First ever ‘Mission Trails Music Festival’ leaves people wanting more

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) - Destination El Paso and El Paso County partnered to bring the first 'Mission Trail Music Festival' to the historic nine mile stretch along Socorro Road.

The event is free to attend, scheduled to last from 1 p.m. until 10 p.m. meant to be a day of cultural celebration according to organizers.

The booths with food and cutouts allowing people to take photos as their favorite Loteria squares and even a place to play cornhole all encircle the main courtyard with enough tables and chairs for everyone as the stage and dancefloor are where people's attention is drawn to.

Energy from the performers on stage reflects back onto the audience as every song draws a new crowd to the dance floor reflecting the moves seen on stage with the smiles on the people as big as the ones on the singers in between verses.

Each song change brings a different color of light filling the stage, the main reason people like Adri Munez Lopez enjoyed coming in addition to being 'in the middle of history'.

"It's amazing, the food is delicious, the music is insane," Lopez said. "To be here in the missions, in the middle of history it's amazingly beautiful and I can't wait for this to be an annual thing."

An aspect of the set list Lopez liked was a reflection of the cultural celebration the festival is meant to be and was definitely one of the highlights for her.

"They started everything out with a Danza Prehispanica that was beautiful, it was theatrical and also honoring our roots," Lopez said. "La Cumbia, la comida, the gorditas were top notch."

Now that the community has had a taste of this festival, at least in Lopez's opinion, there should be more for them to enjoy to bring people together through culture as she said.

"I think we need more of these kind of festivals that bring together our culture, our heritage, our food so that we can come together as a community," Lopez said. "We need more of this in different pockets of our area."

Lopez said she really hopes this festival returns and becomes a regular occurrence for her to look forward to in her community because in her opinion 'it's important and we need it'.

For more information you can go to Destination El Paso's website here.