Since Al Pizano and his family moved to Santa Barbara in 1978, he has made a name for himself through his involvement with a plethora of community organizations, including the Flamenco Arts Festival, the Hispanic Achievement Council, the Santa Barbara Mariachi Festival, the Public Education Foundation, the United Boys & Girls Clubs and Old Spanish Days, for which he served as El Presidente in 1987.

Pizano is perhaps best known for founding the Mariachi Festival with longtime friend and Santa Barbara County Supervisor Salud Carbajal, who called Pizano a valued role model and inspiration.​

“Al has also been a proud advocate and promoter of his Mexican-American heritage,” Carbajal said. “He has also been a tireless advocate for socio-economic justice and political empowerment of the Latino community.”

Though the entertainment business was new to both men, they saw an opportunity to create Santa Barbara’s first major arts production geared toward the local Latino population.

The annual concert draws a diverse audience, but Pizano credits the Latino community’s response as the key to selling out the Santa Barbara Bowl’s 4,500 seats in their first year.

“They turned out, and turned out in bunches,” he said.

Today, Pizano’s focus is maintaining the success of the Flamenco Arts Festival, which he co-founded with his daughter, Vibiana Pizano. This year’s festival will be held this Friday through Sunday, Sept. 26-28. Click here for more information.

With the lessons he learned creating the Mariachi Festival, Pizano was well positioned to help his daughter realize her vision of brining Spain’s best flamenco performing companies to Santa Barbara for a weekend of performances, classes and celebrations of this popular art form.

“Honestly, I sometimes wonder why someone hadn’t thought about it years ago,” Pizano said. “It wasn’t for lack of interest in flamenco.”

As with the Mariachi Festival, a diverse Santa Barbara audience filled the Lobero Theatre to capacity and confirmed Pizano’s belief that it was “an idea whose time had come.”

After many successful seasons, the Flamenco Arts Festival relocated to the Granada Theatre last year.

“To see it succeed, and succeed at the Granada Theatre, was really a thrill,” Pizano said. “At 1,200 (tickets sold), we were double the amount of people we ever had at the Lobero.”

Nearly all of the organizations he co-founded have an educational component with college scholarships given out during the Mariachi Festival and dance scholarships for the Flamenco Arts Festival.

“My interest has always been education,” says Pizano, who was working toward a teaching credential at Cal State Los Angeles when he was offered a job at Southern California Gas Company and moved to Santa Barbara with his family. “Education made such a big difference in my life.”

His fierce belief in the importance of “equal education of children everywhere“ stems from watching his father, an immigrant from Mexico, struggle to succeed in the United States because he did not speak English.

Along with valuing education, Pizano taught his children the importance of serving the community by involving them in projects such as cleaning up Lincoln Park in Los Angeles and organizing local support for Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

“I learned from these experiences (and believe me there were many) that community service is important to strengthening a community, and it brings a diverse group of people together to work toward a common goal,” said Vibiana Pizano, who remembers staying at home to watch her younger siblings while her parents were at the Ambassador Hotel the night Kennedy was assassinated.

Shortly after arriving in Santa Barbara, Al Pizano jumped at the chance to join the Santa Barbara school district board (pre-unification) when board member Mark Phillips resigned in 1979. On his way out, Phillips stated that in light of the increasing Latino population in local schools, he would like the board to choose a Latino to serve the remaining two years of his term.

“He came in with much experience in volunteering,” current College School District board president Molly Carrillo-Walker said. “He knew the importance of staying connected to the community and making it better.”

As the only Latino on the school board, Pizano was an advocate for creating a more diverse district from the top down.

“I quickly became very unpopular when in a KEYT interview I stated that there needed to be greater representation of Latinos on the teaching staff,” he said.

He continued to disrupt the status quo by advocating for bilingual education and objecting to the selling of Lincoln School.

Though he chose not to run for an elected position on the school board, his involvement in the community only grew from there.

Through his next project, Pizano sought to remedy another way in which Latinos were lacking representation.

“My prime preoccupation became the recognition of Latinos in Santa Barbara — people who daily work to make the community better, people in every walk of life who were not being recognized,” he explained.

So Pizano worked to found the Hispanic Achievement Council, which chose as its first honoree Judge Frank Ochoa, who was the first Latino judge to serve in Santa Barbara County since the 1800s. Pizano and his colleagues at the Hispanic Achievement Council held annual events to honor local Latinos for 25 years, only ceasing when they saw Latinos receiving due recognition in all sectors of the community.

In 1996, it was Pizano who was recognized when he was chosen as a local torch-bearer for the Olympic Games.

“Not to detract from anything,” Pizano shares, “but it was one of the greatest thrills of my life.”

He is still in awe that he was able to carry the Olympic torch, and because the selection process is confidential, the person who nominated him remains a mystery.

“Whoever they are, whatever they did,” he said,” I’m eternally grateful.”

— Noozhawk intern Jessica Haro can be reached at news@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.