This weekend, National City’s Pepper Park will be a musical party.
On Saturday, the usually quiet area will take on a festive atmosphere, complete with roving dancers, violins and brassy trumpets for the city’s third annual Mariachi Festival and Competition. The cross-border free music fair will feature musicians from San Diego and Tijuana.
The event is specifically intended to spotlight mariachi music in schools, which has a higher goal: to get students to finish their high school educations and get them into college. The Mariachi Scholarship Foundation, which was created in 1997, guarantees scholarships to students in participating schools who are part of a program for two or more years and maintain a B average.
“They’ve really served as the umbrella to bring all things mariachi together,” said Jacqueline Reynoso, president of National City’s Chamber of Commerce, which is hosting the festival.
Reynoso said she sees the Mariachi Festival and Competition as more than just an educational experience, however, it carries with it a message of cultural co-operation.
“In National City we have a majority demographic of Latinos, primarily of Mexican descent. So for us, it’s important to bridge that as a source of empowerment so our students appreciate and respect their history and are in tune with where the music comes from,” said Reynoso.
Music scholar and virtuoso trumpeter Jeff Nevin is director of Southwestern College’s mariachi program. He not only developed San Diego’s in-school mariachi programs, he’s also sitting president of the Mariachi Scholarship Foundation.
In the past few years, Nevin said, interest in mariachi has been popping up all over San Diego, bringing with it more opportunities for music in education.
“One of my visions is to expand [the Mariachi Scholarship Foundation] to be more of a county-wide organization,” said Nevin.
The Mariachi Festival and Competition runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 14.
