Vibrant in a fading East L.A. scene
It’s Wednesday night on Cesar Chavez Avenue in Boyle Heights. At 8 p.m., the lights are still on at Jesse’s Barber Shop, but the botanica is closed and so is the orthopedist whose sign says “Doctor de los Huesos” (bone doctor). The sidewalks are empty as a police cruiser glides down the street in the heart of this historic immigrant neighborhood.
A screen door cracks open in the middle of a mysterious building covered by a wall-to-wall mural depicting twin serpent figures, as if the painting were beckoning a passerby to come inside. Through the door, which is painted as a large guitar, appears Randy Rodarte, sporting a pointy goatee and dressed as nattily as a zoot-suiter -- vest, suspenders, pleated pants and two-tone, black-and-white shoes. “Welcome to the compound,” he says, closing a chain-link gate behind me.
The compound -- home in the back, work space in the front -- is actually one rambling, creaky building that takes up almost the entire lot near Evergreen Cemetery. This is the headquarters of Ollin, a Chicano band founded in 1994 by Randy and his twin brother, Scott, “recovering punk rockers trying to play [Mexican] music we used to make fun of,” as Randy puts it.
The ‘90s were a heady time for Chicano music from East L.A., witnessing the rise of groups bent on expressing barrio culture while exploring other genres in a new fusion, switching between styles as naturally as they switched languages. Inspired partly by the Zapatista revolt in the Mexican state of Chiapas, socially conscious groups such as Ozomatli and Quetzal mixed politics and partying as they created a new chapter in Chicano music history, with a tip of the hat to predecessors such as Los Lobos and Tierra.
Today, that musical movement has all but vanished. Many bands have moved on or broken up and the venues they played have shut down (the Peace and Justice Center) or scaled down (Self-Help Graphics). Ozo’s success lifted it out of the barrio and into the ozone. Quetzal’s uncompromising vision has taken it to Xalapa, Veracruz, for a year-long immersion in the jarocho culture of southern Mexico. Meanwhile, many mainstays of the scene have either disbanded or retreated, including the Blues Experiment, Quinto Sol, Aztlan Underground and Slowrider.
“People say it’s dying, but I think it comes in waves,” says drummer Joshua Duron, formerly with Blues Experiment. “It’s like we need a Chiapas uprising every 14 years.”
He’s kidding, sorta. The truth is that East L.A. seems to need a sociopolitical jolt to reawaken the charged artistic environment that fueled those previous waves of creativity. East L.A. still has some good young groups, such as the rousing, brassy Upground, and plenty of Chicano rappers and anonymous punk bands playing in backyards every weekend. What it doesn’t have anymore is a real music scene.
“In the old days, we had the Eastside network and the club circuit and it’s just very different now,” says Steven Loza, a UCLA professor of ethnomusicology and author of “Barrio Rhythm: Mexican-American Music in Los Angeles.” “It’s a different world and it’s not as visible at times as it used to be. We’re in a digital age now, and a lot of these young musicians are communicating through YouTube.”
The world may have changed, but this historic neighborhood looks much the same as it always has. Long ago, I used to run a record shop in a strip mall near First and Soto, walking distance from Ollin’s home studio, and little appears to have changed in Boyle Heights, with its mom-and-pop businesses, fast-food joints and family atmosphere.
The Rodarte brothers, 37, have invited me to a rehearsal on the eve of their debut performance at the Temple Bar in Santa Monica, a rare date on the Westside. The gig is especially welcomed by the band’s banjo and accordion player, Kurt MacInnes, who lives on that side of town and won’t have to commute -- “for once.”
The rumpled and bespectacled banjo-picker used to play in a bluegrass band before he “got caught up in world music.” As one of four non-Latino members in the nine-piece outfit, MacInnes brings a flair for an Irish gigue. “There really is an Irish-Mexican connection and I don’t think it’s just because of the Catholics,” he deadpans.
That connection is delightfully displayed on “San Patricios,” a spirited instrumental from the band’s latest album of the same title, inspired by the Irish soldiers who fought for Mexico in the war with the United States. During rehearsal, the group weaves through a musical bazaar of styles, from corrido to country-rock, frequently stopping to refine a percussion break or perfect a multi-part harmony. There’s even a Klezmer-inspired piece called “Boyle Heights Boogie.”
Fusion is the hallmark of what Randy calls neo-Chicano music, reflected in eclectic instrumentation including banjo and jarana, maracas and marimba. But it wasn’t always politically correct during the culturally chauvinist Chicano Movement of the 1970s.
“Boogie” was written in honor of the Jewish doctor who once ran a medical clinic in their building. The good doctor employed the Rodartes, both brothers and their mother.
Now, Mom lives in a unit carved out in the back of the rented “compound.” Scott, the group’s songwriter and lead singer, and his wife share another unit in the middle while her brother rents a room in front. The band practices in what used to be the waiting room of the doctor’s office, a musty space with peeling paint, old wallpaper, glass block windows painted for extra privacy and thick plywood on the doors for soundproofing.
A picture of Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos hangs on the wall, along with an image of an African man in tribal costume, traditional Hindu figures and the cover art (an exotic, wavy-haired brunet puffing on a cigarette) from “The Making of a Trophy Grrrl!” by singer-songwriter-actor Lysa Flores, another important figure from the ‘90s scene.
What ties these seemingly disparate musical elements together, with what Randy calls “the Chicano thread,” is more of an attitude than an arrangement. It means they keep their ear tuned to other cultures that share similar stories, and even chord progressions.
“We’re Chicanos and we’re caught in between,” he says, of the challenges of bicultural identity. “So we’re still looking for something. That is what the Chicano thread is: the search.”
On this humble barrio block, Ollin still searches for the future of Chicano music, practicing with punk fury under a bare light bulb.
Side gigs by some of East L.A.’s best
To catch good music from East L.A., you’ve often got to look in other neighborhoods. Here are a couple of upcoming concerts featuring some of the barrio’s best musicians.
Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Louie Perez perform “Stories in Song,” the first acoustic concert collaboration by the principal songwriting team from East L.A.’s premiere band. The show will be followed by a discussion about the duo’s song-writing process moderated by Tu Ciudad editor Oscar Garza.
8 p.m. next Saturday, at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. Tickets are $38 and $33, available through Ticketmaster. For information, call the Barclay box office at (949) 854-4646 or go to www.thebarclay.org.
¡Descarga! Club Los Angeles features B-Side Players and Mentiritas. Tonight’s show marks the fifth anniversary of the monthly Descarga events, a movable party featuring live Latin dance music and resident DJs. B-Side Players is a San Diego-based roots-reggae outfit whose last album was produced by East L.A. bandleader and songwriter Quetzal Flores. Mentiritas (Little Lies) is a new project featuring members of Ozomatli, Beastie Boys and two East L.A. groups, Cava and Yeska.
9 tonight at Echoplex, in Echo Park. Tickets are $10 and $12. Information: (213) 413-8200 or www.descargaclub.com.
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