Mariachi youth

Youngsters learn more than songs in the groups. They learn who they are, where they come from and where they are going.

Sunnyside High School's Mariachi Los Diablitos, led by Cuco Del Cid (front row, far right), played multiple performances on weekends to raise enough money to record their own CD.

MARY BUSTAMANTE
Citizen Schools Editor
April 26, 2001

In more than a dozen music rooms across town, the sometimes sweet, sometimes thunderous, always beautiful sounds of the mariachi are wafting their way down school corridors.
And students are learning more than just how to play an instrument.
"Kids want to know, 'Who am I? Where do I come from and where am I going?'" said Cuco Del Cid, director of Sunnyside High School's Mariachi Los Diablitos.
Mariachi helps them answer those questions.
"I love it when my former students come back and tell me, 'Cuco, now I'm a doctor,' or a lawyer or a pharmacist or a teacher," said Del Cid, who doesn't encourage his student to go into the mariachi business. That was his profession. He performed with the acclaimed Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano for a dozen years before taking over the Sunnyside mariachi seven years ago - "and it's a risky business," he said.
That is not to say Del Cid, like other local school mariachi directors, doesn't expect professionalism from his charges.
"I'm very proud of my performers. This year they made a CD. And they did it like the professionals would. It was at a good studio, the same place where Linda Ronstadt has recorded," he said.
Which means it wasn't cheap.
The Sunnyside group raised money through tocadas, performances at weddings, funerals, Masses and holiday events - sometimes two or three a day on weekends. Del Cid goes with them, of course, even though his time is volunteered.
Los Diablitos members were some of the hosts of the school's annual daylong Noche de las Estrellas last weekend, a slew of mariachi and folklore concerts that showcase musicians and dancers from southern Arizona's mariachi education programs.
This year, in addition to Los Diablitos, mariachi groups from Tucson High, Pueblo, Salpointe Catholic, Desert View, Nogales and Rincon/University high schools, plus Chaparral, Utterback, Roskruge and Mansfeld middle schools performed. A few youthful groups not associated with schools also participated. Folklórico dancers from Tucson High, Ocotillo Elementary, Chaparral, Pioneer High, Mission Manor Elementary, Roskruge Elementary and Middle School and Sierra Middle School also performed.
Some of these high school groups have traveled across the country - and across the globe - to Orlando, Fla., to Spain to Guadalajara, Mexico, to perform and perfect their talents.
Noche de las Estrellas coordinator Art Menchaca, who teaches business management and media communications at Sunnyside, said mariachi education gives students one more avenue of expression.
"It's a reason to come to school and to maintain their grades," he said. "Performing is like playing a sport; you have to maintain a certain grade-point average to participate."
And that GPA is important to Del Cid.
"I promote education. I want my students to go on to colleges and universities," he said.
That message isn't lost on his students. Delfina Gaxiola, first violinist for Mariachi Los Diablitos, said she wants to be a surgeon, not a professional mariachi.
"I am always going to be a mariachi, but not as a career," she said.
Del Cid is pleased that his students respect his suggestions and said he feels a special loyalty to Sunnyside, which gave him a job seven years ago. This year he had a job offer from a San Diego school, "But I love Tucson and my kids went to school here.
"I never enjoyed any job like this one, even when I was a professional and worked with celebrities," he said. "This is better. I love my students. We're like a family. Our communication is like a father to sons and daughters."
And because that communication is so good, Del Cid makes sure he uses this opportunity to teach something other than songs.
"Time management, responsibility - I learned all of that in this room," said Gaxiola, as she waves her arms to show the expanse of the dark music room, the new CD playing in the background.
Del Cid also fervently talks to his students about drugs, alcohol, smoking and gangs.
"These kids aren't involved in those things," he said. "And it's not only here. It's the same with other mariachi groups all over town. They're nice kids."
He insists that teachers who have his students in other classes come up to him and compliment him on their conduct.
"That's because Del Cid tells us how we should make the right decisions," said senior Melissa De La Rosa, another of his performers. "He tells us to use our heads. He's a very good influence.
"I don't do drugs or alcohol," she said. "He talks to us and gets through to us. We know it's better being here and playing than being out on the streets. It's like a family. We like being with each other."
Del Cid also promotes community involvement. Three days a week, some of his students go to Mission Manor Elementary School to help the students practice.
David Membrila, director of the University of Arizona's Mariachi Arizona and of the mariachi program at Mansfeld Middle School, said he would like to see even more schools form mariachi groups.
"As a public school teacher, I see mariachi education creating something in which students belong," he said. "It fulfills a need and it is culturally significant in Tucson. It also is a way for those outside the culture to embrace a culture of their environment."
Membrila said he also is interested in the public school groups because they "feed" into his program at the UA.
He appreciates the elementary and middle schools that have mariachi groups that get students interested in their heritage at a young age. Davis Bilingual is the grandfather of schools in that area, he said, and Roskruge, C.E. Rose, Mansfeld, Chaparral and Utterback, among others, have followed.
"All these programs give students a sense of belonging, an opportunity to discover their own culture," Membrila said. "And it keeps kids busy. It's positive all the way around.
"But for the longest time, the effort to create mariachi programs was met with a lot of discrimination. Music teachers thought they were going to lose band and orchestra students to mariachi classes, or they just didn't know how to teach it, but that caused some students to shun music."
He hopes that changes even more - and soon - because mariachi "is good for public relations, it's good for community involvement and it ties into the cultural past and the historical future."