Chicano or Chicana is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans who denounce their colonial ancestral roots to solely embrace their Mexican Native ancestry. Chicano was originally a classist and racist slur used toward low-income Mexicans that was reclaimed in the 1940s among youth who belonged to the Pachuco and Pachuca subculture. In the 1960s, Chicano was widely reclaimed in the building of a movement toward political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of indigenous descent. Chicano developed its own meaning separate from Mexican American identity. Youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into the mainstream American culture and embraced their own identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance. The community forged an independent political and cultural movement, sometimes working alongside the Black power movement.
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs, club DJs, mobile DJs, and turntablists. Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
House is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by a repetitive four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 115–130 beats per minute. It was created by DJs and music producers from Chicago's Black gay underground club culture and evolved slowly in the early/mid 1980s as DJs began altering disco songs to give them a more mechanical beat. By early 1988, House became mainstream and supplanted the typical 80s music beat.
Chicano rock, also called chicano fusion, is rock music performed by Mexican American (Chicano) groups or music with themes derived from Chicano culture. Chicano Rock, to a great extent, does not refer to any single style or approach. Some of these groups do not sing in Spanish at all, or use many specific Latin instruments or sounds. The subgenre is defined by the ethnicity of its performers, and as a result covers a wide range of approaches.
Cowpunk is a subgenre of punk rock that began in the United Kingdom and Southern California in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It combines punk rock or new wave with country, folk, and blues in its sound, lyrical subject matter, attitude, and style. Examples include Social Distortion, The Gun Club, The Long Ryders, Dash Rip Rock, Violent Femmes, The Blasters, Mojo Nixon, Meat Puppets, The Beat Farmers, Rubber Rodeo, Rank and File, and Jason and the Scorchers. Many of the musicians in this scene subsequently became associated with alternative country, roots rock or Americana.
Chicago house refers to house music produced during the mid to late 1980s within Chicago. The term is generally used to refer to the original house music DJs and producers from the area, such as Ron Hardy and Phuture.
Reik is a Mexican pop rock band from Mexicali, Baja California, formed in 2003 by Jesús Alberto Navarro Rosas, Julio Ramírez Eguía, and Gilberto Marín Espinoza (guitar). The group's first five albums have been classified as Latin pop, but the group has since transitioned to a more urban-influenced sound since 2015. Reik has won a Latin Billboard Music Award, four Los Premios MTV Latinoamérica awards, and a Latin Grammy.
The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement in the United States that worked to embrace a Chicano/a identity and worldview that combated structural racism, encouraged cultural revitalization, and achieved community empowerment by rejecting assimilation. Chicanos also expressed solidarity and defined their culture through the development of Chicano art during El Movimiento, and stood firm in preserving their religion.
Chicana feminism is a sociopolitical movement, theory, and praxis that scrutinizes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections impacting Chicanas and the Chicana/o community in the United States. Chicana feminism empowers women to challenge institutionalized social norms and regards anyone a feminist who fights for the end of women's oppression in the community.
Suburban Home Records and Distribution is a record label based in Denver, Colorado, United States. The label was founded in 1995 by Virgil Dickerson, and is known for focusing on vinyl releases and bands in the pop-punk and alt-country genres. Its roster has included Two Cow Garage, Drag the River, Oblivion, The Gamits, and Apocalypse Hoboken. In 2006 the label founded the Vinyl Collective, an online store that serves as a community hub for independent vinyl collectors.
Dynamix II is an American DJ act and record label specializing in electro, Florida breaks, and Miami bass. Their 1986 single "Just Give The DJ A Break", reached gold status. Over 600,000+ units of the record were sold and the song reached No. 50 in the United Kingdom in 1987. The record, was considered to be a "formative and influential" in the Miami-bass genre. The track was one of first Miami Bass records to use a Roland TR 808 bass drum.
Danny Robledo, better known as Hypno5ive or Hypno5 is an alternative music DJ, artist, promoter, designer and publisher of a music website of the same name that offers news and reviews focusing on industrial, ebm, darkwave, gothic, post-punk and alternative genres.
Noah Benjamin Lennox, also known by his moniker Panda Bear, is an American musician, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and co-founding member of the band Animal Collective. In addition to his work with that group, Lennox has released six solo LPs since 1999, with his 2007 album Person Pitch inspiring the chillwave genre and numerous other acts. His subsequent albums Tomboy (2011) and Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper (2015) both reached the Billboard 200.
Nu-disco is a 21st-century dance music genre associated with a renewed interest in the late 1970s disco, synthesizer-heavy 1980s European dance music styles, and early 1990s electronic dance music. The genre was popular in the early 2000s, and experienced a mild resurgence in the 2010s.
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is a 1987 semi-autobiographical work by Gloria E. Anzaldúa that examines the Chicano and Latino experience through the lens of issues such as gender, identity, race, and colonialism. Borderlands is considered to be Anzaldúa’s most well-known work and a pioneering piece of Chicana literature.
Ajene Griffith, better known as DJ Agile, is a Canadian hip-hop producer and DJ from Toronto, Ontario. He is a member of the hip-hop groups BrassMunk and Big Black Lincoln.
Willie F. Herrón III is an American Chicano muralist, performance artist and commercial artist.
DJing is the act of playing existing recorded music for a live audience.
Diana Danelys De Los Santos, known professionally as Amara La Negra, is an American singer, actress, dancer, author, and television host. De Los Santos is of Dominican descent, and is most known for her role on the VH1 reality TV show Love & Hip Hop: Miami. La Negra was dubbed by Billboard as the show's "breakout star", landing a multi-album record deal with BMG hours after the show's premiere.
Chicana art emerged as part of the Chicano Movement in the 1960s. It used art to express political and social resistance through different art mediums. Chicana artists explore and interrogate traditional Mexican-American values and embody feminist themes through different mediums such as murals, painting, and photography. The momentum created from the Chicano Movement spurred a Chicano Renaissance among Chicanas and Chicanos. Artists voiced their concerns about oppression and empowerment in all areas of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Chicana feminist artists and Anglo-feminist took a different approach in the way they collaborated and made their work during the 1970s. Chicana feminist artists utilized artistic collaborations and collectives that included men, while Anglo-feminist artists generally utilized women-only participants. Art has been used as a cultural reclamation process for Chicana and Chicano artists allowing them to be proud of their roots by combining art styles to illustrate their multi-cultured lives.
