There are moments in life when one has to choose a direction. Sometimes those decisions come at a very young age, other times later.
Diana Gameros had to choose at the age of 21. For eight years she had been visiting her aunt in Michigan, back and forth from her home in Ciudad Juárez, then she decided to stay — and overstay her tourist visa. Gameros was in love both with music and an American boy who supported her staying to pursue her dreams. It was either love and music in Michigan, undocumented, or back to her beloved Juárez and family and friends, to those desert sunsets and those abrazos of her abuelita.
Gameros chose the U.S. and got a music degree in Michigan, but a few years later found herself in San Francisco — in love with another man, and with the city, as she watched the fog roll in through the Golden Gate.
The journey has brought her, her guitar, and her songs to stages large and small, across the country, across the border, indoors and out — by herself, in small groups, and with other musicians who need little introduction: Joan Baez, Natalia Lafourcade, Taylor Mac, and the San Francisco Symphony.
But before all that, her journey also included working 50 hours a week at a fast-food restaurant to put herself through college, sleeping four hours a night to get her degree, and because of her immigration status, not setting foot in her querido Mexico for 16 years.
Gameros now lives in Berkeley, but her first Bay Area home was the Mission District, where she played regular weekend gigs at the Roosevelt Tamale Parlor. Her music has remained true to the desperation, celebration, struggles, and victories of being an immigrant in a land where the streets and cities share the last names of our tíos and tías. As Gameros puts it, is it hard to have one place to call home, but the Bay surely feels like one.
As she prepared for four shows at SFJazz this Thursday and Friday, Gameros took time out to talk about undocumented life, the influence of the Mission, and making music with her mother and grandmother.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
What do you remember about your childhood in Mexico?
I am from Ciudad Juárez, a border town next to El Paso, Texas. I’m a daughter of the desert and the border, and everything that comes with being from a land that mixes those two elements. A lot of people, when I tell them that I am from Ciudad Juárez, the city being so infamous for its killings and drug cartels, tend to darken my experience of what it was to be in Juárez, but I remember having a beautiful childhood. I remember going outside and playing with my friends until dark. There was always music in our lives, by way of my parents listening to records, and every time we had gatherings at my grandparent’s villages there were always guitars, my uncles would play, and my mother and my grandmother would sing and harmonize. I remember my childhood as a beautiful one and a musical one.
How does it feel to hear people’s perceptions of Juárez?
It is frustrating, but I acknowledge that I have fallen prey to the consequence of experiencing a place from far away. I was feeding myself with the same things that anybody else in the States was feeding themselves with as far as news, because my family wasn’t really telling me what was happening every day. For one, they didn’t want to, and for two, they didn’t have time. I know that there are things to be celebrated in Ciudad Juárez. For example, when I left there were not enough schools to learn music, or there wasn’t even a program where you could get a bachelor’s degree in music. That’s one of the reasons why I left, but now you can get a music program.
How did you start playing music?
I experienced music through joyful gatherings at the pueblito where my grandparents vivían, there was music and celebration, so for me, music meant family tradition, joy, dance, and party.
Then my mom bought me a little keyboard, and they put me in music lessons. I decided to study classical piano, and my relationship with music turned a little sour because I had so many insecurities. My parents didn’t have time to sit down [with me], and I also loved playing outside. I wasn’t super disciplined to acquire that level of artistry, of kids that want to be concert pianists and rehearse eight hours a day.
Recently, I’ve made peace with the piano, and I have been playing and writing more on it, because at the end of the day, it was my first love and we’re getting back together.
I still didn’t know when I was going back, and Arrullo was my way of telling Mexico, ‘I miss you. I love you. I can’t wait to be back.’
How did music help you cope with being a young immigrant in the U.S.?
It has saved my life in many ways, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and I even want to say physically. When I was in college, I had a two-hour commute every day and I had to work 50 hours a week because I needed to pay for tuition. I couldn’t get loans or financial aid because I was undocumented. There were times when I had to slap my face because I’d be driving and falling asleep on the road.
It was pretty unhealthy, but I was studying music and would get this high on the information that I was getting. Learning about counterpoint and listening to the sounds and being able to recognize them, I was just blown away by what I was learning. For everything that has happened in my life where it’s been tough, whether emotional or psychological, music is there to hold me, to accompany me.
What does the Mission mean to you?
It’s kind of a loaded question because of everything. I was evicted. The [landlords] did something fishy so that they could increase the rent, therefore we couldn’t pay. The people I was living with were all artists, and everything got so hostile — even between us — because of what you’re dealing with.
Also, trying to find a new place in the Bay Area, it’s not just a big project, but it can trigger so many things because everything is so expensive. That’s why I had to leave San Francisco and come to Berkeley.
