Kunc's Colorado Edition

We're celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with conversations featuring Hispanic and Latino changemakers, innovators and creators. Today's episode is about music - specifically, mariachi. The style is rooted in Mexico's history, dating back to colonial times, and started to grow in the United States around the 1930s, when people began hearing it on radio stations and in films. These days, it's showing up more often in Colorado schools' music programs, alongside the usual  jazz, orchestra, or symphonic band options for students. That provides the opportunity for more culturally relevant programming to serve increasingly diverse student populations, says Ben San Martin Kellogg. Kellogg isn't from Mexico himself – he's of European and Peruvian ancestry – and he didn't grow up listening to or playing mariachi. But he fell in love with the style when he was brought in to play trumpet in a mariachi ensemble while a student at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He's now a music educator at Edgewater Elementary,