The University of Nevada now offers students the opportunity to minor in mariachi : NPR

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, now offers a minor in teaching mariachi. The music remains popular among young people and someone’s got to teach them how to play it.

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AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Thousands of high school students who once might have joined the band, orchestra or choir now take mariachi classes. Teachers are forming and leading high school mariachi bands in border states like Texas and really anywhere with large Latino populations.

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RASCOE: Mariachi has become so popular that demand for teachers has outstripped the supply.

STEPHEN BLANCO: It’s so busy in the world of mariachi right now, especially in Las Vegas.

RASCOE: That’s Stephen Blanco. He’s the director of mariachi at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Teaching mariachi is a new minor program at UNLV, and Blanco is training students like violinist Axel Rodriguez Olivas how to teach the traditional Mexican style of music to others. Rodriguez Olivas started learning about mariachi under Blanco a few years ago when he was still in high school.

AXEL RODRIGUEZ OLIVAS: Ever since then, I just loved it. You know, I’ve loved playing every single second of it.

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RASCOE: Blanco brought Rodriguez Olivas and other musicians from a Las Vegas high school ensemble to a music convention in California. And Blanco realized the demand for mariachi was huge.

BLANCO: My high school group was performing, doing a great job. And this man walks up to me, and he says, you guys are from Las Vegas. I just took a job as the director of the School of Music at UNLV, and we need to make this happen at the university level.

RASCOE: As the mariachi program opened at UNLV, Rodriguez Olivas became the first student to declare it his minor. Beyond making his college education more fun, he says he loves the way mariachi music serves as a bridge to his Mexican American family.

RODRIGUEZ OLIVAS: We actually find ourselves talking more about mariachi music than we ever have in the past, ever since, you know, I started learning the instruments and started practicing the music. It’s connected my family and I’m sure other families as well.

RASCOE: Despite his own Hispanic heritage, Blanco says his interest in mariachi music is also relatively new. He wasn’t exposed to it much while growing up in Detroit.

BLANCO: It was sometimes present in my grandparents’ living room on the radio. But other than that, it’s not really prevalent there.

RASCOE: Blanco says some people might expect a mariachi band to stay in the background – people in matching outfits, playing guitar and violin and trumpet, just strolling along the sidelines of a bigger festival or celebration. But in Las Vegas, mariachi music is often the main event now.

BLANCO: It’s not always just, oh, you’re going to go to this event and see mariachi music on the side. A lot of the times it’s, hey, there’s an event happening tonight in a beautiful theater, and it’s all about mariachi onstage, to be celebrated in that way.

RASCOE: And performing isn’t the only career path available for mariachi musicians. Blanco says UNLV’s new minor is meeting a growing demand in Clark County public schools.

BLANCO: We have new programs opening every single year, and it is sometimes difficult to find teachers to fill gaps. And that’s another reason why we started this.

RASCOE: With so much opportunity, the future is wide open for a mariachi violinist like Rodriguez Olivas. He says he’s open to the idea of leaving Nevada to teach, but he says he’s leaning towards staying close to home to give back to his community.

RODRIGUEZ OLIVAS: In a way, I’m not only doing this for myself but for future generations. So I’m kind of also trying to think about the future for other students, kind of pave that path for them so that they can do whatever they’d like with mariachi music.

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