I have immense love for the Mission, that’s where I got my first gig. I played for five years every Friday and Saturday at the Roosevelt Tamale Parlor. This place became the hub for people who wanted to bring their loved ones and listen to traditional Mexican music and Mexican classics. I always like to say that the Mission formed me as a professional musician. I wanted to commit myself to music because there was so much pouring out of me, all these stories, all the songs that I wanted to share.
Everything started for me in the Mission. There is this project called Mission Arts and Performance Project, which is every two months on the first Saturday of the month. So I got to perform in garages, art galleries, cafes, houses, and I got to meet a lot of musicians.
I have so much love for the city and for the Bay Area in general. It really feels like a second home, but I don’t think there’s like a first home or second home. Your homeland is always going to be your homeland, but the Bay Area feels very much like my home.
How do you see the Mission now?
Having been there through these years of gentrification, I feel like there are a multitude of things existing at the same time.
I remember it was so hard to walk one block because I would stop and say hi to every person I knew. There were all these really cute stores owned by local and Mexican people who shared a similar culture to mine. Now, it feels sterile. It doesn’t feel as alive. It doesn’t feel as colorful. That feeling grew exponentially through the pandemic.
At the same time, I also left, so I don’t mean to do a disservice. I’ve been back and I feel like it’s starting to come back to life. I know there are more spaces hosting live music and galleries with events, and so little by little it’s coming back to life.
What does it mean to you to perform with your mom and grandma?
It’s incredible and very revealing. The first time I performed with my mom on a big stage was in 2013. She set foot on that stage with such confidence and ownership as if she had done it her whole life. She was a housewife for many years, and then she got divorced and became a psychotherapist, one of the best in Ciudad Juárez, but I know that at heart, she’s a musician.
Recently, I was part of this event at Stanford where we told stories, and I did research on the women of my lineage and found out that all of them were singers. My grandma would go on tours, and now my mom is using music in her therapies. I felt it also because my grandmother, [when] she sang with me at the Brava Theater on a big stage, she [had] no shame.https://fb.watch/kI3jwLc6Nr/
What is the concept behind your first album, Eterno Retorno?
The idea was coming from the fact that I was still undocumented, and I didn’t see an end in sight for my whole immigration process. It was taking me forever to return to my homeland, so that’s why I call it Eterno Retorno, it’s taking an eternity to return.
Your website describes your second album Arrullo as love letters to your homeland. What are you saying to your homeland in these letters?
It’s actually a compilation of Mexican classics that I arranged in a very particular way, que descompuse, more than love letters, the whole album is a love letter to my country. This was produced when I still didn’t know when I was going to go back, and this was my way of telling Mexico, ‘I miss you. I love you. I can’t wait to be back.’
I know things are gray, but I see the little light that comes through, and I want to be with it, and I want to bathe and soak in that light, and maybe together we can help each other. Heal our wounds, in that truth. Whatever truth it is that you’re carrying. Whatever truth it is that I’m carrying, I want us to be together.
How did you select the songs?
A lot of people know my music through the Roosevelt Tamale Parlor, where I played a lot of Mexican classics. Everybody wanted an album of the things they were hearing there. I always knew I had to put out an album to honor those people that followed me from my beginnings, so Women’s Audio Mission gave me this grant through the Zellerbach Family Foundation and the California Arts Council, and they offered me to record with them.
It’s a very maternal album. It has my grandmother and my great grandmother in it with all these elements that are very embracing and maternal. I think it’s because [we’re] speaking of motherland, and this love for voice and music came from my mother first, then my grandmother, then my uncles.
You were raised in Juárez. You were undocumented and sing about immigration. What are your thoughts on Title 42 and the border crisis?
It’s really mind blowing to me and makes me sad how we politicize this conversation. I celebrate people who are focusing their creative energies to shed light on the fact that we’re dealing with human beings who in my eyes are like three superhumans, people that leave their homes have physical endurance, emotional endurance, psychological endurance.
They’re bringing their culture, their recipes, their bravery, their courage, their love. Only somebody who loves their children so much embarks on that journey. I feel like we’re asking the wrong questions. Can we please take a moment to dig deep on who these people are, and all the values and the traits they have?
How do you reflect on your own journey?
The first word that comes to mind is gratitude because I am hyper aware of how the journey of leaving one’s home can take [you] in different directions. There is also the journey of becoming a musician, there’s a stigma, whether you have papers or not. That itself, aside from your immigration status, it’s very hard. How do you sustain yourself financially, emotionally, and spiritually? I am so aware of how fortunate I have been, so that’s why I continue supporting the causes that make sure that the marginalized are represented.
Diana Gameros is playing Thursday and Friday night this week at SFJazz, two shows per night.
Correction 5/23/23: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of Gameros’s album Arrullo.