Women’s Audio Mission is collaborating with musician Nydia Algazzali Gonzalez and the ensemble Mariachi Femenil Orgullo Mexicano to create the first mariachi album ever performed, arranged, produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered entirely by women. Mariachi Femenil Orgullo Mexicano is the Bay Area’s first and only all-female mariachi band. The band will work closely with Terri Winston and other women recording engineers at Women’s Audio Mission to develop arrangements of mariachi standards and record and distribute an album. The ensemble and project will be featured in Women’s Audio Mission’s interactive webcasts of artist lectures and in performances open to the public.
Mariachi Femenil Orgullo Mexicano is composed of 10 Bay Area women who have been deeply influenced both musically and culturally by their own family roots in the mariachi tradition as well as such pioneras as Lola Beltran, Lucha Villa, Amalia Mendoza, Aida Cuevas, and Beatrice Adriana. They have performed together since 2007. Women’s Audio Mission is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of women and girls in music production and recording arts—a discipline in which women are critically underrepresented (less than 5%).