Professor creating Mexican American music curriculum for UTSA

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 — Rachel Yvonne Cruz, a faculty member in the College of Education and Human and Development, is spearheading a new concentration in Mexican American music within the Mexican American Studies program.

Cruz, who is no stranger to the sounds of the guitarrón and vihuela, is a pioneer in mariachi music education. She has shown South Texas students her love of mariachi music and how to connect to the Mexican culture through it for the past 24 years.

Before stepping into the classroom as a music educator, Cruz studied vocal performance at the University of Notre Dame, earning a bachelor of arts in music. Intending to become an operatic singer, Cruz continued at The University of Texas at Austin, where she received a master’s in music and then her doctorate.

While studying for her doctorate, Cruz began taking voice lessons and preparing for recitals with the hope of one day performing at the Metropolitan Opera.

“That’s the day I think that I was truly bitten by the teacher bug.”

“While I was a doctoral student at UT Austin, a friend of mine told me that there was a position at Fulmore Middle School in the Austin Independent School District. They were in need of a choir teacher,” Cruz said. “I was at the end of my doctoral studies, taking only voice lessons in preparation for my final recitals, so I had the time to work. I applied for the position and got it, but I was not a certified teacher at the time. So they emergency certified me. I then got my teacher certification in secondary music and English as a second language.”

Cruz had no plans of making teaching a lifelong career, but she learned about the difference she could make in the classroom. Although she was hired to be the choir teacher at Fulmore, Cruz saw that there was a much greater need.

“When I started teaching at Fulmore Middle School, AISD didn't have a middle school level mariachi,” she said. “They did, however, have a high school mariachi. A large majority of Fulmore students were Spanish-speaking migrant students who were being placed in choir either because there was no room left in other electives like art, or because of the perceived cost in time and money to be in band or choir. It was easier to slip students into choir midway through a six-week period, where the only tool they needed was their voice.”

According to Cruz, it’s been proved that students who study the fine and performing arts have a tendency to score higher on standardized tests.

“I thought those students deserved the same quality of education and to learn in a safe and comfortable environment, as those who took band and orchestra,” she said. Mariachi transcends language, cultural and socioeconomic barriers faced by students. To be part of an ensemble that fosters culture and offers a secure learning environment inspires students academically.”

Not long after, the new mariachi class at Fulmore began enrolling more students than the band or orchestra, Cruz said.

“The mariachi program at Fulmore was very successful. Their excitement and energy in performance was tangible, and they quickly became popular in Austin,” she said.

Upon graduating from UT Austin with a doctor of musical arts degree, Cruz was offered a position at Texas A&M International University in Laredo.

“With 12 years of preparation to become an operatic singer, I found myself directing a middle school choir and mariachi when my goal had been to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, and I was good enough to have accomplished that goal,” Cruz said. “I was told that the job at A&M International was tailor-made for me. While I wanted to train for auditions, I needed to make a living, and the university level became the logical next step.”

While working at TAMIU, Zapata High School’s mariachi program was in need of a mariachi director, so Cruz stepped in to help. After driving from Laredo to Zapata, Cruz worked with the university’s enrollment management to concurrently enroll the Zapata mariachi students at TAMIU.

“With an ensemble that included over half high school students, we started to win national championships,” Cruz said. “The first time TAMIU’s Mariachi Internacional competed in a national arena against schools with programs that were over 10 years old—and won—was incredible. The looks on the students’ faces, their parents, the smiles, the tears, compelled me to forget about my own budding operatic career, and that’s the day I think that I was truly bitten by the teacher bug.”

From that moment, it became Cruz’s crusade to stand in front of a room of academics attesting that mariachi is as viable and important an ensemble as a symphony or an orchestra.

“Mariachi deserves a place on the concert stage and in academia,” Cruz said.

Following her work at TAMIU, Cruz was integral in the creation of the first degree of its kind, a bachelor of arts degree in music, with an emphasis in mariachi performance and pedagogy, at Our Lady of the Lake University. After which, she opened the International Academy of Music and the Arts Coffee Company, combining her passion for music with her love of coffee.

As a music educator, Cruz strives to teach students that there is more to mariachi than proficient performance.

“The cultural component is equally important. A lot of people don’t realize that there are many things the Indigenous people of Mexico did first,” she said. “Polyphony, for instance. It’s been learned, through archaeological discoveries in the region of the Gulf of Mexico, that quite possibly, the polyphony of Mexico, antedates that of Western Europe. Indoor plumbing is another example as well as metallurgy. Those are things that I think are incredible and necessary for students who are of Mexican descent to understand and realize, that they’re not less than.”

Providing a greater understanding of the culture offers students a sense of pride and belonging, beyond what one might get from simply learning to play an instrument, Cruz said.

Cruz, an assistant professor in Mexican American Studies who is developing the new concentration, hopes to continue standardizing and elevating the study of Mexican American music at UTSA and in public schools.

“In many cities, states across the country, mariachi is a course like band, orchestra and choir. At UTSA, I will continue working to standardize mariachi curriculum and education so that it is equitable, and perhaps even rivals that of its Western European counterparts,” Cruz said. “I want to do this as a reaction against colonial and capitalist material inequities and oppressive ideologies in education as a whole.”

— Valerie Bustamante