Hollywood Bowl Event a Mariachi Milestone

Rodri J. Rodriguez said the idea came into her head about a year ago while at the International Mariachi Conference in Tucson.

The Cuban-born Rodriguez wanted to create a milestone mariachi event in Los Angeles. What resulted was the first Mariachi USA Festival to be held Sunday, June 24, at the 18,000-seat Hollywood Bowl.

“Once I envision a show I need to bring it to life so that others can enjoy it too,” said Rodriguez, the owner of the Rodri Group production company that is organizing the $250,000 event.

Rodriguez, director of the show, received advice from Grammy Award winners Linda Ronstadt and Vikki Carr while planning the event. Rodriguez, 35, is a friend of Carr and serves as president of the scholarship foundation named after the singer. Ronstadt accepted Carr’s invitation to perform at the Bowl.

Other entertainers at the event will include Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan, a Mexican group that is one of the best-known mariachi bands in the world; Mariachi Campanas de America of San Antonio, and three Los Angeles area groups. The local groups are Mariachi Sol de Mexico, which performs at Cielito Lindo Mexican restaurant in El Monte; Mariachi Los Camperos, which plays at La Fonda Mexican restaurant, and Mariachi Los Galleros, which performs at El Rey Mexican restaurant in Montebello.

“These mariachis are the best in the business, especially Vargas,” said Steven Loza, professor of music at UCLA and an expert on mariachis. “The music will be of first caliber.”

Rodriguez said this is the most challenging endeavor she has undertaken in her 14-year career as a concert promoter/producer.

Rodriguez admittedly views the show with the same optimism and determination that are part of her everyday life. She said she acquired these qualities after her parents sent a 7-year-old Rodriguez from Cuba to the United States, where the girl had no one waiting.

“They wanted to save me from communism,” remembered Rodriguez, who left Cuba in 1962. Rodriguez was 14 and had lived for seven years in temporary refugee camps and in the home of a New Mexico family when her parents joined her in the United States. “I became strong during those years away from my parents,” she recalled recently. Another pivotal action, she said, was her insistence in the mid-1970s that a Latin category be added to the Grammy Awards, an accomplishment for which she became well-known.

Rodriguez is completing a second four-year term as the only Latina on the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission.

She said Rodri Group acts as a liaison between American entertainers and European and Latin American production companies interested in having U.S. talent perform in their countries.

Mariachi USA, June 24 at 6 p.m. Bowl gates open at 4 p.m. Tickets at Ticketmaster locations. ($10 to $50 each.)