Though I
like the blues, and I am a child of the 1960’s rock ‘n roll generation, as a
California Chicano, I don’t think I can claim the “blues” as my musical heritage.
Recently, I
heard two rock musicians discussing the roots of rock ‘n roll, one was
white the other black, both claimed the blues as their legacy, from its
formative years in the Mississippi Delta to the streets of urban Chicago, a
musical tradition that grew out of Southern slavery and gospel music.
Now, as a
California Mexican, I realized the tradition of which they spoke had nothing to
do with me. Our ancestors didn’t arrive on slave ships, nor did they own the
plantations where slaves labored until emancipation in the 1860’s. Our ancestors didn't land on Ellis Island, and, by proxy, inherit the history of
European, African slavery, or its cultural heritages, like language, music,
food, literature, or clothing.
The reason
I started thinking about any of this was because I found it strange that so few
Chicano musicians became international blues or rock stars. Probably, Ritchie
Valens was on his way, until his death at the young age of 17, already with a
number of hits behind him, including his biggest La Bamba, something of an early crossover.
Chris
Montez had some big hits, and he travelled Europe but was never a household
name. Maybe Trini Lopez, though more of a pop singer, and Los Lobos, to some
degree. The most famous, for sure, is Carlos Santana, whose name is recognized
around the world. Yet, what is interesting about Santana is his rock ‘n roll is
an amalgamation of rock and Latin sounds, like percussion, chord progressions, and
melodies.
There were
some Chicano bands who had number #1 hits, like Cannibal and the Headhunters,
Question Mark and the Mysterians, El Chicano (originally the Premieres), big in
their hometowns and geographical regions but not in the spotlight around the
world, or at least, not for very long periods of time.
I know you can find some crazy-good Chicano blues and rock musicians everywhere in the country. So, why has none of them made it “big?” I have a friend who says it was a form of racism. Record companies didn't know what to do with Mexican rock 'n rollers, like how to market them. They were neither Mexican nor American. In some circles, Black Americans were more American than Chicanos.
Could it be, even though many Chicanos are technically skillful musicians, they didn’t inherit the “heart of the blues,” not like African American and white musicians who carry the South in their bloodline, whether genetic or cultural. Black musicians carried the Delta blues all the way to Motown, hip hop, and rap. One might even argue that at its roots, pure country music carries gospel and Delta blues in the core of its musical DNA.
So, does
that mean Chicanos don’t have “soul?” I mean, first you’ve got to have the
“blues” to then be able to have “soul,” right? I’ve heard country musicians
talk about a certain soulful feeling in blue grass and country; after all, they have gospel music at their core, the same as the blues. Chicanos don’t have gospel
music as their cultural or musical roots.
Santana is
interesting. First of all, consider the name. He turned to guitar after first
learning to play the violin in Tijuana's bars with his dad’s band. It was after the
family moved to San Francisco that Carlos says he became the blues-rock man, who is known for his rendition of Latin rock. As much as he talks about his “blues-jazz” influences, is he
really a blues-jazz-rock man, or does his music legacy come more out of the
Perez Prado, Tito Puente, and northern Mexican border tradition, electrified
and modernized by Gibson, Fender guitars and Marshall amps, with mighty
percussion sections inflaming his sound?
So, if
Mexicans, who were either born or migrated to the U.S., didn’t inherit the
Delta-Chicago blues legacy, what did we inherit?
I’ve been
playing rock ‘n roll on a guitar since I was twelve, yet my earliest musical memories
were listening to mono-sounding Mexican regional songs, border music, coming
from my grandmother’s radio, probably the only Spanish language program, at the
time, so most of the Mexican neighborhood was listening to the same songs.
It was
probably the same in barrios across California and the Southwest. We weren’t
listening to the Delta greats, like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Lightening
Hopkins, or Big Mama Thornton, nor did we make the musical transition north to
Chicago. We heard music of Lydia Mendoza, Las Hermanas Huertas and Padilla, Trio
Los Panchos, Los Dandys, too many mariachis to name, and vocal greats, like Jose
Alfredo Jimenez, Ricardo and Antonio Aguilar, Pedro Infante, Lola Beltran, and
so many others.
As a child
of Mexican grandparents and Chicano parents, it’s not so much that I loved my
grandparents’ music, I had no choice. It seeped its way into my pores, much
like the blues seeped into the pores of African American and Caucasian
Americans from the deep South. Yet, what we all called, collectively, “Mexican
music,” still tugs at my heartstrings, today. If I hear the first strains of a
mariachi playing La Negra, or the guitars playing a norteña or corrido, something
stirs inside me, the “blues,” or “soul?” I don’t think so. For me, the music of my ancestors, though I don't understand it all, tugs a little harder at my heart strings.
Mexican
music, from the border to Vera Cruz and the badlands of Jalisco, comes out of
the tradition of la guitarra Andaluza, the Spanish guitar, introduced to
Spain by the Arabs, made popular by the gypsies of Andalucía, the core
instrument in both Delta blues and Mexican music. The border songs of my youth incorporate
Mexican indigenous song, the melodies of the Aztecas and Maya, but they also
include the strains of Europe, particularly, Germans, Poles, and French. Without
an accordion, where would Flaco Jimenez be?
The “feeling”
of transcendence produced by border music might be kin to the Delta blues or
Motown’s “soul.” It’s what the grand Andaluz poet, Federico Garcia Lorca identified
as “Duende,” discovered in the gypsy siguiriya called, cante jondo,
loosely translated as “deep song,” a translation that doesn’t do it justice.
According
to Lorca, “It is the voice of the people.” It is “depended upon the ‘personality’
of an individual performer, and upon his or her search for the spirit known as ‘duende.'”
Like Robert Johnson at the crossroads, Lorca says, “Not that the artist simply
surrenders to the ‘duende’; he or she has to battle it skillfully, on the rim of
the well, ‘in’ hand to hand combat,” or else sell his soul to the devil. (Lorca, In Search of Duende)
1 comment:
Hi Daniel, I enjoyed reading your post exploring the history of Chicano music heritage. It is an interesting topic as it is true that there were few Chicanos who made it big and there were no soul or blues inspirations around. I think that each culture finds their own musical sound because of being limited to the music we grow up with. Then as you mentioned in your post, the problem arises of how to market a new sounding music to the public without knowing how it will be received so that limits new opportunities for artists to be able to explore their sound. Hence why Santana found his sound by blending the music he grew up with, with local music in San Francisco which was easier to publicize.
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