Luv Doc Recommends: Cinco de Mayo Music Festival

Don’t fool yourself for a minute thinking that Cinco de Mayo was over on Wednesday. The goat heads are barely even on the barbie. You think if the Quatro de Julio happened on a Wednesday we’d all be back to work on Friday? Not likely. No, we’re looking at a five day weekend, minimum, more of a Cinco en Mayo, so buckle down that party hat and get ready to rumble. There’s a whole lot of cerveza, barbacoa, y música between you and Sunday and it’s todo bueno. First, however, you may want to find out exactly what you’re partying about. Get this straight: Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day. That happens on Sept. 16 (Diez y Seis de Septiembre), an unrelentingly hellish time to throw an outdoor party nearly anywhere in Texas. Unfortunately, history doesn’t plan for picnics so you pretty much have to take what you get. Cinco de Mayo on the other hand, was the day in 1862 on which the Texas born (at least geographically speaking) Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza and roughly 4,000 Mexican soldiers decisively defeated 8,000 well trained and equipped French troops at Puebla, Mexico, with the help of a well-timed thunderstorm and a herd of stampeding cattle. The French troops had been sent to Mexico five months earlier by Napoleon III to collect unpaid debts from the Mexican government of Benito Juarez. However, Napoleon III had even bigger plans. He appointed a Hapsburg prince named Maximilian to be emperor and sent 8,000 troops to march on Mexico City. They were defeated along the way by Zaragoza. Bummer for France, even bigger bummer for the Confederacy who was being supplied by France and who would have been the direct beneficiary of a French-run Mexican government. As it turned out, the better provisioned Union army ran roughshod over the Rebs at Gettysburg and the rest is … well … even more history, but the point is that if not for a wily Texican from Goliad, we might all sound like Foghorn Leghorn. Instead, only some of us sound like Foghorn Leghorn and the rest of us celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Why? Because of the aforementioned and the equally important fact that, rather fortuitously, it happened in May. Now that’s a holiday a beer company could get behind. In Austin, we have the Cinco de Mayo Music Festival, a five-day event at Fiesta Gardens featuring more than 30 musical acts as well as arts and crafts, food, beer, dance contests, and a carnival run by people who had tattoos before tattoos were cool. This year’s festival features two stages with acts ranging from the traditional tejano of Santiago Jimenez (the Stevie Ray Vaughan of accordion, or maybe the Jimmie, but that’s open to debate) to the happy faced boy-band pop of Hanson. Yeah, you heard right, Hanson. Sprinkled in between are equally entertaining big hitters like Johnny Degollado, Rick Trevino, Ruben Ramos, Rick Naranjo, Ruben Vela, and a lot of other people not named Ruben or Rick. Not surprisingly, it’s a tejano/conjunto-heavy lineup. You might not be into accordion. That’s understandable. As Willie Nelson once said, “Perfect pitch is when you toss an accordion into the trash and it hits a banjo,” but some of these fellows can really make a squeezebox sing, which is a level of difficulty similar to bathing a cat. Santiago in particular gives the kind of performance that makes you want to hold your lighter up in the air and scream “rock & roll,” even though it’s anything but. Still, if you can’t stand too much oompah oompah, you may want to check out the Town Lake stage tonight (if tonight is still Thursday), which features a double bill of Grupo Fantasma and Del Castillo. Both of these groups feature jaw-dropping musicianship and highly danceable rhythms. If you can’t work your stuff in front of this stage, you may not have it to work. In that case, you’ll want to sit tight for the Hanson show on Sunday night. If there ever were a sure sign that Cinco de Mayo was coming to an end, Hanson would surely be it – sort of like the flick of the light switch at closing time.