Los Mapaches

My son took Los Mapaches after school classes for 11 years from 2^nd grade until he graduated from high school this year and loved every minute of it. Lydia is a wonderful teacher who has an amazing ability to inspire her students. My son and his classmates learned to play a wide range of instruments over the years including not only the panpipes, flutes and percussion mentioned in the review above, but also a variety of stringed instruments from guitar to charango as well as singing in Spanish and several Andean native tongues.
The classes currently meet at Berkwood Hedge School in downtown Berkeley and the group performs a couple of times a year at La Peña and at various festivals around the Bay Area. Excellent musicians and dancers from Bay area Andean ensembles frequently work with the Mapaches in workshops and performances. A real high point (literally!) of my son’s experience was a trip a couple of years ago to Bolivia and Peru with the Mapaches where they exchanged and performed with another youth group in La Paz and toured the country.
I highly recommend this program for any elementary school child seeking an interesting musical experience regardless of previous training.