MARIACHI WITH A DIFFERENCE; SOARING APPEAL UNDERSCORED VIA `VIVA' CONCERT.

Byline: Reed Johnson Staff Writer

``Home of the World's Greatest Mariachi'' declares the somewhat immodest sign outside Cielito Lindo restaurant, an island of Mexican musical culture on a noisy South El Monte commercial strip.

Inside, owner-performer Jose Hernandez is dressed in what might be described as Guadalajara-Hollywood casual: black shirt, black trousers, black and white checked jacket.

But in a few days, Hernandez and the members of his band Mariachi Sol de Mexico - ``the nation's premiere mariachi,'' as it bills itself - once more will don their embroidered traje de charro suits and customized sombreros and take the stage for the third annual ``Viva El Mariachi'' concert at Universal Amphitheatre.

They'll be sharing the bill with Lucero, a charismatic young Mexican singer-soap opera star, and Reyna de Los Angeles, the all-female mariachi troupe that Hernandez willed into being five years ago.

It's a venue, and an event, that says a lot about how far mariachi has traveled toward mainstream pop culture in the five generations that Hernandez's family has been playing the traditional Mexican music. In the late 1960s, when Jose's Mexican immigrant father, the late Esteban Hernandez, and his band Mariachi Chapala used to play the small cantinas along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, some restaurants and bars would charge them to play to make up for the lost jukebox revenue.

By contrast, when Hernandez presents ``Viva El Mariachi'' on Saturday, he'll have the backing of several major-league corporate sponsors, including Sears and Daimler Chrysler Corp.

``To be able to perform the music that's from the rancho, from the campo, the country, and take it to such a classy place, it makes it all that much more special,'' says Hernandez, a warm, energetic man. ``That also happened when we did the (Hollywood) Bowl for the first time, and when we did Las Vegas for the first time.''

Gary Disney, assistant zone manger for Daimler Chrysler in Southern California, says that the concert's professionalism and high musical standards have made it an attractive vehicle for pursuing inroads into the huge local Latino market.

``The event always comes off without a hitch, and they do just a spectacular job,'' Disney says.

Yet now that mariachi has become a regular visitor at concert halls and performing arts centers from Cerritos to Thousand Oaks, Hernandez still is grappling with a familiar challenge: How does he get the trend-happy young Latino demographic to think of mariachi - which dates from the 1870s - as a living folk music rather than a heritage relic?

And now that he's brought mariachi to bilingual, middle-class suburban audiences, how does he get his own Spanish-speaking kitchen staff at Cielito Lindo to tune in?

``If you ask a Mexicano - one of my cooks - what do you have at home, what records, they get into norte, they have banda,'' Hernandez says. ``That's their mainstream. Mariachi isn't their mainstream.''

It's been roughly 15 years since Hernandez and Sol de Mexico first broke through the tortilla curtain that separates places like Cielito Lindo, a festively decorated family-style restaurant, from prestige arenas like the Bowl, Universal Amphitheatre and the Greek Theatre, where last year's edition of ``Viva El Mariachi'' took place.

In that relatively brief time, Hernandez himself has emerged as one of the genre's leading boosters as well as, perhaps, its most influential producer. He has recorded with Linda Rondstadt, Selena, Vicki Carr, Willie Nelson, Juan Gabriel, Lucha Villa and Vicente Fernandez.

Simultaneously, Mariachi Sol de Mexico, which Hernandez founded in 1981, has become the first mariachi ensemble to break into the classical circuit, performing with symphony orchestras throughout the western United States, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Hollywood, too, has come knocking several times, recruiting Hernandez to work on the soundtracks for such feature films as ``The Old Gringo,'' ``American Me'' and ``Don Juan de Marco.''

Hernandez also has discovered and produced new talent such as Reyna de Los Angeles, whose members range in age from 17 to nearly 40. Not only did Reyna de Los Angeles become the nation's first all-female mariachi ensemble. It also demonstrated the music's pull among non-Latinos, including group leader Cindy Reifler, a classically trained violinist of Eastern European extraction who grew up in western New York state.

``The first time I heard (mariachi), I fell in love with it,'' Reifler says. ``Mexican people say, `Because you're doing this, people from other cultures can recognize how wonderful our music is.' When I started out it was, `You can't do this! There's no way you can do this! You're white and you're a girl!' ''

While Hernandez worked very closely with Reyna during its inception, supervising everything from song arrangements to choreography, he now turns much of the reponsibility over to Reifler, the group's musical coordinator.

``Cindy (has) got the character and the experience to be able to work with them on her own,'' Hernandez says. ``She has what we call la chispa, you know, that spark, and that's very important when you're a performer, to mariachi music. (Audiences say) `Viva la gringa, viva la gringa!' They love it.''

Reyna de Los Angeles already has spawned a few imitators and spun off the up-and-coming solo artist Nydia Rojas. A Guadalajara native raised in Los Angeles, and still not even out of her teens, the pop- and rock-influenced Rojas has what A&R executives hungrily refer to as ``crossover potential.''

That potential is underscored by the emergence of young non-Latino mariachis such as Timothy Pollard, 32, an African-American from Long Beach, and Junko Seki, 28, who is from Japan. Both performed at the Mariachi USA festival, which marked its 10th anniversary at the Hollywood Bowl last June.

These and other new artists have been giving audiences a taste of the new musical influences - synthetic pop, African-American drums, saxaphones - that have begun lending mariachi a more modern, eclectic sound.

Similarly, this Saturday's headliner act, Lucero, ``has sort of made mariachi more hip to the younger generations in Mexico,'' Hernandez says.

Hernandez himself is well-known - and occasionally criticized - for his willingness to experiment by adding different musical elements to the purist mariachi mix.

Yet he believes the biggest obstacle to mariachi's further development isn't its old-fashioned brass-and-strings aesthetic, but unadventurous radio formatting. He compares the situation to that of contemporary U.S. country music. While Nashville bends its collective knee in homage to George Jones, Merle Haggard and other gritty old timers, recording executives are busily scanning the horizons for the next LeAnn Rimes.

``I had a huge talk with one of the major, major radio chains, all over the United States, a guy out of New York this morning at 6:30 in the morning,'' Hernandez recounts. ``(He was saying) people might get bored of mariachis. I go, `What is it with you guys? You'd rather see 14 or 15 banda members than a 14-piece mariachi group representing our people, our culture?' ''

The afternoon is wearing on, and the members of Sol de Mexico are tuning up their instruments, patiently waiting for their leader to join them in rehearsal. The Hollywood Bowl and Universal Amphitheatre are fine, but Hernandez is careful to keep his band sounding and looking sharp for the hard-core fans at Cielito Lindo.

``My music is my music, and that's it,'' he sums up. ``I try not to follow a fad.''

The Fact

What: ``Viva El Mariachi '99'' featuring Lucero, Mariachi Sol de Mexico and Reyna de Los Angeles.

Where: Universal Amphitheatre.

When: 8:15 p.m. Saturday.

Tickets: $28, $43, $68, $88, $128. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

PHOTO (1--cover--color) Mariachi going upscale but still looking for more respect.

(2-3) Reyna de Los Angeles, led by Cindy Reifler, not only has become the nation's first all-female mariachi ensemble, it also demonstrates the music's pull among non-Latinos.

(4-5) In 15 years, Jose Hernadez and Sol de Mexico has moved from a family-style restaurant to prestige arenas such as the Bowl, Universal Amphitheatre and the Greek Theatre.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer