Various Sources
It's hard to believe George Ramirez, whose name became synonymous with culture and the arts in Brownsville, died one year ago Oct. 12, 2019, at 73.
Jorge Alberto Ramirez Muñoz was born in in Mexico City in 1946 and emigrated with his family to Los Angeles in 1957. Ramirez came to Brownsville in the early 1980s to launch Polibrid Coatings Inc., a polyurethane industrial coating company that is still in operation.
It's hard to believe George Ramirez, whose name became synonymous with culture and the arts in Brownsville, died one year ago Oct. 12, 2019, at 73.
Ramirez, with his ubiquitous black felt hat and cigarette, was tireless in his quest to uplift local musical tastes through the nonprofit Brownsville Society for the Performing Arts and eventually became its president. His death eerily coincided with the 23rd anniversary of the Brownsville Latin Jazz Festival, which he also founded.
Fully one year since his passing, the crown of his accomplishments, the $5 million Brownsville Performing Arts Academy housed in the once-derelict Stegman Building at E. 11th and Washington street, has undertaken the mission that Ramirez envisioned.
The leaders of the Revival of Cultural Arts (RCA) based at the Carlotta Petrina Museum say they are well on the way to implement education projects in dance and music for low-income kids. Just yesterday, the center was filled with kids taking their dance lessons.
Ramirez literally dedicated a handful of years midwifing it into reality.
Ramirez was associated with the Brownsville Society for the Performing Arts. The RCA has been dedicated to provide free music and dance education to children from low- to moderate-income families in the city’s Buena Vida neighborhood.
An article in the Brownsville Herald after his death said that "Ramirez had envisioned the academy has a certified center for El Sistema, an education model created in Venezuela in the mid-1970s and today considered the world’s most advanced method for teaching classic music and dance to at-risk children in disadvantaged areas."
Jorge Alberto Ramirez Muñoz was born in in Mexico City in 1946 and emigrated with his family to Los Angeles in 1957. Ramirez came to Brownsville in the early 1980s to launch Polibrid Coatings Inc., a polyurethane industrial coating company that is still in operation.
District 4 City Commission Ben Neece – then a municipal judge – met Ramirez and they wound up serving together on the BSPA board. It was during that time that the jazz festival was born.
“Somehow I got into salsa,” Neece told the Brownsville Herald's Steve Clark. “I was listening to a lot of it. I said, ‘George, let’s do a salsa festival.’ He said, ‘Salsa’s kind of narrow. Let’s go with Latin jazz.’”
Ramirez managed to book “King of Latin Music” Tito Puente as headliner that first year. Ramirez was also instrumental in creating, with University of Texas at Brownsville-Texas Southmost College music professor Michael Quantz, the Brownsville Guitar Ensemble Festival and Competition in 2002.
“Actually, he invited me on to the board back in the early days when it was mostly physicians that were populating the BSPA,” Quantz said. He related a story of Ramirez’s response a few years ago when he discovered that none of the students in UTB’s opera workshop had ever seen a live opera performance.
“He just thought that that was completely unacceptable, so he bought tickets to the Houston Grand Opera and sponsored the whole trip for the entire opera workshop,” Quantz said.
Ramirez’s musical tastes were wide-ranging to say the least, and continue to be broadcast automatically around the clock on KXIQ 105.1, a low-power radio station Ramirez launched in July 2017.
Lone Star National Bank on Boca Chica Boulevard donated offices for the station and a roof on which to mount the antenna, though Ramirez supplied the tunes — hundreds if not thousands of songs from vintage rock and country to folk, blues, funk, jazz, Motown and of course Latin jazz, lots of it.
Tune in to KXIQ and it won’t be long before a Beatles or Bob Dylan song pops up. Ramirez loved Dylan and the Beatles, saw the Fab Four perform live at the Hollywood Bowl in 1965 as a teenager, and once told the Herald that the album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was “one that changed us all, really.”
“Blues, rock ‘n’ roll, cumbia — there wasn’t an art form that he couldn’t appreciate, as long as it was an expression of the human condition,” Quantz said. “If it was from the heart, George could appreciate it.”
Quantz noted that Ramirez “loved watching people enjoy themselves” and also took a great interest in others’ well being, personally sponsoring a number of scholarships for music students.
“If there was a need and he heard about it, he did his best to take care of it,” Quantz said. “George brought joy to the place. He made everybody bigger and happier.”
Ramirez long championed the revitalization of downtown Brownsville, and in 2011 he bought the old Fernandez Hide Yard Building, where Neece was running the small live music venue Crescent Moon Café. The two collaborated in that business for a while before going in together on the Half Moon Saloon, which occupies more of the Fernandez Building, which Ramirez restored.
