Commerce City – Every morning at 10, bluejeans-clad students at Adams City High School leave behind a world of textbooks, pencils and notebooks to become mariachis.
The class that teaches the students how to play the sones, rancheras and boleros of mariachi music also provides a larger lesson – one of cultural pride and self-confidence that many educators believe creates better students.
On a recent day, Mexican-American teens played the joyous folk music on school-owned trumpets, a glued-together guitarrón and well-used violins.
“It’s hard to get all of this stuff going on (in the U.S.), the language and everything,” said Karina Mendoza, 15, a sophomore who sings with the group. Her family moved from Michoacan, Mexico, two years ago. “But when I play this, it’s like the same culture as over there.”
The class began seven years ago and was the first of its kind in Colorado. It was the idea of Lorenzo Trujillo, a former Adams County District 14 principal and current assistant dean at the University of Colorado School of Law.
“It’s really meaningful education,” said Trujillo, a mariachi himself. “In the mariachi class, they’re learning history and music. They also learn how they fit into the composite of American culture from their point of view. That is invaluable.”
Trujillo received a $90,000 National Endowment of the Arts grant to help with equipment. The class was an immediate success in the school, where 65 percent of the student population is Latino.
Today, instruments are in disrepair, and only a few costumes have survived. The class’ longtime teacher moved to another school, saying the district’s support for the program had waned.
Former mariachi teacher Mark Wilson, who now teaches in Brighton, said that after grant money disappeared, students were forced to raise money through performances. “But the students are students first, not performers,” he said.
The mariachi program still exists and continues to perform. Through year’s end, the school’s traveling band has eight concert dates scheduled. Thursday, it played a Cinco de Mayo performance before the Colorado General Assembly.
Trujillo’s mariachi model has been replicated at schools from Denver and Jefferson County to Alamosa and Pueblo. And mariachi continues to replace traditional music courses throughout the country as the nation’s demographics change, said Daniel Sheehy, author of the soon-to-be released book “Mariachi Music in America: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture.”
Sheehy estimates more than 500 U.S. schools teach mariachi.
“The most vivid testimony of its value is from the mouths of kids and parents,” he said, recalling one teen whose frayed relationship with his Mexican grandmother improved when she learned he was taking mariachi courses. “At home, suddenly the grandmother looked at the grandson with enormous pride because, ‘My God, he’s a mariachi.’ …
“He started seeing his grandmother as more of a resource, someone he could learn from. The whole family changed.”
On a recent morning, the Adams City class members gathered their instruments to walk down the school’s hallways, singing the traditional Mexican birthday song “Las Manañitas.”
Horns and violins played, the girls in the chorus sang at the top of their voices, and burly boys strummed guitars and plucked the bass.
“This is a class where the male students really step up,” said instructional coach Lisa Hernandez. “This is probably one of the best ways that our kids can connect to their culture, through their music.”
The class stopped to surround secretary Imelda Garza and sing for her birthday. She began to cry.
“My mom used to call me at 5 in the morning on my birthday,” she said, wiping away tears. “Then you hear this. That’s how we got woke up on our birthdays. It was great.”
Staff writer Jeremy Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.