LA’s mariachis form union to boost prices
Read, look, listen.
The musicians looking for work at the city’s famed Mariachi Plaza are singing a lot of ai-yai-yai’s these days.
With the number of gigs plummeting by more than half over the past two years, competition has gotten so cut-throat at the square that fistfights and shouting matches have erupted as musicians underbid each other to land scarce jobs.
Now a group of veteran plaza musicians have banded together to form a type of mariachi labor union to stop what they call “mariachi pirates” from slashing prices to half the going rate.
“Mariachi is culture and it’s the way we earn our living,” said guitarist Arturo Ramirez, president of the United Mariachi Organization of Los Angeles. “We have to protect it. This is unfair competition.”
[…]
Established rates are about $50 per hour per musician, said Ramirez, who heads Mariachi Los Dorados de Villa and has been working out of the plaza for 25 years. Most groups require minimums of several hours or charge for travel and setup time, as well as the performance.
But interlopers are charging as low as $150 an hour for a band - or $20-30 per hour per musician - and advertising in home-delivered flyers, so people aren’t even coming to the plaza to seek mariachis
“They’re mariachi pirates,” said Jacinto Tiznado, a union organizer who also noted that professional mariachis work as registered business and pay taxes. “They don’t even have the whole suit or know all the songs. Their artistic quality is low.”
[…]
Monica Almeida / The New York Times
These are probably pirates:
These guys look like the real deal at a real gig.