Serenade for Success

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Serenade for Success

High School Mariachi Delivers a Message of Culture and Achievement

Story by Felicia Frazar

The lessons learned from music education goes beyond the notes written on a staff.

Whether its choir, band or a combination of both, like mariachi, there’s more than honing the sounds music creates.

Music students tend to build better language skills, find more discipline in their studies, exhibit improved social skills, have a stronger sense of self worth, and show critical thinking and creativity, said Rafael Alarcon Jr., Seguin ISD mariachi director and mariachi instructor for Teatro de Artes de Juan Seguin.

“Music is very involved with multiple interdicisiplinary studies,” he said. “Music, or the arts in general, helps to combine everything in different aspects. It helps students combine all of the different things that they learned in their other classes to create something and I think that is very difficult to have the kids understand they are doing that, because they don’t care. They just want to play the music.”

Alarcon helps his students’ extend their passion for music by learning more.

“There is a history component that at the end of the year I have them do a presentation on artists or a composer or a particular group throughout history,” he said. “They get to see how music is developed throughout time and not just right now in the present. The way I guide my program is modeled after the band programs that I grew up with — discipline and patience, fundamentals, teamwork, confidence.”

Learning to read music, replicate the notes and create new sounds all involves critical thinking skills, Alarcon said.

“There are TED talks and studies that show how much it encompasses all of the brain activity all at once like you have to sightread and express in the music and play in tune, be in time,” he said.

Alarcon was drawn to music at an early age, and despite financial hardships his family faced growing up, his parents ensured that he was able to pursue his passion.

“I pretty much begged my mom to let me join band in sixth grade and I became a trumpet player,” he said. “She sacrificed to give me an instrument because they weren’t provided by the district. That was a huge thing for me growing up and I wanted to make sure that I honored that.”

Through the urging of his parents, Alacron began studying mariachi, not realizing at the time how much it would influence his life.

“I’m so fortunate to have found mariachi,” he said. “I know it was a part of my life growing up. My parents listened to the music. I was lost because of the language barrier, I didn’t understand what was being said. But finding the music, letting it speak to me, letting it connect with me on my terms really grew in my heart.”

Wanting to know more about the music he’d come to love, Alarcon began researching lyrics to learn the language. Eventually, it transformed his musical education.

“That is how I started and now it is my whole world,” he said. “The music is so powerful and meaningful, and not just on the cultural side. It is the human side of the music. The passion, the compassion, the love, the family that you connect with and once you get past the language barrier, you understand that beautiful music is beautiful music and there is nothing that can deny that.”

Alacron uses those connections that he learned to help his students bridge generational and cultural gaps.

“We have the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the music, to learn about it, to perform it, to experience it,” he said. “That is a huge thing. It is beautiful.”

Learning about music, the history and culture behind it also gives instructors like Alacron a chance to show how music opens doors and new opportunities.

Knowing what it’s like to not get the chance to experience a lot of things growing up, Alacron works to change that for his students.

“I came from a poor family and the fact that my family struggled to get me to be able to participate in band and let alone travel to Washington, D.C. to perform at the steps of the capital,”

he said. “That was profound for me growing up. So I try to give my kids the same type of profound experiences that unlock their potential.”

Trips to a contest a short distance from the coast ends with a trip to the beach, or a hike in a state park, Alacro said.

“The things I try to help transcend to my kids are to set goals, be disciplined, to imagine, to be creative, to achieve your goals in a step-by-step process, to work on a team,” he said.

Alacron’s group Matador Mariachi shows off its talents at community events, fundraisers, concerts and contests — together or as solo acts. One of his students is a second-place national champion, while another has self-produced a Tejano music album.

“If you push within reason, with motivation and encouragement, they rise to it and they’ll surprise you,” he said. “When they create, that is one of the highest forms of education as a teacher that we can give to our students. Once they are creating, making things, inventing things, then we’re done and we’ve passed them on to the next level.”