It was a first for UMKC and for local mariachi groups in Kansas City to gather to perform the mariachis music of yester-year. The mariachi groups gave their all and the audience gave them a huge applause and love at Midwest Mariachi Festival.
Eric Gonzalez (top left) of Kansas City’s Mariachi Fuego, one of the bands that performed at the event, said he was proud to play for the audience and said, “Never thought I would have been involved with a mariachi at my age.”
“I love when we can find these cultural moments where we can have this exchange, where we can learn from the community, the community can learn from us. This is a beautiful thing,” said UMKC’s dean of conservatory, Courtney Crappell.
BY JOE ARCE AND COREY CRABLEIn depth-2 part report
Author’s note: This is the first in a two-part series about the Midwest Mariachi Festival in Kansas City. Read more about the festival in next week’s issue, where you’ll meet more organizers, musicians, and audience members.
A first-of-its-kind event recently brought the colors, sounds, and history of one of Mexico’s proudest traditions to Kansas City.
The Midwest Mariachi Festival brought mariachi musicians from all over to give performances, while clinics and workshops for students and adults brought the history and practice of mariachi music to life for attendees. The event, which organizers hope will be offered annually, was sponsored by UMKC, the Sister Cities Association of Kansas City (SCA), the Consulate of Mexico, and KC UNESCO City of Music co-sponsored the event.
Local mariachis Gerardo Ortiz El Mariachi, Los Reales KC, Mariachi el Andariego, and Mariachi el Fuego KC all performed live.
Local historian Dr. Gene Chavez, chairman of the SCA’s Guadalajara Committee, said the festival’s beginnings go back to a conversation he had with UMKC’s dean of conservatory, Courtney Crappell. The two men met at a luncheon, and Crappell, who has an extensive background in the growth of performing arts programs at other universities, asked Chavez if Kansas City had any mariachi groups. Chavez said he was all too happy to answer
in the affirmative.
“I said to him, ‘Yes, we have several that are really great guys that have been playing since, way back in the 1940s,” Chavez recalled. “And he said, ‘Well, I’d like to start a program at the conservatory that deals with mariachi.”
The two men collaborated on ideas for such a program, which included bringing mariachi groups to the U.S. from Mexico to perform. Springfield was discussed as a possible host location, but Chavez said that idea eventually died out due to the heavy ICE activity in the city. Kansas City, he said, seemed like the natural host city for the program.
In addition to music performances and workshops, the event served to honor a longtime mariachi artist, Beto Lopez Sr., father of Lee’s Summit Mayor Beto Lopez Jr., as well as sister of late Lisa Galvan Lopez, a local DJ who was killed during an attack at a Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rally at Union Station in 2024.
“(Lopez) came here from Mexico and he started playing with local musical groups. But he eventually formed a mariachi group that played a mariachi mass at Sacred Heart Church on a regular basis. And then he has stood in with various other mariachi groups. And so he’s been playing many, many years,” Chavez said. “And so we thought it would be very fitting to honor him, along with his passing on his legacy of music to Lisa. And now his granddaughter, Adriana, who is now continuing the DJing that her mom started.”
It may have been quite fitting for a college to co-coordinate the event, as younger people don’t tend to connect with mariachi music, or even know much about the genre at all, UMKC’s
Crappell said.
“I love when we can find these cultural moments where we can have this exchange, where we can learn from the community, the community can learn from us. This is a beautiful thing,” he told Kansas City Hispanic News.
As someone who worked in Texas for several years, Crappell grew to appreciate and love mariachi music. Starting a tradition like this event “felt like home.”
“I told Gene Chavez, ‘You know, it’s wonderful that we had a conversation. But what’s more wonderful is we did something about it,” he said. “Ideas are the easy part. But when we do the hard work over time to make it come to life, and then you see the wonderful audience we have here tonight.”
Crappell said he believes the mariachi musicians who performed at the event fed off of the audience’s energy, a hallmark of any
good musician.
“The energy here. I can see it kind of grow,” Crappell said. “As the audience responds, they get better and better. That’s good music.”
Eric Gonzalez of Kansas City’s Mariachi Fuego, one of the bands that performed at the event, said he was proud to play for the audience and said he “never thought I would have been involved with a mariachi at my age.”
“I’ve always been a percussionist all my life until I turned 60 and my mother bought me a guitar. I thought, ‘Well, I’m not just going to let it sit there in the corner and collect dust. And I started playing with it,’” Gonzalez recalled. “And (Steve Reyes, the band’s manager) heard that I started playing with it. And he needed another lead singer in his group. … But I just wish I would have had a guitar when I was a kid. I would have joined sooner.”
Gonzalez said that Chavez personally approached him and asked his group to perform at the festival not only that – Gonzalez was asked to help organize the festival itself, something which made Gonzalez feel proud as a musician.
“I just took the ball and ran with it. I came up with an agenda of the program, what the program should look like during the day for the kids (students) and then in the evening as well,”
he explained.
Throughout the process of organizing the workshops and performances for the festival, Gonzalez said he had to rely on his network of friends, colleagues, and fellow musicians to help. It’s something that is extremely common in the world of mariachi musicians, he explained, that need to tap into resources like fellow musicians for help with anything from advice to needing an extra instrument.
He said he was especially impressed with the teamwork each member of each band displayed for the big final musical act, in which they all played together.
“I told the groups, ‘You all need to shine your own selves and you play what you think is best. Let’s start with three songs. And then we went to five songs. And then we said, ‘OK, for the grand finale, we all have to play together, so we have to think of songs that we all know so that we don’t have to learn,” Gonzalez recalled. “Jose Longoria brought his student Isaac with him because he knew that his student was very capable in leading as well. And they both played the violin. Of course, Jose Longoria plays more than one instrument. But he just led. I said to him, ‘I want to ask you to stand in front of everybody, and you count off the song and you lead, and you tell us when to end. He just did a masterful job. It all came together.”
Gonzalez said that willingness to come together was special and displayed a stunning example of camaraderie. But it wasn’t only the musicians and the dancers onstage with Gonzalez and his fellow musicians that night. He could also feel the presence of his late father, Lupe Gonzalez, an accomplished musician in his own right.
“He was with me in spirit. I knew that he was with me. I knew he was with me all the way,” Gonzalez said.
And although he loves and has played many genres of music throughout his career, Gonzalez said mariachi is special in a way that few will recognize unless they’ve played it before.
“I’ll always love Tejano music. But mariachi is very special. And the thing about mariachi is, the level of competency and difficulty of mariachi music is to be even above professional orchestra music. I’ve played Bach. I played Mozart. I mean, I played Beethoven. I played Shostakovich,” Gonzalez said. “But when it comes to mariachi music, the rhythm, the rhythm of the guitar, and then the violins and then the trumpets … you’ve got to be top tier to make it sound right and do the song right. That’s how much pride that the mariachi groups take in their performance.”
In part two next week edition, KC Hispanic News will share with our readers the thrill of the sound of Mariachi music, the thrill of the audience and the thrill of the folkloric dancers dancing with the live Mariachi bands of the Midwest Mariachi Festival-KC.
