I’m speaking this week from Mount Pleasant, a neighborhood in Washington, DC where life is often not as pleasant as the name implies. Mount Pleasant is home to a number of immigrants from Central America who are clinging to the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder in the nation’s capital. Families try to keep the old ways together – you can see them strolling in the parks on Sunday, dressed in their best clothes, but it’s more common to see men giving in to drunkenness and despair, staggering on the sidewalk.
In the other Washington – Washington state – is the farming community of Wenatchee. In the past 10 years, the Latino population has increased by nearly 500 percent as agricultural workers move to Wenatchee from Mexico, seeking work in the local orchards and farms. Coming into a new society, the farm workers of Wenatchee face the same pressures as the Central Americans of Mount Pleasant. These transitions are particularly difficult for the young, who find themselves in schools that are not only taught in a foreign language, but that have curricula and bureaucracies unlike anything they’ve ever faced before.
To help the Mexican students feel at home, the Wenatchee school district went to Los Angeles and found a Swedish fellow with a walrus moustache named Mark Fogelquist. The Swedish walrus is an accomplished musician who plays mariachi, the music of Mexico. Fogelquist took a bunch of teenagers who had never played an instrument before and in less than three years produced a mariachi band that is winning international competitions. Winning competitions is important for recognition and it’s very nice and all that, but there are much more important things happening with Mariachi Huenachi, as the band is called. I know, I’ve seen them play. I saw them in Seattle, on a late summer Saturday afternoon. They strolled beneath the sycamores and played and sang and danced. A crowd followed, made up primarily of Northern Europeans. We clapped politely. We are not genetically or culturally programmed to respond in kind to the warmth that flew from these students, but believe me, we loved it.
Within five years, there will be a television movie-of-the-week about all this, I can just feel it. The Wenatchee school board and Mark Fogelquist have done a great thing. They have built a bridge for these newly-arrived students and given them a place of their own in an unfamiliar world. But the real spirit of Mariachi Huenachi is the musicians, the students. Being a teenager is one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do. These kids also have the hardship and uncertainty all immigrants face, but they stand up and perform in front of strangers with an earnestness I have rarely seen.
So what does it mean? It means a student with Mariachi practice has a reason to show up for school and in that band they learn that if they can create something this beautiful, they can do anything. It means that all the immigrant families in Wenatchee have something in the community that is theirs.
It doesn’t mean that Wenatchee, with mariachi, is wonderful in every respect. It doesn’t mean that without it, Mount Pleasant is a doomed community. But it does mean there is hope and hope is the first thing we all need.
If you listen carefully enough, you can hear the music that can save your life.
Mariachi to the Rescue
I’m speaking this week from Mount Pleasant, a neighborhood in Washington, DC where life is often not as pleasant as the name implies. Mount Pleasant is home to a number of immigrants from Central America who are clinging to the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder in the nation’s capital. Families try to keep the old ways together – you can see them strolling in the parks on Sunday, dressed in their best clothes, but it’s more common to see men giving in to drunkenness and despair, staggering on the sidewalk.
In the other Washington – Washington state – is the farming community of Wenatchee. In the past 10 years, the Latino population has increased by nearly 500 percent as agricultural workers move to Wenatchee from Mexico, seeking work in the local orchards and farms. Coming into a new society, the farm workers of Wenatchee face the same pressures as the Central Americans of Mount Pleasant. These transitions are particularly difficult for the young, who find themselves in schools that are not only taught in a foreign language, but that have curricula and bureaucracies unlike anything they’ve ever faced before.
To help the Mexican students feel at home, the Wenatchee school district went to Los Angeles and found a Swedish fellow with a walrus moustache named Mark Fogelquist. The Swedish walrus is an accomplished musician who plays mariachi, the music of Mexico. Fogelquist took a bunch of teenagers who had never played an instrument before and in less than three years produced a mariachi band that is winning international competitions. Winning competitions is important for recognition and it’s very nice and all that, but there are much more important things happening with Mariachi Huenachi, as the band is called. I know, I’ve seen them play. I saw them in Seattle, on a late summer Saturday afternoon. They strolled beneath the sycamores and played and sang and danced. A crowd followed, made up primarily of Northern Europeans. We clapped politely. We are not genetically or culturally programmed to respond in kind to the warmth that flew from these students, but believe me, we loved it.
Within five years, there will be a television movie-of-the-week about all this, I can just feel it. The Wenatchee school board and Mark Fogelquist have done a great thing. They have built a bridge for these newly-arrived students and given them a place of their own in an unfamiliar world. But the real spirit of Mariachi Huenachi is the musicians, the students. Being a teenager is one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do. These kids also have the hardship and uncertainty all immigrants face, but they stand up and perform in front of strangers with an earnestness I have rarely seen.
So what does it mean? It means a student with Mariachi practice has a reason to show up for school and in that band they learn that if they can create something this beautiful, they can do anything. It means that all the immigrant families in Wenatchee have something in the community that is theirs.
It doesn’t mean that Wenatchee, with mariachi, is wonderful in every respect. It doesn’t mean that without it, Mount Pleasant is a doomed community. But it does mean there is hope and hope is the first thing we all need.
If you listen carefully enough, you can hear the music that can save your life.