During Friday’s graduation for Bryan Station High School, people heard a performance of “Cielito Lindo” by Mariachi Escudo de Bryan Station, which Fayette school district officials describe as Kentucky’s only known high school Mariachi band.
“These students did an incredible job, and it’s an example of our ongoing work to expand access to a wide array of diverse arts opportunities for our students,” Fayette Public Schools Board Chairman Tyler Murphy said on a Facebook post.
With some community members upset because some school councils are cutting arts programs, Murphy said in an April post that in last year’s budget cycle, the school board made an additional $1. 4 million investment in visual and performing arts at the district level.
In the 2022 fiscal year cycle, district-level expenditures in fine arts amounted to $347,315, he said.
At a November school board meeting, Fayette school’s Director of Fine Arts Katherine Lowther, said a “direct and clear result of that investment” was the mariachi band.
She introduced Nathan Bailey and Genaro Rascón, who were co-teaching two sections of World Music/Mariachi in both Spanish and English at Bryan Station High School.
li Their group, described as the first known student Mariachi ensemble in Kentucky, recorded a performance of “Canta, Canta, Canta” (Sing, Sing, Sing) for the board.
Rascon told the school board it’s “a point of pride” that Bryan Station High school was the first public school in Kentucky to offer a mariachi band program.
Rascon said its always been his mission as an educator to put Mexican folk music in line with the such fine art categories as orchestra and jazz.
Mariachi, Rascon said, is a multidisciplinary art.
“It’s live performance, it’s theater, it’s language arts because it’s in Spanish. It’s a use of math and science,” he said.
Rascon said mariachi has been taught traditionally in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
He said the band has received multiple requests for live performances and other Fayette schools are interested in a mariachi band program
Rascon said Bryan Station High School’s mariachi band wants to perform at national mariachi school conferences.
Half of the students in the mariachi band are traditional band and orchestra students who have been playing for years, he said.
“The other half have never touched an instrument or read music” before they joined the mariachi band and have only been performing for a few months.
School board member Marilyn Clark asked Rascon whether the program could be offered to younger students.
“I would absolutely love to have middle school or elementary school programs …down the road,” Ranscon said.
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