LOS ANGELES (AP) — Crystal Hernández steadies her violin and scans the crowd from the sixth floor of SoFi Stadium as 70,000 fans stream into a Los Angeles Rams home game. Below her, blue-and-gold jerseys mix with charro suits and sombreros, and the low rumble of pregame noise swells into the opening notes of the late Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” reimagined through trumpets, guitarrón and vihuela.
On Hernández's right, rock guitarist Nita Strauss cuts
through with an electric solo as the several-piece mariachi ensemble locked into rhythm. On the concourse, fans stop mid-step, phones raised, caught by the unlikely fusion of rock, mariachi and football.
At games, it's not unusual to hear Kendrick Lamar,Bad Bunny and Beyoncé's music blaring through the speakers. But the Mariachi Rams are reshaping the sound of NFL game day, blending traditional Mexican music with Los Angeles’ hip-hop and rock influences in a way no other team in the league does.
“Mariachi music has so much flexibility and I think that’s special because we get to show how versatile mariachi music is to the NFL audience,” says Hernández, who is the only woman in the NFL’s first official mariachi band. She's the daughter of Mariachi legend José Hernández, who built the ensemble when he partnered with the Rams in 2019.
In one moment, they play classic mariachi standards. In the next, they are turning Tupac Shakur’s “California Love” into a brass-heavy anthem as a lowrider car bounces nearby while fans roar from the stands.
“The things that come out of our communities, all of our communities, we all represent each other,” says rapper Xzibit, who performed with the USC Marching Band at halftime during the Rams game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He says seeing the Mariachi Rams on the NFL stage speaks to how the culture moves through the city without boundaries.
“To be brought into something where culture is embraced on that level,” Xzibit says. “That's when you feel like you're part of something that matters.”
José Hernández didn’t land in the Mariachi Rams by accident.
A Rams staffer approached him several years ago with a video of a mariachi group performing at a major soccer match and asked a simple question: “Could this work for football?” recalled the Grammy-nominated musician and founder of Mariachi Sol de Mexico and Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles, an all-female mariachi ensemble that includes Crystal Hernández.
José Hernández didn't hesitate. He believed it could work with the right musicians and musical range. What followed was the formation of a 10-member ensemble built to bridge tradition and modern Los Angeles sound, performing classic mariachi standards alongside reimagined pop and hip-hop anthems from “El Rey” to Tupac's “California Love.”
“It's pride and passion,” Hernández says.
The Mariachi Rams are made up of:
Santiago Espinoza (vihuela), Mateo Real (guitar), Joshua Gutierrez (guitarrón), Kevin Ramirez (trumpet), Christopher Rubalcava (trumpet), Crystal Hernández (violin), Adrian Arias (violin), Ricardo Rios (violin), Ricardo Cisneros (violin) and Joaquin Telles (violin).
Hernández says his vision from the start was to reflect the city around them musically and culturally.
“When they see young musicians on that jumbotron at SoFi playing songs they completely connect with, you can't even imagine the pride they feel,” he says.
While other NFL teams, including the Houston Texans, now feature mariachi bands as part of their cultural programming, the Rams were the first to embed a mariachi ensemble as a recurring game-day element when they launched the Mariachi Rams six years ago. Since then, a handful of teams have followed.
Behind the stadium lights and viral halftime moments are musicians who spend most of their week far from the field teaching students, working in offices, designing graphics or performing in classical orchestras across Southern California.
Several members of the Mariachi Rams teach through José Hernández’s mariachi academy. Others balance careers in education, banking, graphic design and orchestral performance before transforming into stadium entertainers on Sundays.
“They have careers, their regular jobs during the week,” José Hernández says. “For them to put on that suit and to go to SoFi and to play … you just can’t imagine the pride that they feel.”
Santiago Espinoza, the band’s vihuela player and a music educator, says the band has become “rock stars in a way,” especially given how often they appear on the SoFi stadium's massive video boards.
“Other people who maybe don’t know about mariachi, they come in to a game and maybe experience mariachi for the first time and they just love it,” he says. “The energy and the vibe that it gives is just electric.”
That energy travels well beyond the concourse.
“Even the players on the field notice… the whole stadium is interconnected,” Espinoza says. “It’s like a big family. We like to call it the Ramilia.”
The band’s presence has become so baked into the Rams’ game-day rhythm that fans immediately sense when something changes.
The group typically performs three times on game day: when gates open, during a first-quarter break and again later depending on the flow of the game. Their role has expanded into community events, watch parties and team activations across Los Angeles.
That evolution includes a holiday collaboration with the band War, which will perform “Feliz Navidad” alongside the Mariachi Rams at SoFi on Sunday.
“There was maybe one game where we had to cut one of their performances, and people… heard about it in the voice of the fan,” says Marissa Daly, the Rams’ senior vice president of studio and marketing. “It was like, ‘Why did they only play twice?’”
While the Mariachi Rams are a Rams-driven initiative, not an official NFL program, their rise fits inside a broader leaguewide push to expand how football connects culturally.
Recently, the NFL has spotlighted Latin artists at international games and major events as part of a strategy to grow its global and multicultural footprint.
Mariachi music has long been woven into the fabric of Los Angeles’ public life. It's a staple across various neighborhoods through quinceañeras, weddings, parades, street festivals and championship celebrations. Bringing that sound into SoFi Stadium, Daly says, was about introducing something new to the city in hopes of reflecting what was already there.
“Our main logo is the two letters ‘Los Angeles.’ It’s LA, right?” Daly says. “You can’t not celebrate Mexican American culture if you’re an Angeleno. If you don’t understand Mexican American culture, you’re probably not going win over this market.”
For Crystal Hernández, the meaning of the Mariachi Rams stretches beyond music and game day. It’s about visibility in a space that has rarely made room for women.
“It makes people feel seen,” she says of the band’s presence at SoFi. “It makes them feel excited to see that their home team, the Rams, recognizes that and embraces it.”
As the only woman in the group, Hernández says she stands at the intersection of tradition and change. For her father, the moment is deeply personal, saying she broke the mold for his family's seven generations of male musicians.
José Hernández believes the band can break barriers too.
“I think it's the beginning of a movement in the NFL," he says. “If these teams know they have Latino fans supporting them, they're going to think of bringing mariachi too.”
