Mariachi Music Strikes Chord With Students Seeking Roots

The sun isn’t up, but already the halls at Hueneme High School in Oxnard are vibrating with music.

It’s not your standard boombox fare, but a sweet, melodic mix of trumpets, violins and guitars that is the unmistakable centuries-old sound of Mexico’s mariachi.

It is the kind of music 16-year-old Jasmine Andrade says her parents and grandparents listen to, the kind so many of her friends dismiss as uncool. The high school junior is undeterred.

She arrives at 7 each morning in the cold and dark, her voice still raw and her fingers not yet limber enough to dance across the neck of her violin, to play and sing ballads about gentleman cowboys, virtuous women and starry-eyed revolutionaries.

Of all the lessons she’s learned in early-morning mariachi class, the most valuable has been this: Mariachi is her music too.

“I didn’t know much about my culture and I wanted to find out more about my roots,” said the Oxnard-born teenager, who was devoted to mainstream rockers such as Radiohead and R.E.M. before joining the mariachi program her freshman year.

Now it’s all mariachi, all the time.

“Every time I hear the music, it’s like it’s calling me,” she said. “And I feel I have to do what I can to keep letting people know what our music is all about.”

The music is about culture and tradition, a folk art rooted in the stories of a bygone Mexico, where themes of homeland and heartbreak are blended in songs aching with tenderness and bursting with bravado.

It is the music of Mexico’s heartland performed at nearly every important occasion: birthdays, weddings, baptisms and funerals.

Throughout Southern California and much of the Southwest, mariachi is increasingly becoming the music of a new generation, providing a cultural counterpunch to the swagger of hip-hop and rap.

The Oxnard Union High School District two years ago launched what has become a thriving mariachi program, joining a growing list of school-based ensembles that have sprung up around the state in recent years.

More than 100 students are enrolled in mariachi classes available at Hueneme, Channel Islands and Oxnard high schools. Many of the them have never picked up an instrument or learned to read music.

In just a few weeks, however, they are trained to play the full range of traditional mariachi instruments: violins, trumpets and three sizes of guitars. And soon they are ready to perform, donning the traditional charro-style jacket and pants to play at school functions, community events and private parties.

They receive academic credit for taking the class. And on a good weekend, performing with classmates, they can earn hundreds of dollars for the program.

“It’s about keeping the culture and tradition alive,” said Camarillo resident Ramon Rivera, 24, a professional mariachi and Cal State Northridge student tapped to launch the Hueneme and Channel Islands programs.

“We accept anybody,” he said. “No matter if you are tone deaf, no matter if you’ve never played an instrument. If you are willing to work hard and try, we’ll make a mariachi out of you.”

At a time when school music programs often take a back seat to test scores and other measures of academic success, the burgeoning youth movement is encouraging to veterans of the mariachi scene.

They say youngsters learn more than a collection of Mexican folk songs. They learn who they are and where they come from. And often, they learn where they are going.

“The music is a lot of fun, but it’s also important in our culture because it ties generations together,” said Sylvia Gonzales, a professional mariachi from Pico Rivera who has created Puro Mariachi, a Web site dedicated to all things mariachi at https://www.mariachi.org.

“I think more and more people are realizing that this music is important,” Gonzales said, “and they are doing whatever they can to keep it alive.”

McDonald’s Sponsors Mariachi Festival

The note hung in the air loud and strong, at first mesmerizing the crowd at Benjamin Franklin High School in Los Angeles and then bringing the mariachi enthusiasts to their feet.

They erupted in cheers for Daniela Flores, a junior at Buena High School in Ventura who performs with Mariachi Juvenil Azteca de Camarillo, one of the first mariachi youth groups in Ventura County.

The Camarillo ensemble had been invited, along with nearly two dozen others, to participate in a competition launched three years ago by the McDonald’s Operators’ Assn. of Southern California.

The McMariachi Festival was held each Sunday in October at auditoriums throughout Southern California. Winners of the monthlong contest were invited to play this spring at the Fiesta Broadway celebration in Los Angeles.

On the final day of competition, the Camarillo group went first. Dressed in matching black suits studded with silver spangles, the ensemble launched into “Paloma Negra.” And with Daniela singing lead, they won the event.

