Young Mariachi singers bring their talented voices together to learn from the masters

On Monday, at the Carlos Alvarez Theater in San Antonio, about 50 young people took turns stepping up to the microphone in front of mostly strangers and belting out a popular mariachi song.

The young people – teenagers and younger – gave their best, something that few people have the courage to do.

“Hello, I’m Mariana Rowan from Uvalde and I’m going to sing ‘Aires de Mayab,'” she said. And then she did just that.

The event is a practice session for the Mariachi Extravaganza Summer Recital, which takes place Friday night at the Alvarez Theater. Almost every one of these children sang in front of their peers. But they also performed in front of the experts.

“We have an outstanding cast of maestros and maestras who have come together here in San Antonio to teach the students,” explained concert producer Cynthia Muñoz, “and they are the real attraction of the camp.”

A maestro is a teacher, and here four teachers teach the children in group sessions and then in individual master classes.

“Last December was the first time I had an audience myself and was accompanied by a mariachi,” said Lianna Hernandez.

She made her first appearance on stage as a mariachi singer last December at the big Mariachi Extravaganza, the annual international competition.

“It was a really great experience. And I think without the extravagance I wouldn’t be here today,” she said.

She also took one-on-one lessons with a maestro to improve her performance. “I’m going to take a private lesson with Jonathan Palomar soon,” Lianna said.

Palomar played a series of notes on the guitar, which he asked Hernandez to play vocally. At one point she did this while pronouncing the “a” sound, descending and ascending the scale. The next time he asked her to follow his instructions on the guitar, this time with the letter “e.”

These vocal exercises were designed to help her pronounce her vowels better. After the class, Lianna said it worked.

“That really helped me find the right placement, because some of the vocal shapes he was doing and the notes he was hitting, I had never done in a real song before,” she said. “So that really helped me find my placement, a lot!”

She then sang a song of her choice while Palomar accompanied her on guitar, providing her with a concrete context to practice the skill she had just learned.

The teacher said he finds working with young people enriching.

“It’s nice to see how they care about our culture from Mexico and how they teach these kids to embrace it and learn these songs in Spanish,” Palomar said. “And sometimes they don’t even speak Spanish. And they learn these songs in Spanish. So it’s nice to see all of that.”

Muñoz said the Mariachi summer camp and concert will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Friday evening with the performance at the Alvarez Theater. Young singers from the South and Southwest will perform.

“Students come to camp from all over the country. We have students from California, Arizona, Florida, all over Texas, Houston, Midland, Odessa, the Rio Grande Valley and of course here in San Antonio,” Muñoz said.

She said visitors who want to attend can find ticket information on Tobin’s website – the sooner the better, because tickets go fast.