If you’d like to witness a new world record with more than 800 mariachis on a stage at once, you are cordially invited to the 28th annual La Frontera Tucson International Mariachi Conference.
Actually, if you have the outfit – a dapper, silver-studded “traje de charro” – you, too, could find yourself in the Guinness Book of Records. While breaking the world record, you’ll look sharp and support a good cause.
The cause, in the broadest sense, is the well being of children. The four-day conference, April 20-24, is intended to nurture talent, teambuilding and hard work. It’s about giving 1,000 or so kids something wholesome to do. In the words of the conference website, it’s about “instilling cultural pride and encouraging mariachi greats in the making.” Others might call it music, wrapped in history, dreams and heroes.
The business model is simple: The shows offset the children’s workshops. The profits, too, are aimed for kids, slated for the children’s services of La Frontera, a local behavioral health nonprofit. Though the group bills the event as a major fundraiser, the conference hasn’t contributed much monetarily since the economy slumped, said Tina Roesler, the event’s marketing director.
Since the event’s start in 1983, La Frontera has netted about $3.5 million, according to its spring 2009 newsletter. Like last year, this year’s conference is just shy of breaking even.
Although the conference claims that it is the single best way to tap the Hispanic market, longtime sponsors have pulled out or scaled back, Roesler said. Sponsorships worth $100,000 evaporated.
The service industry, long a pillar of mariachi support in Tucson, has been battered by the recession. New sponsors such as AARP and State Farm Insurance have just begun to step in.
Meanwhile, competition and prices within the mariachi world are rising. Mariachi music is more mainstream and Tucson’s conference is no longer the only of its kind. Other conferences have emerged around the Southwest and casinos regularly book big names.
So it is by virtue of numbers and history and children that Roesler thinks the Tucson International Mariachi Conference will last; with up to 1,000 students, the master class sold out, 60,000 people attending, and $3.7 million in yearly economic impact. Plus the glory of hundreds, maybe even 1,000 people on a stage at once, playing mariachi music, the unadulterated kind.
“We’re purists here in terms of mariachi,” she said. She doesn’t doubt Tucson will soon hold the world group mariachi playing record. “It will be hard for anyone to beat us. We’ve got way more than 800. And we’ve invited the community.”
For more information, go to TucsonMariachi.org.
