Feeling the mariachi beat

PROVO — Zoran Quintana stands at the front of the mariachi band and strives to sing with machismo, or aggression, and to project over the vibrato, or vibrations.

Quintana is a senior at Provo High School. It's an anomaly in Utah high schools to have a band devoted to mariachi, the traditional folk music of Mexico, known for its rich strings and animated horns.

Provo High School's mariachi band has only two Hispanic students — only Quintana is from Mexico. The irony's not lost on the down-to-Earth musicians, who asked Quintana to join the group as a singer during calculus class a few months ago.

"We needed somebody who was Mexican," said Kristy Roper, a senior who plays guitar in the mariachi band. "We don't have any Mexicans. It's not a racial thing."

Zoran barely could read music, but worked with band teacher Darrell Brown after school for a month to get up to speed.

Students are generally introduced to band through siblings or friends, and not many of Provo High School's Hispanic students, who number 26 percent of the population, are involved.

"Unfortunately, it's been a trend in the Hispanic community, band is not something they want to join," Brown said. "Band is sort of a culture itself."

Originally begun three years ago as a project for an honors music society, the mariachi band has become an instrument — so to speak — to spark Hispanic students' interest in band and gringo students' interest in Mexican culture, Brown said.

Quintana's dad is from Chihuahua state in the north; his mom is from Guadalajara, Jalisco state, in the central part of the country. Mariachi music played during their childhoods, and when Quintana was born in Hermosillo, Sonora state, up until the time he was 6, when the family immigrated to the United States.

Then, he only heard mariachi when his parents played tapes of Ana Gabriel and Vicente Fernandez, modern Mexican folk musicians. Think Peter, Paul and Mary, or the Kingston Trio.

Mariachi bands are comprised of three violins, two trumpets, a guitarron, a vihuela, a guitar, a singer and sometimes a harp. In Provo High's 10-member mariachi band, there is no harpist, and additional trumpeter. Brown plays the vihuela.

Guitarrones and vihuelas are stringed instruments held like guitars. The five-stringed vihuela is small; the large guitarron has six strings and sounds like a bass guitar.