Mary Alfaro Velasco is a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and music educator from Los Angeles, California. She performs diverse musical styles of the Americas including boleros, rancheras, and American roots music to celebrate the depths of female, queer and Latinx identity. She has performed with various mariachi groups, trío romántico ensembles, and other ranchera groups throughout the US, and has recorded with Gaby Moreno, La Santa Cecilia, LA LOM, Mariachi Los Camperos, and José Luis Orozco. Alfaro Velasco has composed and recorded music for professional film, theater, and television productions and has released singles from her first record, a collection of bolero covers to tell a story of gay girl love, loss and healing. She is currently arranging and writing songs for the next volume of recordings. Alfaro Velasco received her B.A. in music and M.A. in Latin American studies from UCLA and has worked on projects to promote and preserve Latinx musical traditions at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture, and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. She teaches two mariachi classes at Santa Monica College, and as an interviewer with the UCLA Center for Oral History, she is currently working on an initiative to preserve the stories of mariachi and ranchera musicians in Los Angeles.