Foot-stomping pee wee mariachi takes center stage at annual San Jose festival

How do you teach traditional Mexican music, a complex and unique sound ever since the first Aztec and Spaniard put their flute and guitar together five centuries ago, to the modern American pee wee set?

"You start with the songs, use lots of language and engage their parents," says Maria Luis Colmenarez, director of the Pee Wee Mariachi program.

The refashioned San Jose Mariachi and Latin Music Festival threw a fiesta Sunday at the city's Children's Discovery Museum, kicking off the big week of events for the annual mariachi celebration. The big hit appeared to be the 45-minute crash courses in musica y danza folklorica for children 5 and younger.

Midway into the morning's first session, 3-year-old Rocco Marron had his zapateado, or footwork, down pat. The band was playing, "La Iguana," a tune from Veracruz that asks dancers, young or old, to get down on all fours and mimic a dancing reptile. His little brother, 1-year-old Nico, liked that part better than the fancy footwork.

Nevermind that "Iguana" is not a mariachi tune or that the band members were wearing tropical, white guayabera shirts and not huge sombreros. The band, El Mosquito, played jarocho music from coastal Mexico, but when you're 3 years old and having a good time, who's going to split musical hairs?

Pee Wee Mariachi is a new, ongoing program run by Mexican Heritage Corp., the festival sponsor which lately has added modern Latino music to the event and moved it downtown from its former base in East San Jose. Wishing to reach very young children, the organization found a natural venue and host at the children's museum and a financial sponsor in "First 5," Santa Clara County's health education program focused on families with youngsters 5 and younger.

While parents grabbed health brochures, the pee wees lined up for classes in a first-rate sound room big enough to handle three-dozen kids and their parents in an intimate and surprisingly orchestrated setting. Colmenarez and lead instructor Rudy Figueroa have come up with a systematic method they can deliver within a pee wee's attention span. That's 45 minutes, to be exact.

With more than 20 years of experience in Mexican dance, they started the kids off by having them pound the floor and knees to the bass beat of a jarocho tune. For the next song, they gave the children plastic Easter eggs filled with beads and had them pretend they were maracas. The instructors gradually took the children through basic zapateados.

About half of the families in the pee wee session were Latino but the rest of Silicon Valley's cultural diversity was well represented, too. There was one catch: Unlike pee wee football or baseball, the parents had to join in.

"Everyone in this room has to participate," Figueroa said.

Teresa Ho didn't mind. She danced and sang and held the hands of her 4-year-old daughter, Sharon, through almost every song.

"We came here to learn another culture," said Ho, who is Chinese and from San Jose.

Linda and Robert Marron, parents of Rocco and Nico, drove up from Hollister.

"We like to be cultural at home," Robert said. "This is their background and we want to make sure they have this opportunity."

Contact Joe Rodriguez at jrodriguez@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5767

A week of mariachi