TEXAS \u2014 Fox Tech ALA CAST Mariachi plays in the heart of San Antonio at Fox Tech High School. David Zamarripa has led the program for over 30 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cKnowing that you can go from the West Side to a high school to college and to beyond, and never be ashamed of your culture, never be ashamed of where you come from,\u201d Zamarripa said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zamarripa walked the halls of Fox Tech as a student before graduating in 1995. He played in his middle school\u2019s first ever mariachi program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to Irving Middle School, and from there, I went to Fox Tech High School. It was different. I wish we were playing the music we play now, back then,\u201d Zamarripa said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He saw when mariachi leapt from a regional event in 2008 to becoming a statewide University Interscholastic League (UIL) event in 2016. Zamarripa served on the inaugural committee at that time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a wonderful thing to be part of the beginning,\u201d Zamarripa said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zamarripa said he\u2019s a product of Belle San Miguel Ortiz, also known as the \u201cMadrina (godmother) of Mariachi education.\u201d San Miguel Ortiz started the country\u2019s first mariachi class in 1970 at San Antonio\u2019s Lanier High School.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mariachi continues to grow in schools from Forth Worth all the way down to the Rio Grande Valley, from 55 schools competing at the state competition in 2016 to 100 campuses in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s been going for just over 10 years now, and we\u2019ve seen about a 50% growth in the number of schools that are participating in mariachi statewide,\u201d Bradley Kent, UIL\u2019s music director, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zamarripa said his award-winning program has over 300 students.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect a lot of greatness of ourselves and from each other,\u201d said Eliza Brinkmann, a student in Fox Tech ALA CAST Mariachi. \u201cEvery performance and competition we come back from, we analyze it as a group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Student Belen Gonzalez travels 40 minutes to Fox Tech from Poteet, Texas. She said the UIL Mariachi Festival has taken her further than that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou create family within mariachi. That\u2019s my favorite thing. You get to go out and meet all the people from around the state, people from the Valley, from El Paso and all of those places,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cYou create a lot of connections with a lot of people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 Fox Tech ALA CAST Mariachi plays in the heart of San Antonio at Fox Tech High…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3564,74988,836,3565,1570,4621,163,6294,278,223,27,29,28,1569,835],"class_list":["post-471701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-app-community","tag-app-culture","tag-app-education","tag-community-news","tag-ctv","tag-culture","tag-education","tag-jose-arredondo","tag-music","tag-news","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}