KCK students reach for deeper meaning playing mariachi

For music educator Bridget Gish, one of the hardest parts about organizing a student mariachi band was getting the students to have an authentic experience with loss, a common theme in the genre.

“Sometimes the heartache or loss is something the younger students have not yet experienced, so it can be challenging to find something for them to relate it to,” she said in an interview with 2más2KC.

The 17-piece student group has started meeting weekly to rehearse. Every Tuesday afternoon at 4 p.m., Kansas City, Kan., students ages 12 to 16 meet at Central Middle School, 925 Ivandale St., to put some new life in the tradition.

Gish said the students’ awkwardness with the emotional content of the material was mediated by learning the music and understanding how critical the words are to the composition. They discovered a love of singing the words, and that brought them in, she said.

“Many students were initially hesitant to sing since they are instrumentalists first. However, once we did vocal warm ups at each lesson and started learning the words to the pieces they were playing on their instruments, they wanted to learn to sing them.

“If you understand the story, expression comes naturally and once they reached that point, they wanted to sing the words as much as play them,” she said.

Gish traveled to Las Vegas for a National Mariachi Workshop for Educators where she learned how to build a group like the one she organized in Kansas City, Kan.

While mariachi music is an artifact of Mexican culture and an ethnic expression, “Mariachi music is at the heart of culture and who we are as human beings,” Gish said.

“It is about uniting us together through all of life's experiences and sharing them with those around us. The notes and technique are vital to performing, but it's the connection with the audience that is really at the heart of Mariachi.”

Students in the mariachi group said the music was both a place to have fun and be free. They added the most important part of learning to perform mariachi was forming an understanding of the music and conveying that to the audience.

Gish said mariachi has played an important in the students’ emotional and intrapersonal development.

“All parents want to see their children successful, but when they see their child making a connection to something deeper inside it returns us home to our humanity. What makes Mariachi hold a special place in my heart is its honesty and passion. You do not have to understand the words, to understand the emotion behind them in Mariachi; you feel the music,” she said.