Musica campirana is a regional style that comes from northern areas of Mexico such as Chihuahua and Sonora. Las Hermanas Padilla were part of that movement and we celebrate them for their contribution with ranchera songs, corridos, and similar sounds.
Las Hermanas Padilla, Margarita and Maria, were born near the Jalisco border, in the town of Tanhuato. Their family, devout followers of the Catholic Church, fled Mexico due to the persecution they faced because of their religion. They arrived in Los Angeles in the 1920s.
Margarita and Maria’s father supported them in their singing and during the 1930s the sisters began to become popular because of their beautiful voices. They learned almost a thousand songs as they came to perform on radio programs. In 1937 they recorded their first song, “La Barca de Oro.”
“The duet made some of the first recordings in the United States of mariachi music that included the trumpet, and frequently teamed up with virtuoso classical trumpeter Rafael Méndez,” according to mariachi musician and historian Jonathan Clark, as he writes in the chapter on mariachi music in The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings.
