{"id":27574,"date":"2023-09-22T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T12:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=27574"},"modified":"2023-09-14T16:02:03","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T20:02:03","slug":"student-composer-is-hooked-on-classics-blended-with-hispanic-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/student-composer-is-hooked-on-classics-blended-with-hispanic-heritage\/","title":{"rendered":"Student composer is hooked on classics \u2013 blended with Hispanic heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hispanic Heritage Month at Furman<\/a>
\nRead more stories >><\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI love beautiful melodies,\u201d said Sahid Palacios \u201925.<\/p>\n

As a young violinist, he found many of those melodies in the classical works by European composers such as Beethoven and Tchaikovsky he began playing in his El Paso, Texas, grade school orchestra. In high school, he discovered more when he joined another ensemble, this one performing the traditional music that would likely have been familiar to his extended family in Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Texas, most high schools have a mariachi,\u201d Palacios said (the term refers to the genre of music as well as the musicians or groups who play it). \u201cAnd it\u2019s growing now. There are middle schools and elementary schools that are starting to have mariachi.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the music performance major, who plays guitar as well as violin, hopes to start a mariachi club at Furman \u2013 but his overall creative vision emerges in original compositions like \u201cIntroduccion y Polka,\u201d featured on his YouTube<\/a> channel. His music blends mariachi with classical, combining the traditional guitar, violin and trumpet sounds with a full symphony orchestra.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s stuck in this mentality that you should always play traditional music from the past,\u201d said Palacios, who was inspired by the boundary-breaking compositions of Jos\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, founder of Mariachi Sol de Mexico. \u201cI just want to change the music and give a new feel to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heartbreak, happiness and pride<\/h3>\n

The beauty and romance of symphonic music blends well with the emotion and passion of mariachi, Palacios said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMariachi is a little hard to describe if you don\u2019t know Spanish, because a lot of it is in the lyrics,\u201d he said. \u201cThey always talk about being heartbroken and wanting love. It\u2019s also very happy and proud of the culture. And another aspect is tequila \u2013 a lot of people drink tequila in Mexico, so it\u2019s a big part of the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in El Paso, Palacios spent a few early years in Juarez, Mexico, before returning to Texas. He remained in the Southwest for his first year of college, attending New Mexico State University (NMSU), where he played in a mariachi band (one of their popular numbers was \u201cAtrapado Entre los Classicos<\/a>,\u201d a mariachi arrangement of \u201cHooked on Classics\u201d).<\/p>\n

At NMSU, he also gained a mentor in violin teacher and conductor Sim\u00f3n Gollo<\/a>. In 2022, when Gollo left Las Cruces to join Furman\u2019s faculty as an associate professor of violin, Palacios also headed to Greenville, South Carolina.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know what to expect,\u201d said Palacios. \u201cI was bracing myself because I knew it was going to be different. But it was good when I got here; in my first semester, I met so many people and made so many connections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eyes and ears on the future<\/h3>\n

Along with bonding over music with fellow students in the Daniel Music Building, Palacios soon connected with the Hispanic Outreach and Latinx Awareness (HOLA<\/a>) student organization, which is helping to present many of the campus events celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. While he ultimately plans to enter graduate school for an eventual doctorate degree in music, Palacios said he might take some time beforehand to teach public school and open his own studio.<\/p>\n

And, of course, \u201cI want to keep composing,\u201d he said \u2013 keeping his eyes on the future of mariachi and his ears open for more beautiful melodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With works putting mariachi musicians on stage with symphonic orchestras, Sahid Palacios \u201925 hopes to take traditional Mexican music in a new direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":27578,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,70,39],"tags":[1120],"class_list":["post-27574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-center-for-interpersonal-connection","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-music","tag-hispanic-heritage-month"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}