POP MUSIC : Hinojosa Spices Songs With Cultural Variety

Does ethnic pride stand in the way of a larger sense of commonality and social cohesion?

In music, at least, the evidence suggests that ethnicity doesn’t have to build walls but can serve as a foundation for a vision that is at once particular and widely embracing.

Los Lobos is one of the grandest examples of artists who immerse themselves in the music of their ethnic heritage but also venture into a wider world of influences. The band’s concerts and albums offer a vibrant display of the Mexican folk roots it absorbed when it was starting out 20 years ago in East Los Angeles.

But cherishing a Mexican identity didn’t stop Los Lobos from mastering blues, heartland rock and, more recently, avant-garde rock influences. For Los Lobos, heritage is vital, but it lives alongside a love of music that comes from sources outside its own ethnic background. When the band weaves its shows from many strands, including the ones passed down through its bloodlines, it plays with a higher artistic understanding that allows diverse strands to hang together.

One gets the same sense of the particular and the universal listening to Tish Hinojosa, the Texas-born singer who plays a Cinco de Mayo concert tonight at Cal State Long Beach’s new Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center. Hinojosa will appear with a backing trio.

The youngest of 13 children raised in San Antonio by Mexican immigrants, Hinojosa grew up listening to the folk songs and pop ballads of her ancestral homeland. But she also absorbed American folk music, country and rock ‘n’ roll.

Like Los Lobos, Hinojosa never seems to be on foreign musical turf. Her pure, pliant voice can call to mind Joan Baez and Nanci Griffith in folkier moments, Emmylou Harris when she veers toward traditional country and Natalie Merchant when she turns up in a pop-rock context and dips into a dusky lower register. On record, she also has shown an easy way with Western swing and the dreamy rhythms of Cuban salsa and Brazilian samba.

Hinojosa writes most of her own material. Her fine ear for melody shows in numerous lovely, tender, romantic ballads. Her social concerns come across in songs that seek to put a human face on political issues. “Something in the Rain,” from her 1992 album, “Culture Swing,” personalizes the plight of migrant workers exposed to toxic chemicals while working in the fields. Her gentle, sorrowing approach proves more moving and effective than soapbox thunder.

Now in her late 30s, Hinojosa made her first career gambit in 1983 when she moved to Nashville. After two years yielded scant results, she headed back to the Southwest. She eventually wound up on the Austin, Tex., scene that has been an incubator for diverse, progressive roots music in which folk, rock and country are seen as complementary, not mutually exclusive.

She emerged on the national scene in 1989 with the well-received “Homeland,” on A&M; Records (Los Lobos member Steve Berlin was the producer). Difficulties with the label led to her shelving a planned follow-up that was produced by R&B; great Booker T. Jones, but Hinojosa returned in 1991 with “Aquella Noche,” a lovely, ballad-oriented release on the independent Watermelon label. Sung almost entirely in Spanish, “Aquella Noche” captured a concert she gave in Austin in honor of Cinco de Mayo.

“Culture Swing,” on a bigger independent, Rounder Records, explored Hinojosa’s full range of influences. Next up is “Destiny’s Gate,” due out later this month on Warner Bros.

Back on a major label, Hinojosa is clearly bidding for a mainstream audience. The production is too glossy at times, indulging in synthesizer and string sweetening that gilds the lily. However, her essence as an intelligent, melodically gifted writer and fetching singer consistently comes through.

Perhaps “Destiny’s Gate” will help Hinojosa reach the audience that has opened up for such popular folk-pop-country hybrid artists as Mary-Chapin Carpenter and Rosanne Cash. Worse compromises have been made to further the careers of far less interesting talents.

Who: Tish Hinojosa.

When: Tonight, May 5, at 8.

Where: Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 E. Atherton St., Long Beach.

Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Palo Verde Avenue exit; go south on Palo Verde, turn west on East Atherton Street. Theater is on the south side of Atherton.

Wherewithal: $15 and $12, with $2 discounts for students and seniors.

Where to call: (310) 985-7000.

MORE POP:

Veteran Orange County country singer Jann Browne celebrates the release of a fine new album, “Count Me In,” with shows Friday and Saturday, May 6 and 7, at the Rio Grande Bar and Grill, 26701 Verdugo St., San Juan Capistrano. (714) 496-8181.

Kristin Hersh, founder of the long-running alternative rock critics fave Throwing Muses, has taken a detour with her first solo album, “Hips and Makers.” The always-intense Hersh plays a solo acoustic show Friday, May 6 at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, with the ethereal new British duo, Pooka, opening. (714) 496-8930.

Winston Rodney, a.k.a. Burning Spear, has been one of the most trenchant performers on the reggae scene since the 1970s. His latest release is “The World Should Know.” Burning Spear plays Saturday and Sunday, May 7 and 8, at the Coach House. (714) 496-8930.

* POP LISTINGS, Page 15