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High-quality mariachi bands perform traditional Mexican songs in many of the region’s restaurants. This style of music dates back to the nineteenth century when Maximilian was emperor of Mexico.

This comfortable theater hosts two colorful, all-singing, all-dancing shows each weekday night: Voces y Danzas de México showcases Mexican traditional music and dance, while Tradición del Caribe is a more wide-ranging show with the rhythms of Cuba, Venezuela, Santo Domingo, and other spots around the Caribbean.

Dancer, Teatro de Cancún

Cancún’s premiere Latin dance venue, where salsa fans can try out their slickest moves to top bands from Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Cuba, and around the Caribbean. It’s a comfortable venue, and explosive, pulsating performances are guaranteed.

Azúcar, Cancún

The live show at the end of each day in Xcaret (included in the park ticket) presents many sides of Mexican traditions in colorful fashion, beginning with an impressive display of cowboy skills, going on to imagined versions of pre-Conquest Mayan rituals and dances, and ending with folk dances and music from around the country, from mariachis to the soft, dulcet tones of Yucatán boleros (see Playa del Carmen: Xcaret).

Full-scale Spanish-style bull-fights, with the toreros dressed in flashy, sequinned suits, are presented every Wednesday in Cancún’s bullring, preceded by a charro (cowboy) display – and sometimes cock-fighting too. There’s also a bullring in Mérida that’s used less frequently, and bullfights feature in many Yucatán town fiestas(see Village Fiestas).

A charro is a Mexican cowboy, in the famous outfit of big sombrero and embroidered jacket(charras are cowgirls, in similar hats but flounced skirts), and a charrería is a Mexican rodeo, a spectacular, competitive display of rope tricks, steer-wrestling, and astonishing horsemanship. There’s no fixed charrería program in Cancún, but they come up fairly often. Mérida’s charro ring has a similarly irregular schedule.

The very best introduction you can have to the Yucatán’s distinctive music and folklore – the gentle, romantic music of guitar trios, the graceful jarana dance – is to go to one of these free concerts in the lovely setting of Mérida’s Parque Santa Lucía. Held every Thursday for nearly 40 years, they are loved by locals still more than by tourists.

The great Mayan cities of Chichén Itzá and Uxmal are used as venues for daily shows in which their giant temples are dramatically lit in changing colors (included in the site ticket). Some parts of the commentary, “imagining” the cities’ ancient history, are pretty far-fetched, but the visual effects are certainly spectacular (see also Sound and Light Show& Sound and Light Show).

Campeche showcases its traditional music and dances with free concerts in the charming setting of the Colonial patio of the Casa Seis and, with a more eclectic program, from the bandstand of the Parque Principal.

The Puerta de Tierra, or “Land Gate,” in the old city walls of Campeche provides the backdrop for a spectacular audio-visual show that uses the architecture well to evoke tales of pirates, sea battles, and other events in the city’s maritime past (see Puerta de Tierra).