The slight, soft-spoken soprano unleashed a powerful rendition of the mariachi standard, singing of lost love and broken hearts as if, at 17, her own already had been put through the ringer.

“That’s my favorite song,” she said afterward. “I cry every time I sing it.”

Although she learned the song long ago, she sang it in public for the first time at a Mothers Day celebration in Oxnard last spring, on the same day her grandmother died.

By then Daniela had been performing for about a year with the Camarillo group, founded by Ismael and Delia Palomino. In 1994, the Camarillo couple had their trumpet-playing son, Daniel, ask friends at Camarillo High whether they had any interest in playing mariachi music.

Soon a dozen or so youngsters began gathering weekly at the Palomino house, a tradition that continues today, except that Daniel, a 21-year-old music student at Ventura College, now arranges the music and does most of the teaching.

“Too many of these kids were losing their culture,” said Ismael Palomino, a construction company worker. “I see the improvement with our students, but also with the other groups. It’s exciting to be part of that.”

Los Angeles-area McDonald’s owner and operator Bob Arciniaga said the competition aims to showcase the talents of the growing number of mariachi youth groups in Southern California.

He said the competition gets bigger every year. And the groups keep getting better.

“When you see the kids perform this music, you feel it here in your corazon,” said Arciniaga, the event’s chairman, touching a hand to his heart.

His was not the only heart aflutter. Nervous youngsters strayed into the high school parking lot all morning, warming up their trumpets and tuning their guitars.

Inside, big blasts of music filled the auditorium. The group from Woodrow Wilson High School in East Los Angeles brought shouts of “Bravo, bravo!” from the crowd.

Then came the moment of truth for Mariachi Relampago, a new group out of Oxnard. Most of the members got their start through community-based mariachi programs and decided to strike out on their own a year ago.

“I’m going to have a hernia, I swear,” said 15-year-old violinist and vocalist Crystal de la Cruz, as she made her way to the stage.

As it turned out, she had nothing to worry about. With her mother nervously chewing her fingernails in the audience, Crystal sang a sorrowful ballad that had the crowd whistling its approval.

The Oxnard group didn’t win. But none of that seemed to matter as Crystal and the other performers joined on stage for an encore, kids of all backgrounds and talent levels playing in unison and dancing to the infectious beat.

“You can’t help but fall in love with this music,” she said. “You really have to feel the music to understand how beautiful it is.”

Program Gives Rise to Family Band

The roots of Ventura County’s mariachi youth movement trace back two decades to Oxnard resident Gilberto Vasquez, 60, who taught his own kids and others how to play the various instruments at his house.

In the early 1990s, Vasquez launched what is widely believed to be the first formal mariachi youth program in the county, based at the Boys & Girls Club near downtown Oxnard.

That program continues today under his direction, with kids as young as 7 showing up three days a week.

It’s the same place Rivera got his start. Although he began playing trumpet in fourth grade, he learned mariachi under Vasquez’s tutelage while at Camarillo High School. His two brothers, Tony and Dominic, followed suit as did his sister, Danielle, and mother, Marie.

The family soon had enough players to form a mariachi band, which it did several years ago under the name Mariachi Camarillo.

By the time the Oxnard high school district started its program, the Rivera family had made a name for itself.

School board trustee Bob Valles proposed the school mariachi program after watching groups from other areas perform at a school conference. And he thought Ramon Rivera would be perfect for the job.

It started in 1999 as an after-school club but was formalized in May 2000 after Rivera joined with high school band teachers to write the class curriculum.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm for this program, and a lot of the enthusiasm had been generated by Ramon Rivera and his family,” said Valles. The program helps connect Spanish-speaking students to school and helps English-speaking Latinos find their roots, he said.

“I think mariachi is a way of cultivating some of the talent we have on campus,” he said. “I’m so proud of these kids. My personal goal is to make professional mariachi musicians out of as many who want it.”

At Channel Islands High, Rivera prods and coaches, playing his trumpet with one hand while keeping time with the other. He breaks into song to help his soloists through the rough patches.

And when all else fails, he stops the music and gives a pep talk.

“There are three things we always do: We start together, we end together and we always have respect,” Rivera said.

“That’s the most important thing I want you to learn this semester,” he said. “Have respect for your culture, respect for the music and respect for yourselves.”