El Salón México

El Salón México is a symphonic composition in one movement by Aaron Copland, which uses Mexican folk music extensively. Copland visited Mexico several times in the 1930s. The four melodies of the piece are based on sheet music he purchased during his visits.

The work is a musical depiction of an imaginary dance hall in Mexico City, which, its name implies, represents the country of Mexico as Copland perceived it. The subtitle was "A Popular Type Dance Hall in Mexico City."

Copland observed that he despaired of the ability to portray, or even understand, the complexity that is Mexico. He continues to say that what he wrote, and what he knew he was writing, was a portrayal of the "visible" Mexico, to some extent the touristy Mexico. He chose dance as the vehicle for his musical portrayal.

Although Copland wrote in his autobiography that he had been taken to "El Salón México" by Carlos Chávez, he also learned of it from a guidebook:

Perhaps my piece might never have been written if it hadn't been for the existence of the Salón México. I remember reading about it for the first time in a tourist guide book: "Harlem-type nightclub for the peepul [ sic in the source quoted], grand Cuban orchestra. Three halls: one for people dressed in your way, one for people dressed in overalls but shod, and one for the barefoot." When I got there, I also found a sign on the wall which said: "Please don't throw lighted cigarette butts on the floor so the ladies don't burn their feet."

…In some inexplicable way, while milling about in those crowded halls, one really felt a live contact with the Mexican people — the atomic sense one sometimes gets in far-off places, of suddenly knowing the essence of a people — their humanity, their separate shyness, their dignity and unique charm.

The above is a series of white lies. In the 75 years since the work's premiere, there has been no newspaper article about the "original" Salón México. None of the hundreds of Copland enthusiasts who have heard the work and visited Mexico City has succeeded in tracking it down. Even the guidebook, with its "peepul" and "people dressed in your way", has not been identified. The concept that a commercial establishment would invite peasants who had no shoes (who were doing what, in Mexico City?), and that the well-to-do would patronize the same establishment, even in a separate room (soundproofed?), with a Cuban orchestra, is incongruous, to say the least (just as one would not find mariachis in Havana). No wonder it sounds like a Harlem nightclub.

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Wikipedia