a bunch of groups, there’s a bunch of musicians. I mean, everyone has their own style, of course, and has like their own clients, and they have preferences. Right. But I think here in Arkansas, it’s really starting to grow this in music. And there’s starting to be more groups out there, too. More community events, especially specifically like Heritage Month that we’re in September. There’s a lot of them right here, or it’s our first time bringing mariachi in this event. I’m like, first time it’s crazy. Entonces well, we’re gonna keep on doing this and hope to grow more here in Arkansas. It’s amazing. Thank you.
Sophia Nourani: Is there anything else you want to share? Maybe about yourselves and— Oh, one more thing. You already said it. Where can people find you?
Hermanitas Álvarez: And in all platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and all those on YouTube for our music videos. Another project that we have going on right now is we just came up with a music academy, a mariachi academy, in Rogers. So that’s a new thing that’s happening here in Rogers. You guys can contact us through our social media page as Hermanitas Álvarez or search up Álvarez Mariachi Academy. And that phone number is 479-347-5910. If you guys want more information about that, we’re going to be giving guitar lessons. Voice lessons, violin, trumpet. So I mean, it’s never too late, even for adults. I mean, I have a lot of people to come to me and be like, oh, I wish I did guitar. You can still do it right now. And it’s for all ages.
That was the song Bésame Mucho by Trio Hermanitas Álvarez. You can find our whole lineup of Live Sessions at our YouTube page.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
