Copyright The Boston Globe
And with that, the Pops’ annual schedule increased by one. In its second year, the orchestra’s Día de Muertos concert (Saturday at Symphony Hall) celebrates the music and legacy of late Latin pop icon Juan Gabriel, with performances by Mexican-American singer La Marisoul, Mexican singer-songwriter Ely Guerra, and Boston-based mariachi bandleader Veronica Robles. Robles was also on last year’s bill, and to hear her talk about that experience, it’s no wonder she agreed to return. “It was magical,” she says of the 2024 performance. “Me singing Mexican music with the Pops as a singer and then paying tribute to the memory of my daughter the way we did it, with a picture there on stage. My mother came to the concert from Mexico, my husband was there … people singing along. Everybody was excited about the end, singing ‘Cielito Lindo.’ So that was beautiful.” If last year’s concert deliberately spotlighted local artists, this year the Pops have cast a wider net geographically as well as stylistically. “It’s so beautiful that they did a folklore concert last year and this time they are choosing new generations,” says Guerra over Zoom from her Mexico City home, which she points out is right next to Frida Kahlo’s house. In a way, Guerra speaks about the holiday itself in similar terms, of letting barriers that separate one type of music from another fall. On Día de Muertos, she says, “we are inviting the dead to come here and have a little moment again. It represents life, not death, for us. So for me, it’s a movement that speaks about transcending borders and transcending frontiers and transcending the line between what is a journey here and another type of journey.” Robles similarly sees Día de Muertos as being about making connections. “It’s a thoughtful celebration about somebody who passed away,” she says. “And it doesn’t have to be a specific person. It’s on your personal aspect, the personal life. If you lost someone, you want to be part of something that creates community.” As the Pops knows well, one way to do that is through music. And a figure who looms as large as Gabriel, who died in 2016 and would have turned 75 this year, has the ability to represent far more than his songs. “I believe he expresses what we are,” says Guerra. “We are Mexicans. We are super free. We love freedom, and we love to express our culture in everything: food, the way we dress, the way we speak, slang, everything. So Juan Gabriel is just part of this freedom. And he’s representing out loud what we are all the time, trying to show the rest of the world the way we are open and warmth and tu casa es mi casa.“ ”Everybody knows Juan Gabriel and everybody loves him and his songs," Robles says. “People will know the songs that we will sing, and they will sing along.” As indicated by her admission that she listened to 400 Gabriel songs before selecting the one she would perform (“I wanted really to get in deep into his history”), Guerra takes her participation in the ongoing Pops tradition of Día de Muertos seriously. “It’s a time to be familiar,” she says. “It’s a time to be human. It’s a time to understand: This is a collaboration. Not only a singer comes to sing, I feel like I’m coming to interpret and to say things more than the singing could do. Normally, to perform on stage, it is a challenge, but to perform with … I don’t know if this is the right word to say, but this monster — I always feel like orchestras are like monsters — and to blend with them, it is risky. And at the same time, it is a huge responsibility.” Big as that responsibility is, Robles understands the stakes. They are the same at this year’s Pops Día de Muertos concert as they were last year and they will be every year. “Bringing the community together on this venue makes me happy,” she says. “Especially in this moment, it makes me feel part of this community. It makes me feel seen, makes me feel that I belong.”
