Lalo, Los Lobos y Los Ninos : Lalo Guerrero and the East L.A. Band Team Up for a Children’s ‘Dream’

Los Lobos, the band born in an East Los Angeles garage in 1973 and now one of the most respected names in pop music, is the heartbeat of a new children’s album. Lalo Guerrero, the pioneer Mexican American folk singer and activist, is the heart. And children’s music has rarely sounded so good.

The Grammy-winning, internationally acclaimed Los Lobos, described by drummer Louie Perez as “the soundtrack of the barrio,” and Guerrero, the 78-year-old “father of Chicano music,” have recorded the band’s first children’s album, “Papa’s Dream,” a joyful, family-affirming, bilingual mix of storytelling, rock ‘n’ roll and Mexican folk songs.

Although Los Lobos has done music for children’s spoken-word recording company Rabbit Ears, and appeared on Walt Disney Records’ “Stay Awake” celebrity album a few years ago, this release--by Music for Little People/Warner Bros. Records--is the group’s first major venture into the children’s market.

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“What we do on a folkloric level just naturally lends itself to kids,” Perez said. “We’ve always wanted to do something like this and when we were presented with the idea, it seemed so perfect.”

The idea came from Music for Little People founder Leib Ostrow, who has produced a series of culturally diverse recordings with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Buckwheat Zydeco, Sweet Honey in the Rock and others.

On the recording, Papa Lalo (Guerrero) invites listeners to accompany him and his sons (Los Lobos) and grandchildren (San Pablo, Calif.’s, Los Cenzontles Children’s Coro and others) from East L.A. to Mexico in his “Wooly Bull” blimp to celebrate his 80th birthday and to see his sister Violeta.

As the story unfolds, with complications from a mountain storm and from birds who pluck the blimp’s woolly thread for their nests, Los Lobos complements the action with rousing renditions of such rock ‘n’ roll oldies as “La Bamba,” “Wooly Bully” and “Buzz, Buzz, Buzz,” plus traditional Mexican songs--many with new lyrics to fit the story.

Ostrow, who co-produced the album with Los Lobos and Eugene Rodriguez, an expert in Mexican music, said that Guerrero’s name came up when it was decided that the album would “tie in the kind of rock ‘n’ roll and Mexican music that Los Lobos does” with a story (written by Phillip Rodriguez and Al Carlos Hernandez) about a man taking his family to Mexico.

When Ostrow asked Los Lobos who should play the grandfather, “All of a sudden, all the flags went up in our heads,” Perez said, “and we said, gee, Lalo Guerrero. He’s done such significant things for Latin American music, and he’s always been kind of like a grandfather for us, too.”

Guerrero, who lives in the Palm Springs area and still performs, has known Los Lobos members “since they were 16 years old, just starting out and making a little noise around East L.A.” (In addition to founding members Perez, David Hidalgo, Cesar Rosas and Conrad Lozano, the band includes Steve Berlin and the most recent member, percussionist Victor Bisetti.)

Guerrero was delighted when “the boys” called to ask him if he’d like to do the album. “I said, ‘Hey, man, I’d love it.’ ”

It was inspired casting. Guerrero’s hearty, confident narration in English and Spanish, his melodious lead vocals on “De Colores” and “Cielito Lindo,” and his trademark expansive warmth, draw listeners cozily into an all-inclusive celebration of family and Chicano and Mexican culture.

Guerrero, whose contributions as a folk singer were recognized in 1991 with the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, observes parallels between Los Lobos’ barrio roots and bicultural background, and his own. He notes that just as he did, Los Lobos has embraced both the music of Mexico and the music “of the land of their birth, America.”

Born in Tucson in 1916, Guerrero as a young man dreamed of being another “Rudy Vallee or Al Jolson,” but couldn’t break into the American music mainstream because of his ethnic looks. “I am very Mexican looking. I have a lot of Indian in me,” Guerrero said matter-of-factly, adding that the barrier still exists.

So Guerrero “reverted to my Mexican music and made a good living at it,” then became a musical activist, writing songs in the ‘40s in support of L.A.’s young zoot-suiters who were the targets of racial attacks. Some of the songs were later used in Luis Valdez’s musical “Zoot Suit.”

In the ‘60s, Guerrero’s protest songs chronicled the rise of the Chicano movement, and later he became known for such satiric musical observations as “No Chicanos on TV.”

Guerrero hopes that “Papa’s Dream” “will touch all kinds of children and bring a better relationship between children of different backgrounds. For a while,” he said, “even here in Palm Springs, we had some racial confrontations between black and Mexican American kids. Kids need an understanding of each others’ cultures so they can get along better.”

“Since Day One,” Perez said, “our mission has been to bring our culture to people far and wide and at the same time redefine a lot of stereotypes, and there’s no better place to do that than with children. They are our future.”