“Somehow I got into salsa,” Neece told the Brownsville Herald's Steve Clark. “I was listening to a lot of it. I said, ‘George, let’s do a salsa festival.’ He said, ‘Salsa’s kind of narrow. Let’s go with Latin jazz.’”
Ramirez managed to book “King of Latin Music” Tito Puente as headliner that first year. Ramirez was also instrumental in creating, with University of Texas at Brownsville-Texas Southmost College music professor Michael Quantz, the Brownsville Guitar Ensemble Festival and Competition in 2002.
“Actually, he invited me on to the board back in the early days when it was mostly physicians that were populating the BSPA,” Quantz said. He related a story of Ramirez’s response a few years ago when he discovered that none of the students in UTB’s opera workshop had ever seen a live opera performance.
“He just thought that that was completely unacceptable, so he bought tickets to the Houston Grand Opera and sponsored the whole trip for the entire opera workshop,” Quantz said.
Ramirez’s musical tastes were wide-ranging to say the least, and continue to be broadcast automatically around the clock on KXIQ 105.1, a low-power radio station Ramirez launched in July 2017.
Lone Star National Bank on Boca Chica Boulevard donated offices for the station and a roof on which to mount the antenna, though Ramirez supplied the tunes — hundreds if not thousands of songs from vintage rock and country to folk, blues, funk, jazz, Motown and of course Latin jazz, lots of it.Tune in to KXIQ and it won’t be long before a Beatles or Bob Dylan song pops up. Ramirez loved Dylan and the Beatles, saw the Fab Four perform live at the Hollywood Bowl in 1965 as a teenager, and once told the Herald that the album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was “one that changed us all, really.”
“Blues, rock ‘n’ roll, cumbia — there wasn’t an art form that he couldn’t appreciate, as long as it was an expression of the human condition,” Quantz said. “If it was from the heart, George could appreciate it.”
Quantz noted that Ramirez “loved watching people enjoy themselves” and also took a great interest in others’ well being, personally sponsoring a number of scholarships for music students.
“If there was a need and he heard about it, he did his best to take care of it,” Quantz said. “George brought joy to the place. He made everybody bigger and happier.”
Ramirez long championed the revitalization of downtown Brownsville, and in 2011 he bought the old Fernandez Hide Yard Building, where Neece was running the small live music venue Crescent Moon Café. The two collaborated in that business for a while before going in together on the Half Moon Saloon, which occupies more of the Fernandez Building, which Ramirez restored.
That, unfortunately, is also for sale by his surviving family.
10 comments:
The RCA could not manage a raspa stand.
They are nothing but another radical socialist politically motivated group that has no clue how the real world works.
Brownsville has no appetite for the Arts. It is a town starving for food, Montoya. smh
IT'S NOT OPEN? i saw lessons there the other day? is this an old article?
If it would benefit the gringos it would have never been closed, but it don't but as long as you people elect pinches cocos wanna be white, things here will never change.
The academy had to close down due to the covid restrictions. Now that the restrictions have been lifted, the academy is up and running with classes in music, art, dance and film with hundreds of kids enrolled. By the way, when it was closed, teachers were using online platforms for all their lessons.
George Ramirez was a doer, not a poser wannabe like so many of the misleaders in the Browntown. George had an appreciation for the arts and culture which he supported with his time and money. I miss him.
Rest In Peace, my friend. We’ll get it together one day down here!
“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
This is a crazy article - there have been great events at the center. From crossroads to performances, interviews, lessons, all kinds of great things going on..... this article makes no sense and only is trying to cause problems
This is an insult to the teachers and volunteers as well as the 100s of students who go there
It’s as if - they are insignificant because they don’t have money or don’t live in fancy neighborhoods
Ramirez would love that underserved children are getting served- he would thank these teachers — he would tip that hat and smile and wave
What you didnt accomplish in a lifetime will not be accomplished with a death
Let that bottonless barrell jiin the likes of the sports park and UTB
October 17, 2020 at 10:21 AM
forgot bike trails...
Who ever wrote this is trying to sway readers in to thinking the city made a mistake in allowing roca to use the building. They are doing great things - but according to the writer they are not
Classic privileged group coming in on “fancy horses” with their LIES thinking they and their friends$$$ can do better for their $mall little group
The worst part- the insult of it all is they do this in the spirit of “Ramirez”
Please you do nothing in his spirit —you do it for selfishness and attention . Do something in Ramirez’ spirit and get off your fancy high horse and volunteer to teach a course to underprivileged kids- for free .
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