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How the first transgender mariachi woman makes her LGBTQ audience feel ‘special’

‘When I get onstage, I kind of feel untouchable,’ Natalia Melendez, a professional musician with Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Ángeles, told Moneyish.

This story is part of “Ceiling Smashers,” a series in which successful women across industries tell Moneyish how they broke down professional barriers.

Natalia Melendez got her introduction to mariachi music as a young kid at her grandmother’s backyard birthday party. She watched, transfixed, as her uncle and other musicians performed with the late mariachi icon Laura Sobrino.

“The whole two-hour set that they did, I didn’t leave,” Melendez, 38, told Moneyish. “I just sat there on the sidelines just watching.”

Decades later, Melendez is in the game as the first transgender woman to work as a professional mariachi musician. The Mexican-American performer, who grew up in a family full of musicians in southern California, learned the violin at age 8 and went on to play with several mariachi groups throughout her teens and adulthood. She now plays violin and sings with the ensemble Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Ángeles (Rainbow Mariachi of Los Angeles), which bills itself as the world’s first LGBTQ mariachi.

“It’s a safe place for people such as myself to artistically express themselves, without hindrance of any negativity,” she said. “This is the safest group you can be in and still be badass onstage, and not worry about being judged or made fun of — and actually be respected for your talents.”

Melendez, who initially came out to friends and later family as a gay young man, says things “clicked” once she realized she was a transgender woman. An “identity crisis” of sorts ensued, she said, and at one point, substance abuse took hold. Around 2007, during a year of soul-searching at a men’s Christian ministry program, she says God gave her permission to live as her true self. “He spoke to my heart, and he gave me the OK,” she said. “That’s all I needed.”

She returned to Los Angeles filled with promise, working a mix of retail and freelance music gigs to get back on her feet. Amid concerns from family and friends, Melendez transitioned publicly while playing with the group Mariachi Voz de America, which she says was supportive. “I had a lot of pressure on me, because I was trying to speed up the nature of the whole journey and I couldn’t,” she said. “I had to deal with those little things — being ridiculed and talked about, made fun of, looking like an oddball onstage.” About five years ago, she said, she began feeling fully confident in her own skin.

In 2014, Melendez joined Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Ángeles, a reincarnation of a short-lived group that her childhood friend Carlos Samaniego had formed while they were in college. Samaniego, an openly gay performer, was fed up with discrimination and disrespect he had experienced in the mariachi world. The now 10-person ensemble stands for unity and equality, Melendez said, as well as respect for its artistry. While gigs came slowly at first, the group has grown more established and found steady work playing gay weddings, pride festivals and other events.

Melendez says she comes alive when she performs. She becomes a “big flirt.” “When I get onstage, I kind of feel untouchable,” she said. “I want to leave my heart onstage.” Offstage, she works full-time as a phlebotomist for the health-care diagnostics company LabCorp. “I work my butt off. I work seven days a week,” she said. “I have a little window where I can rest.”

While the group strives for authenticity, Melendez said, it also plays with the traditions of mariachi music — common themes of which include heartbreak, betrayal and love triangles — by bending gender norms. “A man will sing to a man; I sing to a man; a girl will sing to a girl,” Melendez said.

The point, she added, is to make members of their LGBTQ audience “feel special.” “We wanted to give that to the gay community. We wanted the gay men to feel a man sing to them. We wanted another lesbian to feel, ‘Oh my God, this girl just sang to me. I never had that before — this is different, but it was so beautiful.’”

Daniel Sheehy, a director and curator emeritus for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings who has performed mariachi music since 1968, called Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Ángeles “a pretty potent symbol of inclusion” and praised the group for infusing mariachi music with new meaning. “Carlos and Natalia — through their courage, through their musicianship, through their vision — have made mariachi music a bigger world than it was before,” Sheehy told Moneyish. “And, many people like me would argue, a more beautiful world.”

Melendez says she feels “a big, big responsibility” to be visible and relevant within the transgender community. “There are so many transgender women out there that are doing amazing things as activists, as supporters, as counselors,” she said. “I’m just an artist, and that is my mustard seed. I’m just trying to do as much as I can with the little that I can offer to the world.”

She wants to serve as a “vessel” for others in the LGBTQ community to follow in her footsteps, she added.

“I want to be that visual person, that encouragement, to be like, ‘Wow, she did it, so I can do it — I love this music, I want to be onstage, I want to sing, I want to play an instrument,’” she said. “Go for it. … All the discouragement society will give to you means nothing.”

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