CHICAGO (AP) – Jose Torres smiles as he thinks about how his 12-year-old daughter has embraced learning the same mariachi music he plays at home during a new Chicago Public Schools program that teaches the Mexican songs, linking the family’s culture with the classroom.
“She’s asking questions about her family, her background,” Torres said, sitting outside Alexa’s music classroom at Richard Edwards Elementary School, a largely Hispanic arts magnet school on Chicago’s South Side. It’s one of five Chicago schools with 1,100 students in the third through seventh grades that the nonprofit Mariachi Heritage Foundation debuted in this fall.
Chicago joins dozens of schools districts nationwide in cities including Las Vegas, San Antonio and Tucson, Arizona, that teach students how to sing and play mariachi music. It’s a way to connect schools and parents from Hispanic communities, foundation president Cesar Maldonado said.
A traditional Mexican music, mariachi often is performed by groups of musicians playing stringed instruments and trumpets and wearing brightly colored costumes. The songs are both ballads and fast tempo reflecting different, often rural regions of Mexico.
“It gives parents the opportunity to have a topic they can speak on,” Maldonado said. “Let’s use that as a platform to bring parents into the conversation of everyday academic life.”