The success of his high school mariachi program is music to Al Gurule’s ears — literally.
Before he began teaching mariachi in public schools, Al Gurule was an accountant who performed mariachi on the side.
“I didn’t want to work with little kids. I didn’t think I would like it,” he said. “When I started, I realized how smart kids were. Actually, they are smarter than adults and easier to teach.”
Back then, he said his thinking was limited because of the musicians in his social circle. He also said his general impatience made him apprehensive about teaching kids.
He began teaching kids and adults in the ’90s at the Mariachi Spectacular, an annual UNM-sponsored conference/concert. Before then, he was teaching mariachi in the evening at the University through the Mariachi Lobo program, which was canceled in 2008 due to lack of funding.
In 2000, Norberta Fresquez, co-organizer of Mariachi Spectacular, told him she wanted to start an elementary school program. The initiative began at the East San Jose Elementary School, located off of Gibson and Broadway boulevards, as a before-school program, he said. The program quickly became popular, he said, and as the students moved on to Washington Middle School, the principal there wanted him to continue the program.
He continued to teach at East San Jose before school while he taught after school at Washington. This trend kept up once the students reached Albuquerque High School. At the middle school, the principal told him since the band had 13 students, she wanted to make his 80 mariachi students her band.
At that point, Gurule said he closed the book on his accounting career and earned his teaching license at CNM to work in the programs full time.
Now, students earn elective credit for the class, though because it is the only program of its kind, it is the black sheep of the Albuquerque Public School fine arts department, he said.
“Same notes, same theory, same philosophy, but the fine arts department. If it’s not band or orchestra, it doesn’t exist,” he said. “So we’re on our own as far as funding is concerned. My money doesn’t come out of fine arts, it comes out of a different budget.”
At a high school where the graduation rate is 50 percent, Gurule said everyone who has continued into the Albuquerque High School mariachi program has graduated.
“They become family,” he said. “For the most part, they’re pretty good students, very disciplined. … This is good peer pressure, because I’ve heard them talking. If you don’t do well in class, they call you names, so it’s cool to be smart in this group, as opposed to how it’s cool to not be smart. If we could figure out why, we’d be very rich, because that’s the biggest problem in the school systems.”
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Gurule said he has 140 students currently, some of which he has watched grow into young adults while he becomes more like a role model and mentor than simply a mariachi instructor. For example, he said there are some kids who grow up considering college as being exclusively for rich, smart kids. He said he opens their eyes to possibilities, like being the first in their family to get a college education, and some of them have already done so.
“They’ve come to me for advice and really personal stuff, crazy stuff I know they couldn’t go to their parents about,” he said. “I watch out for them, I’m really concerned about them. I see them being around for a long time, I don’t think just because school’s ended, I’ll never see or hear from them again.”
The program maintains a high degree of visibility in the community by playing for the public. The group has played for the mayor and the governor, he said. Last year, he brought the students to Santa Fe to perform for the legislature.
State Representative Rick Miera, D-Bernalillo County, said he discovered the program after he discovered something similar in Taos, though that program is limited to high school juniors and seniors. He said the program is valuable in that it stimulates kids in a way that keeps them involved in school, giving them incentive to do well in other subject areas.
“We’ve been cutting education for many years now, and the first thing to go is always that right brain kind of operation, the arts and music,” he said. “That’s unfortunate, because sometimes that and other issues keep kids in school, keep them involved and learning. That’s the shameful part.”
