By Lynn Córdova. Contributing research by Frank R. Martinez (Article first published in Vol 10, 1992)
Mariachis Update 2017
Crooning a song his grandmother might have sighed over in her day, the handsome young man sings of lost love and undying devotion. His fresh youthful face, shaded by his sombrero, is much too bright and shiny to make his woes believable. The crowd at the St. Raphael’s bazaar stops to listen and watch. For some it is a shock to see Anglos in traditional mariachi finery singing in flawless Spanish.
My surprise is twofold: the group on stage consists of Eastwood High School students fascinated with music of another generation and for some, another culture. Second, I am impressed with their talent. They sound professional. I later discover that this group and ensembles from Del Valle and Bowie High Schools, among others, are trained as part of the local high school curriculum. The Ysleta Independent School District and the El Paso School District support and encourage the groups as cultural ambassadors in the community.
In the Ysleta school district, the program started three years ago when the superintendent asked the fine arts director, Ramon Rivera, to start the program in the area high school curriculum. Guillermo Quezada, an instructor at Eastwood High School, volunteered to start the program. Quezada, finding great interest in the idea, decided, “If it’s going to be done, let’s do it right.” The Mariachi Reyna was born.
The Eastwood High Group is made up of 17 musicians, 10 young women and seven young men, a departure from the traditional all-male mariachi band. They are a bicultural group with 30 percent of their members Anglo and the rest Hispanic. Quezada, although a professional educator, has no degree to teach folkloric music, if indeed there is such a thing, but he does have a lifelong love of the mariachi sound.
Zeke Castro, maestro at Del Valle High School, is a classically trained, professional violinist who has also played mariachi music for more than 20 years. There are 10 young women and 10 young men in their mariachi group Primavera. Castro says the mixture reflects a growing interest by young people in the music they hear at home and in their community.
The Del Valle group attended the annual Tucson International Mariachi Conference in April for Southwest area mariachi musicians. Members studied their individual instruments and performed in the concert featuring all groups in attendance, the highlight of the conference. Similar conferences are held in Salinas and Los Angeles, Calif., and in San Antonio, Texas, in the summer.
The El Paso Independent School District also has a very successful mariachi music program. Pete Ramos, Principal of Bowie High School, liked the idea of a mariachi band. Ricardo Barragon, a vocal music and guitar instructor at the high school, was a natural choice to start the program.
Osos Orgullosos (The Proud Bears) perform nearly every week. The 21 students in the group are made up of mostly Hispanics, 12 young women and nine young men. They welcome visiting dignitaries at the airport and perform for many area functions.
Both school districts have been very supportive of the mariachi program. The hardest item for the groups to locate is sheet music for this traditional folk music. Normally, mariachi music is learned by imitating the masters of the unique sound, not by following written music.
To overcome this obstacle, instructors and other musicians throughout the area share materials and ideas about their music in workshops. They agree that this folk music is relatively easy to play technically but difficult to perform stylistically.
These young mariachis develop a lot of poise through performing. Some hope to use their experience to become professional musicians or at least be able to supplement their future incomes.
The high school groups do not compete with each other but rather support one another. The folk groups are asked to play for a variety of occasions such as birthdays, receptions, charity functions, quinceañeras, serenades and holidays such as Mother’s Day.
If one group is already engaged on a particular date, another high school band plays. Prices for a performance may vary from $15 to $275 an hour. Quezada says the demand for these mariachis is great. The bands have full schedules and are turning down many opportunities to perform.
To meet the growing demand for mariachis, Barragon proposes that both school systems train younger students who show an interest in the music at the intermediate school level.
The unique mariachi program allows border youth an opportunity to discover their musical heritage at a time when society is preoccupied with nostalgia. The popular music of the 1940s and 1950s in the Hispanic community is reemerging as teenagers discover their musical roots and continue the mariachi tradition.
UPDATE 2017
Image caption: Angela Morgan-Thornton (center) directs EPCC’s Mariachi Real de El Paso. (Photo courtesy of Angela Morgan-Thornton)
Interest in mariachi programs in high schools all over the country has grown in the 21st century. Angela (Anji) Morgan-Thornton taught dual credit music classes and directed the Bowie mariachi group from 2000 to 2010. She taught dual credit music classes at EPCC’s Northwest Early College from 2010 to 2015. In 2009, she founded the College’s Mariachi Real de El Paso which performs for College and community functions such as commencements, Music Department Showcases, Fort Bliss Wounded Warrior Celebrations, Sun Bowl Thanksgiving Day Parades, Mariachi Sundays in Mesilla, the Las Cruces International Mariachi Conferences and others.
The EPCC group is a diverse one with high school and college students, professionals and retirees. The group presents workshops on the history of mariachi, its culture and traditions and participates in community outreach projects to encourage others to keep playing, singing and learning more about music in general. Morgan-Thornton is an adjunct music instructor at EPCC while teaching full-time at Franklin High School where this spring she organized a mariachi group that meets after school. The subject will enter Franklin High School’s curriculum in 2018. Other EPISD high schools with mariachi programs include Chapin and Austin High Schools.
Morgan-Thornton tells the story of her mentors in San Antonio who were told by parents in the 1970s, “Get that cantina music out of the schools.” Mariachi groups abound in Texas now. Even the UIL has a pilot program begun in 2016 called the State Mariachi Festival. Bowie High School and four high schools from the Socorro district — Socorro, El Dorado, Eastlake and Montwood — participated, along with 53 others, judged on instrumentation, attire and stage presence. In 2017, 71 schools participated, and the 2018 festival will be held on February 23-24. There is now a Texas Association of Mariachi Educators (TAME) who are “dedicated to the continued statewide growth and development of Mariachi and Mariachi education.”
In neighboring New Mexico, aficionados and music educators alike are familiar with the Las Cruces International Mariachi Conference, a five-day presentation of workshops and performances for young people and adults, begun in 1994. Each November, thousands of music lovers flock to hear both the student and professional mariachis, having enjoyed the vocal sounds over the past 24 years of professionals like Lola Beltran, Pedro Fernandez, Aida Cuevas, Vikki Carr, Pepe Aguilar and Mariachi Cobre, Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán and others. The conference will return on Nov. 8-12, 2017, after a two-year hiatus.
At EPCC, four Mariachi classes will be offered in the fall, either for academic credit towards degree arts requirements for any major or for continuing education credit. Students will learn about mariachi theory, cultural studies, styles and repertoire and will play in the summer productions of Viva! El Paso. More information is available from Anji Morgan-Thornton (amorgant@epcc.edu).
Students of mariachi music are not only learning the fundamentals of this type of music and developing performance expertise ? they are learning about the culture and history of a people even as they popularize the unique sound. Who can resist a love ballad or corrido by a handsome group of trained musicians in an era where many people can only stream, not play music?
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