Mariachi Dreams: A Year of Music, Magic, and Belonging on the Border

Mariachi music education programs are exploding in schools and colleges across the country, from California and Arizona to less-expected states like Oregon, Iowa, Indiana, and Missouri. In Texas alone, more than one hundred high schools take part in the University Interscholastic League’s annual contests. On the heels of her popular November 2022 New York Times Magazine story, “A Championship Season in Mariachi Country,” journalist and cultural anthropologist Cecilia Ballí has been following three of the country’s top high school varsity mariachis as they experience the ups and downs of a year of competitions, culminating at the Mariachi Extravaganza, considered the national championship of school and college mariachis. The three groups are neighboring rivals in small, rural Starr County, Texas, bordering the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Ballí’s book in progress, Mariachi Dreams, studies contemporary American high school through the eyes of Mexican American musicians, the spread of mariachi music, and life along the U.S.-Mexico border.

This program will walk us through the history and the vibrant and competitive world of mariachi music. The evening will conclude with a performance by Los Pasajeros, an award-winning mariachi ensemble from the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

Cecilia Ballí is a writer and journalist who has been writing for magazines for more than twenty years. In 2000, she became the first Latina or Latino writer at Texas Monthly, where she published long-form stories and essays as a writer-at-large. She has written extensively about Tejano history and culture, immigration, the murders of young women in Ciudad Juárez, U.S.- Mexico border drug violence, and Mexican military disappearances and torture, among other subjects. She has also published stories in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and Columbia Journalism Review.

Photo credit: Benjamin Lowy