Every Saturday, Veri Chavarin attends a mariachi class at the Logan Heights Library.
"I love mariachi because it just comes from your soul, your heart," she said. "There are songs that you can listen to when you're feeling happy, when you're grieving, when you're hurting over a breakup."
She found out about the class after her son's school emailed families about resources at the library. As she scrolled through a list of music classes run by the nonprofit Villa Musica, she saw an all-ages mariachi ensemble.
For her dad, 80-year-old Rosalio Chavarin, it was a dream come true.
"Since I was a kid, my wish was to play mariachi," he said in Spanish. "I searched and searched to see where I could find a group that would teach me how to play mariachi music."
The Chavarins have been part of Villa Musica's Logan Heights group for nearly four years. Veri Chavarin plays the violin, while her dad plays the guitar.
"I really treasure this time with my dad," she said. "We won't be here forever, and so these are things I'm going to really hold dear to my heart."
Villa Musica offers music classes at five libraries in San Diego. Based on survey responses from the local community, the nonprofit started violin and guitar classes at Logan Heights in 2014.
"Five or six years after we'd been here, we had enough students playing at a high enough level that they were really interested in doing something together," said Executive Director Fiona Chatwin. "I thought, 'Well, a mariachi ensemble sounds like violins or guitars coming together and making music.'"
Classes are free, and instruments are provided. This quarter, the nonprofit lent nearly 250 instruments to students across the city.
"The instrument is a part of the education," Chatwin said. "So long as a person's registered, they get their instrument, they take it home, they practice, they learn to tune it, they learn to look after it."
Andrew Rodriguez teaches the mariachi class. He said the group includes kids, seniors, Latino and non-Latino musicians.
"It's the diversity that really makes it special," he said.
Rodriguez and his brothers were part of mariachi programs at their south San Diego schools. English was his first language, and he said mariachi helped him learn Spanish and understand his culture.
"Us being in San Diego, a border town, it's allowed me to make sense of both worlds that I live in," he said.
It's helped Rosalio Chavarin make sense of his world, too. He said he became less outgoing as he grew older. At the mariachi class, he's been able to laugh and talk with his classmates.
"I'm happy," he said. "I'm doing what I love."
The spring-quarter mariachi ensemble performs its final recital at 5 p.m. Saturday at the City Heights Performance Annex.
