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 Entertainment | February 2008 
Learning the Art of Mariachi is Big North of Border
 Alex Dobuzinskis - LA Daily News
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| | Daniel Zamora strums his Guitarron. The kids are all Mariachi apprentices at San Fernando High School. (John McCoy/Daily News) | | |
San Fernando is just one place where young musicians are getting an education in mariachi.
The city's program, which meets at San Fernando Middle School, is one of hundreds in the Southwest where students are learning about the lively Latino music.
There are, in fact, so many instructional programs in the United States that some say it's better to learn mariachi north of the border.
"In Mexico, if you're thinking about education, about mariachi - yeah, you can find good mariachi there. But as far as education for the kids to learn, they're kind of behind a little bit," said Nati Cano, a 75-year-old mariachi musician who helped establish the San Fernando program.
Sergio "Checo" Alonso, 32, one of the instructors in the city's Mariachi Master Apprentice Program, has been appointed to a National Association for Music Education working group on mariachi music. The group has finished one book on mariachi and is working on another.
The National Association for Music Education counts more than 1,100 members who use its resources on mariachi education. Mariachi instruction is particularly big in Texas and other parts of the Southwest, but many Washington state teachers are also involved in the association's mariachi program.
Mariachi music is a folk tradition that goes back more than 200 years to Jalisco, Mexico. A basic mariachi band has three violins, two trumpets, a guitar and two uniquely Mexican instruments that resemble a guitar - the vihuela and the guitarron.
Traditionally, the music is played by ear. But with the explosion of mariachi instruction in the United States in recent decades, more young people are learning to read sheet music.
It's not the first change the art form has seen. The harp once was a fixture of any mariachi band, but these days it takes mobility to play at weddings, baptisms and countless other family events, and a harp is too big to lug around.
But at the San Fernando mariachi program, with its emphasis on teaching the music's roots, there's a harp. It's played by a 10-year-old girl from Anaheim who comes every Tuesday for the program's three hours of lessons.
Maria Erana is a mariachi festival organizer and the director of broadcasting for Radio Bilingue, which has six stations in California. She, too, says mariachi music is thriving in the United States.
"Definitely, when people in Mexico see the kind of instruction that there is in mariachi music here in the U.S., with all the schools offering mariachi programs and conferences and concerts, ... they're really surprised," she said. |
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