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San Antonio’s Ford Mariachi Festival just wrapped up in San Antonio. Unlike most mariachi festivals, it doesn’t take place in a building and doesn’t even happen on a stage. Instead, young musicians get onto river barges and circle downtown's horseshoe bend.
San Antonio’s downtown is built on two levels. One features the bustling city streets, and then 15 feet down is the river level, where barges tote tourists and locals alike in the circular mile-and-a-half River Walk filled with hotels and restaurants.
On Wednesday evening, a band director and high schoolers gathered and prepared for a performance. In the area, several dozen young people milled about, holding and sometimes playing guitars, violins, guitarrones and trumpets.
A cloud with heavy rain threatened to let loose.
Director of Orchestras Jason Thibodeaux from Churchill High School also conducts the school's Mariachi Orgullo. He noted that the mariachi club was his students’ idea. Taking on mariachi was family tradition for some of his students.
“For some of our kids, this is how they relate to their past or their own traditions, and then for some of our kids — like me — they're learning a new tradition, and they're learning a new type of culture,” he said.
At Churchill, orchestra and choir programs are music electives, and mariachi is a music club for after school hours.
Carlos Sifuentes plays the 5-string vihuela. “We like to explain it to people as a bigger ukulele or as a guitar without the top without the top E string,” he said.
This isn’t family tradition for him. It’s one that immerses him in a past he never had.
“As a proud first-generation Hispanic teenager, joining the Mariachi Orgullo was definitely one of the best decisions I could have done with my high school years,” he said.
River barges appear, and one mariachi band after another, loaded students on and began the performance route to crowds lining the horseshoe bend. Azul Ruiz has been playing since fifth grade, and she is definitely carrying on family tradition.
"I'm actually from Mexico City, and my grandfather was a composer, and my father sang in mariachis," Ruiz said. "So I guess you could say it's been part of my family for forever.”
The impression that the mariachi club has made on Azul has her making plans for the future, and she credits Thibodeaux with part of it.
“I'm going to study art education. I want to be an art teacher, kind of based on what Mr. T is like. He puts all his dedication into this, like a fine art,” she said.
Sara Moore plays violin. “I started orchestra when I was in sixth grade, and I've continued that all throughout high school, and then I joined the mariachi program at Churchill my sophomore year,” Moore said.
She hadn’t played this music growing up, but she added that her curious nature led her to join the mariachi club.
“Honestly, it was just my interest in music itself and wanting to immerse myself in a new culture," she said. "And of course, being a resident of San Antonio, you already kind of have that culture.”
They loaded up and headed to the horseshoe bend, where the kids got to play, and at one stop, they were joined by Ballet Folklorico dancers.
Maria Tijerina sat nearby, watching those dancers, and enjoying the mariachi music. She was impressed by their execution, but also that schools were recognizing the good these kinds of programs can do.
“I think that's a great way to help them succeed, not just in their high school, but also in their community, with their families and in their future too,” Tijerina said.
That rain cloud moved on, leaving the kids to the warm embrace of the thousands lining the river.
