San Antonio Mariachi Serenade Version Of 'Grease' Song Sets Internet Ablaze (VIDEO)

SAN ANTONIO, TX — You haven't lived until you've heard a genre-bending mariachi version of a hit song from the movie "Grease," and a widely shared video featuring just such a cover will enable you to check that off your bucket list.

San Antonio-based Mariachi Entertainment System has produced a video showing a heartfelt lady mariachi singing the song "Hopelessly Devoted to You" made famous by Olivia Newton-John in the 1978 film adaptation of the musical of the same name. It's difficult to imagine such a version without first hearing it, what with the guitar-heavy mariachi ensemble accented by blaring trumpets and sometimes those dreaded maracas comprising such musical groupings.

Ane yet it works.

Since being posted on the band's Facebook page late last month, the video has garnered more than 290,000 views and in some 7,000 shares. Judging from the comments on the Facebook thread, the genre hybrid version is a musical success with virtual requests being made for similar covers.

To the uninitiated encountering such ensembles solely at Mexican food restaurants where they travel from table to table hoping for tips, mariachis are sometimes viewed as more of an unavoidable annoyance at eateries filled with people who enjoy Mexican food. That view was given a kitschy send-up in the 1996 film "Jerry MaGuire" when Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character sings a version of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" at a family gathering with musical accompaniment from musicians recruited from a favorite restaurant.

But this is an out-of-context perspective. To the cognoscenti, mariachi is a beautifully layered form of music with richly complex lyrical architecture often conveying tales of love or heartbreak or expressions of national pride. The musical expression dates back to at least the 18th century with traditional sub-genres of its own depending on the venue at which the songs are being played. In 2011 UNESCO recognized mariachi as an Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Over the decades, the genre has had several prominent practitioners lionized in Mexico. Long before the three tenors of opera, three mariachi singers—successful solo artists in their own right yet referred to by fans collectively as "Los Trés Gallos Mexicanos," or the three Mexican roosters—gave soulful voice to the genre in the middle of the last century. To this day, it's still debated as to who was the best interpreter of Mexican ballads among the trés gallos: Pedro Infante, Javier Solis or Jorge Negrete.

Tragically, all three singers died prematurely in near succession within a 13-year span and from unusual circumstances: Negrete in 1953 from hepatitis at the age of 42; Pedro Infante at 39 in the crash of a plane he was piloting in 1957; and Solis, the last surviving member of the triumvirate at the age of 34 after complications from gall bladder surgery in 1966.

Denied water as a result of his surgery, the latter is having to have said among his last words: "They will have to shower my grave with lots of water."

Filling the void in the wake of their deaths was José Alfredo Jiménez, known for accenting his interpretations with wordless yet plaintive cries to accentuate the sadness of some of his heartbreak songs while also composing songs now considered standards. He, too, died young at 47 from cirrhosis of the liver.

Jiménez's heir apparent is a man hailed today as the greatest living interpreter of traditional Mexican music, Vicente Fernández, now largely retired at the age of 77.

To be sure, mariachi is more than just marauding groups of musicians interrupting your dinner at at the Mexican food restaurant you frequent. Rather, these musicians are the embodiment—the manifestation made flesh as legacy abassadors—of a rich tradition emotionally touching even Americans of Mexican descent some generations removed from the mother country, able to reduce some listeners to tears in hearing the sung words voicing heartfelt emotions to which we can all relate.

In the intervening years, mariachi has gained a wider acceptance and appreciation in the mainstream. The televised talent competition "America's Got Talent" has featured several interpreters of mariachi music, including Alondra Santos a couple of years ago when she competed at the age of 13, capturing even the hearts of audience members expecting pop music at the contest.

And who can forget San Antonio's Sebastien De La Cruz, aka "The Little Mariachi" who rose to fame after singing the national anthem at the NBA Finals in 2013? Then 11, the little mariachi's powerful voice belied his diminutive stature.

Which is all to say that the appeal of mariachi is growing, and is now even a popular musical path in interpreting covers of songs more familiar with the mainstream. And you know, it somehow works.

Remember all this next time you start to shoo away a mariachi at your favorite Mexican restaurant.

>>> Photo of mariachis in Austin by Steve via Wikimedia Commons