By Miguel Nicolas
Former Southwestern College President Dr. Serafin Zasueta led the creation of the college library, Cesar Chavez student services center and the late, great Student Center, but the college mariachi is his landmark achievement. That and his hiring of a Tucson trumpet virtuoso, Dr. Jeff Nevin to run it.
Mariachi Garibaldi has performed on six continents—often at the invitation of the government—and SC’s program is the first in the world to offer a degree in mariachi music. That includes Mexico, mariachi’s homeland.
This month’s 25th Anniversary Concert was a borderlands rock concert that propelled a sold-out audience across a range of styles and emotions from sentimental to raucous. In other words, the kind of performance South County mariachistas have come to expect.
A San Diego Union-Tribune profile on Nevin called him “the Johnny Appleseed” of mariachi due to his tireless quarter century of launching bands in high schools and colleges across America. It would be no exaggeration to say Nevin wrote the book on mariachi because he did. His textbook, “Virtuoso Mariachi,” is a music instruction classic. Virtually every academic mariachi in the nation has Nevin’s fingerprints.
Nevin is humble like well-worn huaraches and soft-spoken as a violin aria. His Mariachi Garibaldi is neither.
Blazing trumpets, pulsating guitarrons and soaring voices lit up the evening like lava escaping Popocatepetl. Planet Earth’s best collegiate mariachi announced itself like a trache-clad Arcangel Gabriel, calling out across the mariachi diaspora, then purring like a content kitten.
Nine-year member Omar Marmolejo said Nevin is brilliant and mariachi is essential.
“I think it’s really cool that Southwestern College has such a great mariachi,” he said. “It’s beautiful, especially it being in the United States.”
Nevin, of course, agreed.
“The thing that’s important is we have a degree (program) in mariachi music,” he said. “This was the first in the world and now there are other schools that offer a similar program, even in Mexico.”
Madre Mexico has completely embraced the pioneering transfronterizo band from Chula Vista. Mariachi Garibaldi has performed onstage with Mexican legends Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan at the Mariachi Encuentro de Guadalajara. Former Mariachi Garibaldi singer-guitarist Robert Bell described it as “playing at Woodstock with The Beatles.”
Mariachi Garibaldi did something unprecedented at the Encuentro, performing Nevin’s punchy mariachi arrangement of the Johnny Cash-June Carter classic “Ring of Fire” in English.
“That was nervy,” said Bell, who sang the number. “It was kind of like Bob Dylan playing his electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, but with a much different result!”
Other than the dash of Cash, Mariachi Garibaldi plays it straight and honors Mexico’s rich musical heritage with classics like “Cielo Lindo,” “Tren,” and “Por un Amor.” Ricardo Loera is one of several SC students who said playing in the mariachi keeps him connected to his ancestral homeland.
“I’m forgetting (Spanish) because I don’t practice every day,” he said, “but music and mariachi is so traditional to Mexico. It’s my roots. Mis raices. Mi pais. My connection to the cultural has become more personal.”
Photo By Miguel Nicolas / Staff
