With her violin tucked under her chin, and her bow moving methodically across the strings, Jessie Vallejo ’07 plays mariachi music at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles as part of a COVID-relief fundraiser for CORE, a global humanitarian organization founded by Sean Penn and Ann Lee.
The SUNY Potsdam alumna, who received her degree in music education from The Crane School of Music, has played live music all over the world with groups like Mariachi Lindas Mexicanas, an all-women's group based in Los Angeles. From the famous Hollywood Bowl and performances at the Latin Grammy Awards and Arnold Schwarzenegger's home to international shows in Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador and China—Vallejo has taken her skills from Crane to a global stage.
“These types of large performances always make me want to pinch myself, and during sound checks, I often have this wave of profound appreciation for where my violin has taken me in the world,” she said.
After walking across the commencement stage at SUNY Potsdam almost two decades ago, Vallejo began her career as a music teacher in the Syracuse City School District, Baldwinsville, and West Genesee Middle and High Schools. She provided string lessons to middle school students, violin lessons to high school students, and then at West Genesee Middle School she led the orchestra program.
“I loved it there and had a great time starting to apply my ideas in teaching mariachi music through the alternative strings group started by Steve Frackenpohl,” she said. “I wasn't sure what would happen next, so I applied to just three graduate schools and was ready to apply to string jobs in New York State, but to my surprise, I received a special fellowship to go to UCLA's ethnomusicology program, my top choice for graduate school.”
In 2008, she moved to southern California to pursue her master’s degree and Ph.D. in musicology / ethnomusicology from UCLA, a region of the country that she has called home ever since. “Often people say you need to be in the right place at the right time, and some of that is what helped me; however, you need to be prepared for that moment, and SUNY Potsdam was key to my success in that I was well-prepared for these opportunities when they came up,” Vallejo said.
After receiving her Ph.D. in 2014, she began teaching ethnomusicology classes at UCLA and UC Riverside part-time, before accepting a full-time position at the California State Polytechnic University in Pomona a year later. For the past decade, she has been teaching ethnomusicology at the college and has taught classes across the core curriculum for all music majors. She also established a mariachi group on campus that has continued to create exciting performance opportunities for her students.
“I rely on the skills I learned at Crane and SUNY Potsdam every day. For example, Southern California hasn't had as strong of a history in string education or even consistent music education in many schools where our college students come from. This means that a lot of the students who join my class are beginners. I think some of my coworkers had low expectations for what the ensemble might achieve, but I credit my degree in music education and what I learned at Crane as being the secret to my success in preparing brand new students in a short amount of time."
Vallejo meets with her students two to three hours a week, and although most are non-music majors who don’t take private lessons, she has seen the students excel as they learn to play mariachi music. After just two to three years in the group, Mariachi Los Broncos, several students have started performing professionally throughout the region.
“All of what I learned at Crane related to teaching my secondary instruments, musicianship skills, and rehearsal techniques have been central to the success of the program and my classes,” she said.
Outside of the classroom and performance spaces, Vallejo has been conducting a variety of research examining the intersection of music and culture, with a significant work centered around Native American musicians like the Kichwa-Otavaleño and Kanien'kehá:ka.
“I have focused primarily on sociocultural and linguistic revitalization projects that focus on musical practices. Although sometimes people may think music is frivolous or a luxury entertainment, in the contexts where I have worked, music is central to asserting and reclaiming sovereignty for Indigenous communities,” she explained.
As an extension of her role at Cal Poly Pomona, Vallejo also conducted research on the impact of mariachi music during the global pandemic. She noted that most mariachis depend on live performances for their income, and as her network of musician friends played live music, she did as well.
“Mariachi is a versatile style, and we were able to adapt to performing and adhering to safety precautions. As COVID began to hit Los Angeles and Southern California in December of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, I performed nearly a year's worth of events (many funerals) in the months that are typically slowest. I observed and witnessed immense grief and loss across the region, and in some cases, the losses were personal friends, family members, or mentors,” she said. “Overall, I feel the experience of performing during the pandemic taught me about how much society does value music. When policymakers, scientists, or medical doctors are unable to help, when people have nothing left, they turn to music.”
