In 1969, educator Belle Ortiz introduced mariachi to a ballet folklórico class at Lanier High School, which soon added a dedicated mariachi class.
Over the next decades, Ortiz’s pioneering effort would grow into dozens of mariachi education programs in middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities throughout the San Antonio area, now serving more than 2,000 students in 17 schools in the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) alone.
Northside ISD is planning to add at least two programs in the coming years, and the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) have recently added new programs.
Musician Juan Ortiz met Belle Ortiz in that Lanier folklórico class, and the pair would emerge as changemakers establishing mariachi as an educational mainstay in the region, building off of deep Mexican American cultural roots throughout South Texas.
Belle Ortiz spearheaded the first collegiate-level mariachi education program in 1974 at San Antonio College, and Juan Ortiz and musician Pete Moreno are widely credited with creating the first university mariachi program at Texas A&M University at Kingsville, a program that still flourishes today.
The art form of mariachi
Northside ISD Director of Fine Arts James Miculka said he’s regarded as a person who could sell a tree off of an asphalt lot, but more than salesmanship helped him secure his district’s first mariachi education programs in the 1990s.
Belle Ortiz served as Miculka’s primary research contact for his music education degree studies at UTSA because he “was working on a middle school band curriculum that had more cultural pieces and connected to the Hispanic population” in a way that his knowledge of jazz and classical music did not.
A professional trumpeter, Miculka had experience performing in salsa bands and developed a special appreciation for the art form of mariachi when he witnessed firsthand the professional mariachi ensemble assembled by Juan Ortiz for Fiesta Texas.
Seeing and hearing the array of trumpets, violins, guitars and vihuelas, Miculka said his “jaw hit the floor. When I heard that I thought, ‘Holy cow, this is what a mariachi group should really sound like.’ … I’ve kept that as my benchmark for teachers.”
Miculka hired Roland Sandoval as music director of the program established in 1990 at John Jay High School. Miculka then expanded to start a program at Holmes High School and created “feeder” programs at middle schools in the district including Rayburn, Jones and Sul Ross. Looking ahead, Miculka said the district is considering new programs in at least two more high schools.
Both Miculka and Sandoval credit parents in their districts with establishing the importance of formalized mariachi education programs.
“It’s such a visible part of our culture,” and when parents realized their children could access the traditional music through formal education, “they started advocating for that,” said Sandoval, who is now the fine arts instrumental music coordinator for SAISD.
‘Way deeper and more beautiful’
Cynthia Muñoz has been working to bring visibility to the art form of mariachi for decades, starting the Mariachi Vargas Extravaganza competition in San Antonio in 1995.
The annual competition invites high school mariachi groups from around the country to hone their skills toward winning recognition in the prestigious event, with groups from the Rio Grande Valley regularly winning top honors.
Muñoz credits Belle Ortiz with inspiring her own work to promote mariachi culture, having witnessed Ortiz’s first mariachi festival in San Antonio in 1979 featuring the world-renowned Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán.
“This had a significant impact on me as a young teenager as I realized that our culture, music and history was way deeper and more beautiful than I ever could have imagined,” Muñoz wrote in a Facebook memorial post commemorating Ortiz’s influence.
In a New York Times story published in 2022, Texas writer Cecilia Ballí wrote extensively of the importance of the Mariachi Vargas Extravaganza competition for mariachi education programs. Teachers use the allure of the competition to train their students on the many details of mariachi performance, from instrumental precision to poise and posture onstage.
Now celebrating its 30th year, the Extravaganza offers its summer recital on Friday at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts Carlos Alvarez Studio Theater, featuring participants of its summer camp and UTSA’s Mariachi Los Paisanos group.
‘Like lighting a match’
Education programs need certified teachers. Miculka said that as mariachi learning evolved from being passed along through families to professional apprenticeships and public school programs, musician John Lopez saw the demand and led the effort to establish a mariachi-focused degree-level program at Texas State University in San Marcos.
Lopez “has been a blessing. His program at Texas State is just prolific” at preparing teachers for the public school pipeline, Miculka said. He noted that UTSA is moving toward its own degree program under the direction of mariachi director Michael Acevedo, who will lead the school’s first mariachi summer camp in July.
Lopez started teaching at Texas State in 1993, eventually helping combine several programs into the Latin music studies program established in 2003. He retired recently but has had a hard time staying retired. Lopez was first asked to revive the San Antonio College program that went dormant during the coronavirus pandemic, then was hired to create a new program at UIW.
Lopez said the Kingsville program “was like lighting a match,” with students going on to create ensembles at schools in their home communities throughout the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas, many of which have been formalized as programs as those former students rose into the ranks of school administrations.
Lopez brought longtime professional mariachi Michelle Quintero on board to teach in the Texas State degree program. As Moreno’s niece, Quintero grew up learning and performing mariachi. “I sang before I spoke,” she said of her uncle passing on the tradition.
Quintero’s educational track predates formalized mariachi education, so she studied operatic voice at the University of the Incarnate Word. She began teaching in middle and high schools in SAISD and NISD while still performing professionally and later earned a graduate degree in vocal pedagogy and music education at Texas State.
Quintero said that with Lopez’s retirement, she took a job at De Zavala Elementary School in the San Marcos ISD to continue the tradition of creating “feeder” programs for collegiate mariachi schools. But with her own impending retirement and the passing of these programs to a new generation, she worries for the future of mariachi studies. One issue is the lack of mariachi-specific music textbooks, a gap she said she aims to fill by writing her own book in the near future.
Still a struggle
Despite overall growth in mariachi education programs, Poe Middle School mariachi director Augustine Ortiz nearly lost his program in February, with SAISD facing declining enrollment, budgetary tightening and school closures. But Poe principal Elizabeth Castro was able to save the program through a special allocation, in part because hundreds of students prioritized their mariachi studies.
Studying mariachi not only creates enthusiasm for his students to come to school, Ortiz said, but helps them excel overall. “The standard of the students’ education is rising when they’re in programs like these,” he said. “What helps is that it’s culturally relevant to them since we do have a huge Mexican American population in our school.”
Ortiz said he has been open with his students about the challenges faced by the programs. “They need to learn that we need to advocate for ourselves,” he said. “That way we can get the best education [for] our students, not just currently but in the future as well.”
Lopez acknowledged that establishing the legitimacy of mariachi-specific music education is “still a struggle, it’s still a battle. But more and more often, you’re seeing mariachi standing alongside with band, choir and orchestra as a fourth pillar of music education,” because “it directly relates to the culture of Texas, and especially South Texas and the Southwest.”
And students emerging from mariachi education programs will find jobs, Miculka assured, if not as mariachi teachers, then as professionally practicing musicians.
“There’s a supply and demand now for mariachi teachers,” he said. “If you’re gonna go into music education right now, the place to be is mariachi education.”
