Sounds of Guadalajara

Wednesday, July 5, 2006 | 7:19 a.m.

Cesar Lara, a curly haired teenager , sits holding his violin while a chorus of teenage boys belts out a passionate Mexican melody. Although Lara says he's not a singer, he joins in anyway.

"I like violin since I was little," the Canyon Springs High School student says during a break at the Clark County School District's first Mariachi Music Camp.

"But they didn't have this program in Mexico."

Lara is eight months into learning the violin through the district's mariachi program.

It's the same program that made news last year when a national group ridiculed it as "La Pork-a-Racha," saying the $25,000 in federal funds that the program received was a prime example of pork-barrel spending.

While some say mariachi in the schools is a waste of money, others praise it. Mariachi has even been called the "new Sousa" for a country with changing demographics.

Javier Trujillo, director of the local mariachi program, says it helps keep Hispanic students in school and involved, including valley newcomers, such as Lara, who moved to Las Vegas last year from Mexico.

"That's a room full of teenagers. Male teenagers. Singing," Trujillo says, pointing to a home economics classroom at J.D. Smith Middle School where a group is singing "Por Mujeres Como Tu," a Pepe Aguilar love song with a title that translates as "For Ladies Like You."

Dressed in a black suit and a striped shirt, Trujillo sips a cup of coffee. He says he sees himself when he looks at the students at the three-week mariachi camp.

Trujillo was raised on Tucson's tough South Side. His mother enrolled him in a mariachi program at age 8, and he credits it with keeping him from trouble and encouraging him to purse an education that led to a master's degree.

The music camp draws students from 12 area schools. Most of the students come from poor neighborhoods and at-risk schools.

"It gives them so much more," Trujillo says. "They don't have to depend on gangs. They can impact the community in many ways.

"And it's important the community sees them and knows that not everything they read in the newspaper is true.

"They're not out there tagging buildings, involved in gangs and committing crimes. They're here at 7:30 a.m."

Trujillo was recruited in 2002 after he brought mariachi students from Tucson to perform for Clark County students.

Getting it accepted as legitimate music is "an uphill battle," says Trujillo, who blames Hollywood for the mariachi stereotype of "three or four drunken overweight guys in a bar."

An estimated 500 schools nationwide have mariachi programs. During the spring, Marsha Neel of the Clark County School District led a committee that launched a networking effort within the National Association for Music Education, which promotes mariachi within the music curriculum.

Sue Rarus, a researcher with the National Association for Music Education, said there was a need for the initiative because of the growing Hispanic population. In the Clark County School District, more than one-third of students are Hispanic.

"I was born in Mexico. It's my music," says Griselda Palafox, a graduate of Desert Pines High School, who brought her boyfriend's younger brother to the camp so he could take guitar lessons.

Susana Santana switched from orchestra to mariachi and says she appreciates the camaraderie. "It's more lively. It's not all about reading the notes. It's about feeling the music. So you have to be connected."

A pilot program beginning this fall at Rose Warren Elementary School will have third and fourth graders studying violin to help improve cognitive and critical thinking skills.

Some of the more than 2,000 students in the School District's program had never played instruments before. Others switched to mariachi after years in band and orchestra.

After hearing a mariachi group at a school gathering, Rancho High School violinist Carlos Valenzuela switched from the orchestra. He surprised his mother by playing a Spanish birthday song.

"She started crying," Valenzuela says.

Valenzuela appreciates the cultural tradition of mariachi music. He and other students formed a mariachi group that performs in the community. Recently, it performed at a graduation party and at the home of a young woman the day before she was to be married.

Trujillo and the district's other mariachi teachers have a group of their own. Twelve teachers and the principal from Eldorado High School are teaching at the three-week camp.

Noe Ramos, who teaches mariachi at Orr Middle School and Valley High, was brought in by Trujillo four years ago from Corpus Christi, Texas, where he was teaching high school band.

"I heard how big mariachi is here," says Ramos, who adds of the camp: "This is amazing. We weren't expecting this many kids."

Student Daniel Franco wouldn't miss it. He's serious enough about the music to form his own group, Mariachi Franco. It held a fundraiser last weekend to pay for uniforms. The suits cost $300 each but are worth it, Franco says.

He grins and playfully punches Trujillo on the shoulder as he says, "We want to start performing like them."