SO SOCAL: The Best...The Beautiful...And The Bizarre : PLATTER PATTER : Listen Up, Young People

“Did you forget what bop meant? That’s how come you gotta go to school. It’s very, very simple. You gotta pay attention in class. Let me play this song right here so you can pay attention.”

--Daniel “Sancho” Castro

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Who could possibly doze off during the Cheech Marin-meets-Wolfman Jack rap of the man who calls himself Sancho? Every Saturday from 6 p.m. to midnight, during KPCC-FM’s (89.3) Chicano music show, the radio oozes his unmistakable ese-next-door congeniality. It’s a stream of idiomatic Spanish, convoluted Spanglish and sing-alongs to such seldom-heard nuggets as a live version of Malo’s “Suavecito,” all part of the stay-in-school soft sell.

“The message is more important than the music,” says Castro off the air. “We don’t tell our listeners that, but we hope in the process they’re getting some of the words of wisdom we talk about, about going to school and getting involved. I use the music to catch my breath.”

Castro, 54, has been spreading the word since 1984, when he approached Pasadena City College, which operates KPCC, with an idea for reaching the dropout-prone Latino community. Start talking, it said.

Castro also oversees the Chicano Music Awards, an annual event at the civic auditorium in his native Pasadena. It has raised nearly $1 million for the Quetzalcoatl Memorial Scholarship Fund, named for Castro’s son, who died in a 1994 auto accident at age 8.

“Education was the thing that changed my life,” he says. But it took a while to bring it to the kids. Castro, who has a PhD in social politics, worked as a land developer and consultant to the state Assembly, even running unsuccessfully for a seat in 1976. He wound up at East Los Angeles College, doing a stint as a dean and Chicano studies teacher, and is currently an administrator at Mission College in San Fernando. “But my life revolves around the Saturday show because I dig music, and if I can be a catalyst, that’s cool,” he says.

“I need to be around kids,” he says. “I have to be around something with a future.”