A Year-Round Guide to Franklin and Nantahala

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Rosemary and Goat Cheese Strata

Listen as the pages of the magazine come to life in the Storytellers podcast featuring the voices of Our State writers. Each podcast episode features a writer reading their column

Mariachi Dreams

Father and son Cosme and Daniel Rangel perform at a quinceañero in Lincolnton

Listen as the pages of the magazine come to life in the Storytellers podcast featuring the voices of Our State writers. Each podcast episode features a writer reading their column aloud, allowing each distinct voice to shine. Click below to listen to Senior Editor Mark Kemp read his column aloud. 


The tempest inside the modest home on a quiet neighborhood street in Lincolnton is in full gale force. Surrounded by multi-colored lights, streamers, and balloons, 15-year-old Israel Yanez, a gold crown atop his head and broad smile on his face, sways from side to side. About 10 others, from very young to very old, form a circle around him. All are moving rhythmically to the sweet, celebratory twang of a Mexican folk song performed by Grupo Vale, a local mariachi band popular throughout the southern Piedmont.

Dressed in matching black trajes de charro, or cowboy suits, with sparkling silver sequins, the quartet churns out a tornado of strumming and plucking. Frontman Cosme Rangel’s fingers flutter across the keyboard of his accordion as his bandmates keep the rhythm on traditional acoustic instruments like the small, lute-like vihuela and big, fat, six-string bass known as a guitarrón. As the intensity of the music mounts, Cosme’s 23-year-old son, Daniel, raises a silver trumpet and blows a series of high, staccato notes — like the sound heard at the beginning of Johnny Cash’s classic song “Ring of Fire.”

The 50 or so people packed inside this spacious room are here to celebrate young Israel’s quinceañero, the traditional Mexican party marking a child’s coming-of-age. I’m here for the mariachi music.

I’ve long been mesmerized by these small ensembles that wander like musical nomads from table to table inside my favorite Mexican restaurants, serenading couples with a song and a rose. Musicians whose high-lonesome voices and nimble-fingered strumming remind me of the North Carolina bluegrass music I grew up with, whose aching melodies and soaring harmonies can bring tears to my eyes. So I reached out to the members of Grupo Vale, who invited me to follow them around on this rainy Saturday as they traveled from a tiny birthday party south of Charlotte to this quinceañero in Lincoln County.



Cosme and his brother Pedro, who plays the vihuela, come from a long line of musicians in the state of Michoacán in southwestern Mexico. Their dad played Mexican folk songs as a hobby, and an uncle was a member of a professional band that immigrated to Texas decades ago. Cosme has been living in the Lincolnton area for three decades, but he and Pedro didn’t begin performing mariachi music professionally until eight years ago, tapping Daniel, who was born in the U.S., to play the trumpet that he’d learned in a high school jazz class. These days, Grupo Vale spends weekends performing at restaurants, birthday parties, weddings, funerals, festivals, and any other event requiring a mariachi band with a deep catalogue of music.

As the group runs through its set, adding songs in other traditions — like the om-pah sound of Mexican Norteño and even mariachi-style covers of bluegrass standards like “Rocky Top” — a man in jeans and a cowboy hat holds his toddler son in his arms, bouncing along to the beat, his boots clicking on the wood floor. An elderly woman waltzes with her adult daughter, the two moving gracefully, chest to chest. Tables are filled with freshly made Mexican breads and desserts. In a picnic area off to the side, teenagers gather in huddles, talking, giggling, hugging.

Preserving their beloved cultural traditions is what initially inspired the Rangels to form Grupo Vale. “Es muy importante,” Cosme tells me in Spanish translated by his son, “because it brings nostalgia for how we lived back then. We want this new generation to have the same traditions that we have.”

Mexican traditions that are now as firmly rooted here as the blend of African American banjos and Scots-Irish fiddles in an old Appalachian ballad. Traditions brought to our state in spicy food, twangy music, and a deep connection to family.

This story was published on Jan 15, 2025

Mark Kemp

Mark Kemp is a senior editor at Our State, the resident playlist maker, a former music editor at Rolling Stone, and a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.