"Mariachi fever:" How South Texas educators spread love for mariachi

ROBSTOWN — For four days at the end of June, Robstown Early College High School rang with the sounds of mariachi, the strumming of guitars, vihuelas, guitarrones and guitarras de golpe drifting through the halls.

The second annual Coastal Bend Summer Mariachi Camp culminated with a final performance Thursday, during which campers showed off a repertoire of 18 songs. Students range in ability from absolute beginners to advanced musicians who have been playing for years.

Over the course of the week, a harpist set up in the library, while a renowned mariachi vocalist gathered students on a set of riser steps. Students and instructors spoke in English and Spanish, sharing a love for the music.

“It’s enthusiastic and it’s fun to learn,” 10-year-old violin player Sophia Infante, of Alice, said.

Sitting in the hall Tuesday as the musicians prepared to break for lunch, Infante’s grandfather Robert Garcia said mariachi is the perfect fit for South Texas. He’s particularly happy to see mariachi music appreciated in schools.

“The music livens the spirit,” Garcia said. “It makes you want to participate and sing. It does all those things and it’s really beautiful Mexican music. Many of the songs talk about historical events. ... Before it was written, history was transferred from generation to generation by music. That’s how the stories, the tragedies, the happy events of the Mexican people were transferred from generation to generation.”

Camp founder John Vela got the idea for the camp while judging a mariachi contest last year in San Antonio when a fellow judge mentioned they were bringing a vocalist from California to teach some workshops in San Antonio.

They held a successful vocal workshop with high school students in April 2022 at Ben Bolt-Palito Blanco High School.

Inspired, Vela reached out to his friends and colleagues, inviting instructors from San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley and other Texas urban areas, hosting a camp last summer with about 100 students.

This year, closer to 200 participated.

To support the camp and increase opportunities in mariachi for South Texas musicians, Vela is starting a nonprofit, the Coastal Bend Mariachi Heritage Foundation. Vela hopes to expand beyond the camp to hold workshops and clinics throughout the year.

“The purpose of the camp is to concentrate on students from our area, to give them the opportunity to learn music and to learn it from world-class instructors,” Vela said.

Instructor Rafael Palomar traveled from California to lead vocal lessons at the Robstown camp. Palomar is a former member of Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, a renowned band known for creating some of the seminal recordings of the mariachi canon. Palomar said that mariachi is his life and his roots. He likes everything about it.

“De mariachi, me gusta todo,” Palomar said. “Porque es mi vida ... mis raíces.”

Mariachi summer camp

With the sounds of singing and the notes of harps blending overhead, Robstown ISD Band Director Charles Cabrera smiled.

“This is the future,” Cabrera said. “It (mariachi) is going to keep on going.”

Two high school students in an advanced session, Enrique Garcia, a vihuela player from Alice, and Marko Cantu, a guitarra de golpe player, have participated in the camp for two years in a row. Cantu traveled from Cotulla, southwest of San Antonio, to attend the camp.

“It’s really a good way to learn and grow so I can be a mariachi in the future,” Garcia said.

Cantu said that he feels called to mariachi, more than any other musical activity he could do at school.

Cantu said the camp is hands-on, and instructors don’t just provide songs to learn, but also ask students questions and provide cultural context.

Trumpet instructor Yamila de la Rosa, who is an incoming senior at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, said students are excited to learn about all the things the trumpet can do in mariachi music. During the camp, her students Nickolas Garcia and Jaime Casas were curious and eager to learn.

Casas, from Freer, and Garcia, from Alice, will both be freshmen at their respective schools next year.

As a trumpet player, Casas enjoys the role his instrument plays in mariachi music.

“The trumpet is the leader of the melody,” Casas said.

De la Rosa was inspired to learn the trumpet by a school band director. When she heard the trumpets of Mariachi Sol de Mexico, she fell in love with mariachi.

“This music, especially in Hispanic culture, it’s a part of those big moments like weddings, funerals, birthdays,” de la Rosa said. “This music takes people back to the times when they were very happy or reminds them of loved ones. That’s what makes this music so beautiful.”

De la Rosa was at the camp teaching intermediate trumpet players.

“I saw all the amazing things the trumpet can do,” de la Rosa said. “Since then, it’s been no turning back. I’m here because I want these kids to feel the same exact joy that I did when I first heard this music.”

Violin instructor Miguel Guzman, a mariachi educator at Texas State University, said that part of the appeal of mariachi is that it combines multiple aspects of fine arts.

“We sing, so that’s like choir; we have string instruments, so that’s like orchestra; we have brass instruments, like band; we act out our parts and sing, so that’s like theater,” Guzman said. “Mariachi music puts everything in a complete package.”