Her Roots
The path to her success began years earlier as a student at Soule Road Middle School and Liverpool High School, just north of Syracuse, New York. Her middle school teacher, Edie Shillitoe, encouraged her to audition for a variety of performance opportunities, including the All-County Music Festival. “She taught me that if I didn't succeed in an audition one year, I'd be that much more prepared the following year. She also had us play fiddle music, so she was an early influence for me to pursue playing multiple styles of music,” Vallejo said.
Early influences in her life also included Dr. Robert Washburn ’49, a beloved professor who taught at Crane for more than five decades. At one point during his career at Crane, he worked as a guest conductor for Vallejo’s high school orchestra, where he also introduced her to the field of ethnomusicology.
“When I heard that a career existed in which you'd be expected to travel and learn about the world through music, I was determined to follow that path. I also saw college as an opportunity to begin learning heritage languages lost in my family. My father understood Spanish but stopped speaking it due to how California K-12 schools were English-only when he was a child, and some teachers would threaten to hit the students with rulers if they spoke Spanish,” she said.
Eager to connect her cultural heritage with her passion for music, she applied to music schools around New York State, eventually choosing Crane after encouragement from her violin teachers Barry Blumenthal and Mary Calogero, both Crane alumni.
“After I visited campus for auditions, I couldn't stop talking about the opportunities there. I also remember the audition process feeling so welcoming. A senior bass student helped me find my way around the building and to my scheduled activities. My audition day was a very cold, blustery, and white-out snowy day, but Crane was buzzing with energy. None of the other campuses felt that way."
When she arrived in the fall, she enrolled in Crane’s prestigious music education program, while also branching out across campus to pursue a minor in Spanish—the perfect accompaniment to her path in ethnomusicology. During her four years at the College, she developed essential skills as a musician and music educator, while embracing an interdisciplinary approach to her education as she weaved modern languages into her studies.
“My degree in Spanish is another aspect of my SUNY Potsdam education that has influenced my career and personal life every day. My language learning skills shape how I teach, how I integrate cultural lessons into the classroom, and how I communicate in the field for my research or performances,” she said.
While at SUNY Potsdam, Vallejo studied abroad in Madrid, Spain, and then received funding for a trip to Mexico to study how mariachi music is played in her grandfather’s hometown, León, Guanajuato.
“For me, it was empowering to study my family's heritage language in addition to being part of a renowned music education program. My time working with the student clubs (at the time called the Caribbean Latin American Student Society and the Black Student Alliance) was also essential for my personal and career growth,” she said.
Memories of late-night practice sessions with friends, playing in the musical theater pit, hanging out at Pete's Place, and playing sports in the Knowles quad, all rush back to her mind when thinking about Potsdam. One of the most significant moments from her undergraduate years was the opportunity to play the violin on stage at Carnegie Hall with the Crane Symphony Orchestra on her 20th birthday.
“Crane provided me with excellent musicianship skills, practice ethic, and general knowledge of multiple instruments. I am so glad to see the curriculum becoming more diverse with offerings like the mariachi ensemble. Presidential Scholars was another opportunity that allowed me to have mentorship in research, performance, and language in ways that prepared me for success in graduate school and my post-graduate career,” she said.
Now with her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology, a decade of teaching experience in higher education under her belt, and extensive performance experience around the world, Vallejo has now been making an impact at her alma mater. In the fall of 2024, she returned to campus to work with students in Crane’s new mariachi group, Los Osos del Norte, led by Dr. Shelly Tramposh.
“It has been moving to see so many students from all sorts of backgrounds interested in honoring the culture and the music. Although people may think having a mariachi way up in the north country is a novelty, the likelihood that current Crane students will have to work with mariachi or Mexican music at some point in their career is high,” Vallejo said. “I hope there will be future possibilities for my students at Cal Poly Pomona to collaborate with Crane students. Overall, Potsdam and Crane opened up many doors for me, and I have been thrilled to give back to the campus and support faculty and student efforts of integrating mariachi into the campus and broadening the curriculum in ways that benefit all students.”
Article by Jason Hunter