Making mariachi cool: Florida’s only conservatory in Homestead shares music, Mexican-American pride
A European tour and 4X platinum live album with Shakira.
Annual performances at Bono's exclusive parties.
Serenades at the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, George W. Bush and Mother Teresa.
Los Mora Arriaga may very well be the poster child of the mariachi music genre. The eight-part family band from Monterrey has been nothing short of a Mexican success story, having performed for over five decades, in four continents, and touting credits with icons like Gloria Estefan and Beyonce.
But if you're wondering where these virtuosos might spend their downtime, you won't find them lounging in South Beach or getting chummy with their star-studded address book. Instead, you'll see them in a school cafetorium deep in South Dade teaching farmworker kids all about the 19th-century Mexican folk genre.
Los Mora Arriaga are just one of the many hidden gems found at Homestead-Miami Mariachi Conservatory, Florida's sole mariachi school. Since 2015, the program, an offshoot of the nonprofit Mexican American Council (MAC), has improved the lives of local farmworker children through the arts, bridged cultural gaps in the area's Mexican-American families, and revived the underrepresented genre in South Florida, albeit often without the recognition and support seen in similar initiatives countywide.
While the conservatory formally started after winning an inaugural $60,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to open the school, its history actually dates back to the early '80s, when Los Mora Arriaga toured through Miami and met the Garzas, MAC's founding family, through the city's Latin music scene. In between shows at the Copacabana Supper Club and the Orange Bowl, patriarch Cipriano Garza would host the band for various Homestead visits. It didn't take long for the band to grow a heart for the neglected community and do something about it.
"Over the years, the Garza family always invited us to perform [at MAC] and we always thought to ourselves, 'Why is Homestead so forgotten? The resources just don't get here fast enough," said Levid Mora Arriaga on what pushed the band to settle in South Florida. "One day, Cipriano told us, 'Hey, I want you to teach the children here. We said 'Let's do it.'"
Thus began the mission to establish a mariachi school for students unfamiliar with the genre in a community that has been historically underfunded. Lofty, MAC CEO Eddie Garza admitted, but doable.
According to Statistical Atlas , roughly 20.9% of Homestead's population is of Mexican ancestry. They are the area's third largest group after Cubans and Central Americans, numbering over 8,200 residents.
"There's a lot of organizations that mean well — that have come down here, that have launched something — and within a year or two, it's over because the challenges are too great, the gaps are too wide and there's never enough resources," said Eddie Garza. "Can you imagine giving a young lady a violin and then we take it away from her? MAC wanted to ensure that if we launched this, we were going to be making a real commitment to the community."
Almost a decade after opening its doors, Garza has seen the conservatory achieve just that. The school, which holds after school group lessons at Leisure City K-8 two to three times a week, has seen attendance skyrocket from 20 to 300 youth annually, racked up prestigious partners like the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation, and performed on Capitol Hill, all while keeping the program free to attend.
"The first few years, I'm just trying to get us gigs, trying to get our kids a chance to play in front of an audience that, sometimes, isn't ready for us," laughed Garza, reflecting on the initial pushback the school faced in making mariachi cool again for Homestead. "I'm getting the kids booked at the chili cook-off, the Rock 'n Rib Fest . . . you can imagine the audience at these places. [But] we've been able to be a wonderful ambassador for what it is to be Hispanic, specifically Mexican-American."
More than just a genre, mariachi is a 19th century folk-derived music style that hails from the western region of Jalisco (also known as the birthplace of tequila) and has gone on to become an emblem of Mexican culture and pride. It traditionally features brass and string instruments like violins, trumpets, and guitars, and is considered the most popular Latin music format in the United States.
Despite its accolades, the heart of the conservatory's mission remains with the individual, holding that when you build up the child and the home, you build up the community. MAC's supplementary Family Empowerment program hosts digital literacy classes and parenting seminars during after-school music instruction to equip all household members for success and encourages high family involvement for young musicians.
"When they perform, it's a big 'wow.' They're totally different. They're mature, know what they're doing. You can see that confidence they have," said Celejina Tapia, 45, a longtime MAC parent. Her seventeen-year-old daughter, Emily Pedraza, enrolled in the newly minted conservatory in 2015 at just eight years old. Nine years later, Pedraza is well-versed in trumpet, guitar, violin, and guitarrón, has seen her English and math grade point averages soar, and walks around with a newfound self-esteem, all thanks to her biweekly music lessons.
"I feel more connected to everything around me. This program showed me confidence in myself," said Pedrazs. "It's an entire new connection for me at home and [at the conservatory]."
The music school plans on ticking off an ambitious checklist in the coming months that features a first-of-its-kind mariachi magnet program, a low-donor sustainable giving program, and a visit to the recording studio.
"[Mariachi music] truly is a marriage of cultures . . . it's such a beautiful mezcla," said Eddie Garza. "This music heals our families where parents are more than likely bringing a lot of trauma from wherever they're coming from. What we're able to do through our program is create beautiful moments of love and positivity that these families can build off of."