Guzman said that mariachi is important to the culture of South Texas.

“The Hispanic population is the largest demographic now and if there’s a party or celebration, there’s always mariachi music,” Guzman said. “It’s part of our DNA.”

Mariachi history in Texas and the Coastal Bend

In 1977, Vela, who grew up near the Alice area, was a percussionist and music major at Texas A&I University in Kingsville, which is today known as Texas A&M Univeristy-Kingsville. He played electirc bass in the jazz band, but a professor encouraged him to learn the guitarron and join a new band, which would become known as one of the first collegiate mariachi bands.

“I said, ‘Sure, I’ll give it a try,’ and here I am 45 years later,” Vela said.

He learned on a borrowed guitarron, a large six-string acoustic bass guitar.

“The music was challenging,” Vela said, in part because at the time few mariachi resources existed. “We had a lead sheet that had the lyrics and the chords above the lyrics, but that’s it. I don’t think there was even a guide as far to say what style or what key time signature or et cetera.”

They primarily learned by listening to cassette recordings. Vela would listen to the music and write down the baselines he heard.

An event that looms large in Vela’s memory was the first international mariachi conference held in San Antonio in 1979. The event was a key moment in the development of the modern mariachi movement in the U.S.

“There were scholars from different universities that were into ethnomusicology and then of course you had the world’s greatest mariachi, which was Mariachi Vargas,” Vela said.

Vela says that he “caught mariachi fever” while listening to Mariachi Vargas, a band that dates to 1897.

“They were just fabulous,” Vela said. “That’s when I really started my quest to learn as much as a could about mariachi.”

He was drawn to the mariachi repertoire of difficult, fast-moving music with virtuosic techniques and polyrhythms.

Vela started teaching elementary music and middle school band in Driscoll. Over the years, Vela taught across South Texas in Ben Bolt, San Diego, Benavides and Freer. Vela started and his colleagues started mariachi programs at each school.

The modern mariachi movement

In the early 1980s, few schools in the country had mariachi bands. Vela recalls a few school bands in San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, but none locally.

That changed in the 1990s and 2000s, Vela said, when school mariachi “exploded.” School mariachi instructors like Vela also wrote music for beginners.

Today, there are UIL mariachi competitions and the Texas Music Educators Association has an All-State Mariachi Ensemble.

At the camp, Adolfo Estrada was teaching advanced armonía, the rhythm section of mariachi typically made up of the vihuela, classical guitar and guitarra de golpe. A vihuela is a stringed instrument smaller than a guitar. The guitarra de golpe is a five-stringed Mexican instrument, larger than a vihuela but smaller than a classical guitar.

Estrada is an ethnomusicologist who previously taught at Texas State University.

The mariachi conference in San Antonio that Vela attended as a student was one of the first of its kind in the U.S., modeled after the baile folklorico, Estrada said. It was the tail end of the Chicano movement, when Mexican Americans were fighting for civil rights and embracing their heritage.

“Baile folkloricos were having these touring conferences all over the country, getting people together and teaching them,” Estrada said. “Well, why can’t we do that with the mariachi format? That was the idea in 1979 and since then it’s proliferated throughout the United States and the southwestern United States.”

Estrada said that there have been innovations in the U.S. mariachi movement.

In Mexico, the mariachi genre is traditionally male-dominated, Estrada said, with many musicians learning to play from family members. But in the U.S., more and more young musicians are coming to the genre through school. That’s how Estrada first became involved with mariachi himself as a high school student in San Antonio.

Because of the presence of mariachi in schools, American mariachi also tends to have more female participation.

“Texas has been an innovator in having mariachi as a part of curriculum within the public education system K-12,” Estrada said. “In that scene, you can’t exclude anyone. Here, there’s inclusion of having women. Young women are readily accepted.”

Another factor changing the face of mariachi music in the U.S. are competitions, Estrada said.

“The intense playing, the aggressive playing, the busy arrangements has taken over that part of education,” Estrada said.

In Robstown ISD, a band with middle school and high school members strives to compete in UIL competitions.

Cristopher Brooks will be in eighth grade at Seale Junior High School in the fall. Brooks competed at the state competition with Robstown ISD’s Mariachi Sol Rojo.

The district mariachi band practices after school. The camp, Brooks said, was a great opportunity to get additional practice time.

Cabrero, the district band director, hopes the district will one day have both a middle school and high school mariachi band.

“The music, it touches their creativity,” Cabrero said of the students. “Once they start singing, they just want to keep singing.”

Here's why Corpus Christi, Alice ISDs are investing in school social workers

How Corpus Christi ISD aims to improve learning with summer school programs

Young writers play with their craft at A&M-Corpus Christi camp

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Mariachi tradition fostered by South Texas educators