Wunsche High School junior Camryn Garcia may not always realize it, but when she’s practicing flute at home in between mariachi band practices, her father, Joe Garcia, is listening at the door.
Even though Camryn only started playing mariachi music this past fall, Joe can tell his daughter inherited a sharp musical ear from her grandfather, a two-time Grammy Awards-winning Tejano artist and recording engineer. The slightest misstep causes Camryn to pause and start again, leaving her father in awe.
“I want it to be perfect,” Camryn said in her family home Wednesday. “But I’m also trying to make it stylistic. … You can always play the notes, but it’s how you play them that really changes how it sounds.”
Spurred by her family’s musical legacy, Garcia joined about two dozen Spring ISD high school students in the district’s first-ever mariachi ensemble assembled earlier this past fall. While Hispanic students make up half of the district’s population, Spring remained one of the few large Houston-area districts without a designated mariachi program.
Many high schools across the region — including those in neighboring Aldine, Conroe and Klein ISDs — have developed mariachi programs over the past few decades, aiming to engage their communities’ fast-growing Hispanic populations. Mariachi is a form of traditional Mexican folk music characterized by heavy brass, guitar and guitarrón, and full-throated singing and shouting called a grito.
Just three months in, Spring students say the opportunity has already helped them develop greater cultural pride and closer bonds with their extended families in Mexico.
Spring High School senior and vocalist Mariyah Aguilar grew up listening to mariachi but doesn’t speak any Spanish. Now, when she learns a new mariachi song, she translates the lyrics so she can understand the emotion and meaning behind them.
“I feel more connected to (the music),” Aguilar said. “Even singing for my grandma now, she used to start crying to some of these songs and I never understood why. But now, I do.”
Spring High senior Ian Zamora played flute for years before turning to tuba his sophomore year. Now holding down the ensemble’s brass section, Zamora said he was grateful for the switch — and wants to help others get out of their comfort zones, too.
“When people start off, the natural response is that they’re a little scared and a little timid, which is completely normal,” Zamora said. “But as you play along with the music and continue to dive deeper into the experience, it starts to feel like something. It’s like it feels less new … and so just naturally over time, as you get accustomed to it, it becomes an experience that you really want to live to its fullest extent.”
For now, Spring’s ensemble remains relatively small and loose, with no set class period for students from multiple high schools to practice. Roughly once a week, the team gathers in the Spring High band hall for rehearsals sandwiched between students’ other ensemble groups and arts classes, forcing each performer to take significant ownership of their role. The incorporation of flutists and tuba players breaks slightly with tradition, though it’s inclusive of students’ talents.
The band most recently showcased its progress at Spring’s State of the Schools event in January, and it’s preparing for a Cinco de Mayo performance in May. Some students aspire to compete against other Texas high schools at the University Interscholastic League level, though district leaders say they’re focused on building a solid program foundation first.
For Spring Superintendent Lupita Hinojosa, the district’s first Mexican American to hold the position, the arrival of mariachi has been nearly a decade in the making. Hinojosa grew up in the Rio Grande Valley listening to mariachi on the radio with her parents, who immigrated from Mexico as teenagers. She also led campuses at Houston ISD with mariachi programs in the 2000s.
Seeking to expand on a proud fine arts tradition in Spring and further welcome its growing Hispanic community — about 52 percent of the district, up from 43 percent a decade ago — the district committed to forming a program a few years ago, going so far as to buy suits for students. Hiring troubles delayed the start, however, until Spring High School’s percussion and jazz director, JD Guzman, agreed to lead the ensemble.
Although the program formally launched this semester, the band surprised Hinojosa with a debut performance at a school board meeting in November. She immediately burst into tears.
“Standing there and seeing them, and then hearing the guitars, the strumming of the music, hearing the trumpet … it immediately took me back to my family,” Hinojosa said.
Guzman, who has spent 20 years in Spring as an instructor and director, said scheduling remains his biggest obstacle, since most of his students balance mariachi with other ensembles. Many students also are accustomed to playing more classical and band music, he said.
“That’s the fun part about teaching these kids,” said Guzman, who picked up jazz and mariachi music as a middle schooler. “Everything that they’ve learned from when they started in sixth grade is based on notes on a page, and folk music is not about that. It’s more about training your ears. …There’s two kids in there that can’t read music, but they’re picking everything up by ear.”
After playing flute for over five years and performing in marching band for three, Garcia said mariachi has brought her closer with her late grandfather’s legacy and fueled her desire to compete — hopefully one day in interscholastic tournaments. As a Mexican American who doesn’t speak Spanish, Garcia said mariachi has also given her a new common language.
“One half of my mom’s side, they’re straight from Mexico, they only speak Spanish,” Garcia said. “This is something that I can present and connect with them about, because it’s something that we both understand.”
Correction, March 13: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the grade of Carmyn Garcia. She is a junior.
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