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Play mariachi, stay in school,speak Spanish
By Linda Stewart Ball |
January 8, 2009, Thursday
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THE joyful mariachi music of Mexico is catching on in US high schools where it helps keep Hispanic teens from dropping out. It also reminds them to speak Spanish, writes Linda Stewart Ball.
Jose Perez often butted heads with his grandfather, who emigrated from Mexico years ago and feared his US-born grandson didn't appreciate the sacrifices his family made. Then the teenager started playing the music of the elder's homeland.
Perez, 14, took a mariachi music class at his Fort Worth (Texas) high school, and gained a cultural connection to his grandfather as he learned how to strum the five-stringed vihuela.
"He used to always yell at me because I didn't want to do my chores," Jose says. "But as soon as I got into mariachi, I guess we developed a better relationship."
Mariachi not only gave Perez closer ties with his family, it also gave the high school freshman one more reason to stay in school.
With soaring dropout rates among Hispanic students, mariachi education programs, long popular in parts of South Texas and California, are springing up in schools across the country to help keep the nation's largest and fastest-growing ethnic group academically engaged.
"You don't have to worry about your kids joining gangs, we provide the gang," says William Gradante, a master mariachi teacher and chairman of the National Association for Music Education's Mariachi Advisory Committee.
Daniel Sheehy, director and curator of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in Washington DC, says hundreds of public schools have mariachi education programs. They're striking a hopeful chord in some unlikely places, from Washington state and Idaho to Illinois, Virginia and the Carolinas, often wherever there's an influx of Mexican immigrants.
Aside from encouraging Hispanic students, mariachi is bringing parents into schools who might have been too intimidated to visit before. School concerts are often packed with people who know all the old songs and are often heard singing along.
When their children come home wearing traditional mariachi garb and asking their advice on proper pronunciation of Spanish songs, the music becomes "a kind of cultural glue or family glue in some cases," Sheehy says.
"Families come from Mexico and don't speak English and two generations later their kids don't speak Spanish," he says. "Mariachi is kind of a bridge."
Mariachi is an alternative to traditional band, orchestra or choir for students who already love the music or seek exposure to something new. Ensembles typically include a couple of trumpets, a guitar, violins and ethnic instruments: two vihuelas (resembling little guitars) and a guitarron, the big-bellied bass.
"It's really a very high art form that requires virtuosity playing," says Alan Lambert, mariachi director for the Grand Prairie School District, near Dallas, Texas.
Lambert, who launched the mariachi program in his district two years ago, says most people in the US have not been exposed to the music's serious side. He shadowed a mariachi group in Guadalajara, Mexico, last summer where musicians played some of the best violins in the world: a Stradivarius and a Guarnerius.
The American Southwest hosts many mariachi festivals and "the level of musicianship is incredibly high," says Donna Emmanuel, a music education professor at the University of North Texas who teaches the history of mariachi to teens at a mariachi summer camp.
In Texas, where 500,000 students participate in music classes, mariachi ensembles are competing for the first time this year for bragging rights through the University Interscholastic League.
Although some see the sanctioned statewide competition as further proof of mariachi's acceptance, others say it comes at a cost.
Traditionally, mariachi stems from an aural tradition, passed down from musician to musician because little was written and improvisation played a role.
Some purists worry that the budding standardization in the classroom will kill the celebratory, spontaneous nature of the music, in the way that jazz has become more academic.
Jose Perez often butted heads with his grandfather, who emigrated from Mexico years ago and feared his US-born grandson didn't appreciate the sacrifices his family made. Then the teenager started playing the music of the elder's homeland.
Perez, 14, took a mariachi music class at his Fort Worth (Texas) high school, and gained a cultural connection to his grandfather as he learned how to strum the five-stringed vihuela.
"He used to always yell at me because I didn't want to do my chores," Jose says. "But as soon as I got into mariachi, I guess we developed a better relationship."
Mariachi not only gave Perez closer ties with his family, it also gave the high school freshman one more reason to stay in school.
With soaring dropout rates among Hispanic students, mariachi education programs, long popular in parts of South Texas and California, are springing up in schools across the country to help keep the nation's largest and fastest-growing ethnic group academically engaged.
"You don't have to worry about your kids joining gangs, we provide the gang," says William Gradante, a master mariachi teacher and chairman of the National Association for Music Education's Mariachi Advisory Committee.
Daniel Sheehy, director and curator of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in Washington DC, says hundreds of public schools have mariachi education programs. They're striking a hopeful chord in some unlikely places, from Washington state and Idaho to Illinois, Virginia and the Carolinas, often wherever there's an influx of Mexican immigrants.
Aside from encouraging Hispanic students, mariachi is bringing parents into schools who might have been too intimidated to visit before. School concerts are often packed with people who know all the old songs and are often heard singing along.
When their children come home wearing traditional mariachi garb and asking their advice on proper pronunciation of Spanish songs, the music becomes "a kind of cultural glue or family glue in some cases," Sheehy says.
"Families come from Mexico and don't speak English and two generations later their kids don't speak Spanish," he says. "Mariachi is kind of a bridge."
Mariachi is an alternative to traditional band, orchestra or choir for students who already love the music or seek exposure to something new. Ensembles typically include a couple of trumpets, a guitar, violins and ethnic instruments: two vihuelas (resembling little guitars) and a guitarron, the big-bellied bass.
"It's really a very high art form that requires virtuosity playing," says Alan Lambert, mariachi director for the Grand Prairie School District, near Dallas, Texas.
Lambert, who launched the mariachi program in his district two years ago, says most people in the US have not been exposed to the music's serious side. He shadowed a mariachi group in Guadalajara, Mexico, last summer where musicians played some of the best violins in the world: a Stradivarius and a Guarnerius.
The American Southwest hosts many mariachi festivals and "the level of musicianship is incredibly high," says Donna Emmanuel, a music education professor at the University of North Texas who teaches the history of mariachi to teens at a mariachi summer camp.
In Texas, where 500,000 students participate in music classes, mariachi ensembles are competing for the first time this year for bragging rights through the University Interscholastic League.
Although some see the sanctioned statewide competition as further proof of mariachi's acceptance, others say it comes at a cost.
Traditionally, mariachi stems from an aural tradition, passed down from musician to musician because little was written and improvisation played a role.
Some purists worry that the budding standardization in the classroom will kill the celebratory, spontaneous nature of the music, in the way that jazz has become more academic.
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