Soaking Up the Secrets of Mariachi

When 9-year-old Christina Gonzalez hears mariachi music--with its violins, trumpets, the vihuela and the guitarron--she thinks, “Dad.”

“He likes the music,” Christina said bashfully, “and I like him.”

Her father, Francisco Gonzalez, said he wants to share with Christina and his 10 other children the music he fell in love with as a boy in Mexico. “I want them to know their culture,” he said.

And so, young mariachis like Christina celebrated the culture of their ancestors Sunday afternoon during a three-hour concert at San Fernando High School, which included festive songs that prompted audience members to tap their feet and clap, and slow, sorrowful ballads that left eyes watering.

Girls wore brightly colored long skirts and big bows that held back their long dark hair; boys wore straight pants and jackets with elaborate designs.

Fifteen minutes before the 3 p.m. concert began, the fourth annual La Voz Del Mariachi was a sellout, as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and teachers eagerly gathered to see culture preserved in the performances of 11 mariachi youth groups based in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

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About 120 mariachi players, of all experience levels and from elementary through college age, played in the high school’s refurbished auditorium, which was decorated with sombreros and paper flowers in fuchsia, green, yellow, orange, red and blue.

Each time a new group went on stage, parents and relatives leaped from their seats to immortalize the event in photos and videos.

Patty Avalos, 28, had a relative take the pictures while she beamed and nervously fidgeted in her seat as members of Mariachi Juvenil Estrella, from the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in Pacoima, walked on stage.

Among the dozens of children in the band, some of whom looked smaller than their instruments, was her 10-year-old daughter, Samantha.

Earlier that day, Samantha, who’d been picking at her breakfast, confided in her mom: “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“It’ll be OK,” Avalos told her.

When Samantha kissed her mom minutes before the concert, she gave her a “don’t-leave-me” look. Her mom reassured her again.

“She’s doing good,” Avalos said to one of Samantha’s uncles. “She’ll feel good.”

Concert organizers estimated the crowd at more than 1,000.

They hoped the concert would strengthen community ties and, with adult tickets costing $8 each, raise money for instruments and costumes for the young mariachi bands.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s San Fernando Cluster Office and the San Fernando Valley Latino Arts Council sponsored the event.

Honored at the concert was Veto Ruiz, a professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge and director of Mariachi Aztlan, a music group formed in the late 1960s. He played string instruments with the band and said he would never tire of the sound.

“It moves, it touches, it teaches you who you are,” Ruiz, 53, said before the concert, which was to be his farewell performance. “It reminds you that you’re a part of something more.”

Traditional mariachi music dates to the 1870s in the Jalisco Highlands of Mexico. The sound combines violins, trumpets and a five-string vihuela, which looks like a small guitar, and a six-string bass guitar called the guitarron. Today, many say that Los Angeles has one of the highest concentrations of mariachi musicians in the world.

Gonzalez, 50, and eight of his children form Mariachi Fiesta Mexicana, a mariachi group that performs at weddings, special parties and during Catholic Masses. They’ve also started recording a CD.

Some of Gonzalez’s children play in a second mariachi group. Gonzalez’s wife drives them to performances, manages the group’s money and cheers them on.

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Before Sunday’s concert, dressed in their burgundy costumes, the Gonzalez children practiced in an empty classroom, joked and drank juice. The sisters, wearing big gold hoop earrings, laughed at little Christina who wanted more red lipstick and more blush.

They weren’t nervous because mariachi is so much a part of their lives.

“My father got us all playing,” said Cecilia, 15, a 10th-grader at San Fernando High. “He wanted to keep us off the streets and give us pride. He doesn’t want us to forget about our ancestors.”