Chicano or Chicana is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans who reject any colonial ancestral roots to embrace solely 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.
Los Lobos is a Mexican-American rock band from East Los Angeles, California. Their music is influenced by rock and roll, Tex-Mex, country, zydeco, folk, R&B, blues, brown-eyed soul, and traditional music such as cumbia, boleros and norteños. The band rose to international stardom in 1987, when their version of "La Bamba" peaked at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, and also topped the charts in the United Kingdom, and several other countries. Songs by Los Lobos have been recorded by Elvis Costello, Waylon Jennings, Frankie Yankovic, and Robert Plant. In 2015, they were nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2018, they were inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame. They are also known for performing the theme song for Handy Manny. As of 2024, they have been nominated for twelve Grammy Awards and have won four.
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.
The music of Mexico is highly diverse, featuring a wide range of musical genres and performance styles. It has been influenced by a variety of cultures, primarily deriving from Europeans, Indigenous, and Africans. Music became an expression of Mexican nationalism starting in the nineteenth century.
"La Bamba" is a Mexican folk song, originally from the state of Veracruz, also known as "La Bomba". The song is best known from a 1958 adaptation by Ritchie Valens, a Top 40 hit on the U.S. charts. Valens's version is ranked number 345 on Rolling Stone magazine′s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
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.
The Ride is a studio album by Los Lobos. It was released on May 4, 2004, by Hollywood / Mammoth Records. It features numerous guest musicians, including Bobby Womack, Tom Waits, Rubén Blades, Dave Alvin, Richard Thompson, Elvis Costello, Mavis Staples, and Garth Hudson. The album contains new material and also new versions of earlier Los Lobos songs.
La Pistola y El Corazón is the fourth album by the Mexican American rock group Los Lobos, released in September 1988 on Slash/Warner Bros. Records. The mini-album is dedicated to Tejano/Mariachi folk music. It won a Grammy Award in 1989 for Best Mexican-American Performance.
Son jarocho is a regional folk musical style of Mexican Son from Veracruz, a Mexican state along the Gulf of Mexico. It evolved over the last two and a half centuries along the coastal portions of southern Tamaulipas state and Veracruz state, hence the term jarocho, a colloquial term for people or things from the port city of Veracruz.
Crow Jane Alley is an album by Willy DeVille. It was recorded in 2004 in Los Angeles. For this album, DeVille was joined by members of the Chicano rock band Quetzal, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, and Peruvian Afro-Cuban jazz drummer Alex Acuña, among other prominent musicians. Crow Jane Alley was produced by John Philip Shenale, the third album Shenale produced for DeVille.
Los Cenzontles is a Mexican-American group, cultural arts academy, and media production studio, that promotes Mexican roots music through research, performance, education, musical recordings and videos. They are based in the working-class city of San Pablo, California where they form the core of Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy, where the members of the group were trained. Los Cenzontles have revived and promoted little known styles of Mexican regional music since 1989. The group has collaborated with numerous artists that include David Hidalgo, Linda Ronstadt, Los Lobos, Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, Jackson Browne, The Chieftains and Flaco Jimenez, among others. Los Cenzontles has produced 30 tradition-based and cross cultural albums, 4 documentaries, and hundreds of video shorts available on their YouTube channel.
Son de Madera is a son jarocho band based in Veracruz, Mexico. Its core members are Ramón Gutiérrez Hernández, Tereso Vega, and Rubí Oseguera Rueda. The band was founded in 1992 by Ramón Gutiérrez and Laura Rebolloso.
Son de Montón is a Mexican band founded in 2004 in Guanajuato, which fuses Mexican traditional music, especially son music and other musical styles with a purpose of bringing traditional music to younger audiences. The members are Ignacio Piñón Pérez, who plays violin, a guitar called a jarana and quijada, Anatolij Tkatschinski Pérez who plays jarana and quijada, Eduardo Vallejo Torres who plays percussion, Antonio López Cardons who plays jarana and harmonica, Fernanda Aldonza López Cardona, Primo Lara Stephens, Luis Jesús Cibrian García, José Abraham Morales Salazar and sound technician Jacob Sinuee Segoviano Alonzo. Its members come from Veracruz, Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Guanajuato, but the band is based in Guanajuato.
Los Soneritos is a group dedicated to Mexican folk music and dance, founded in 2005 in Colima by Omar Alejandro Rojas Ramos. Rojas Ramos formed the group while working at a primary school, giving classes in music and dance. It was formed with the express intention of preserving and promoting folk music and dance to youths and children. The group mostly performs music and dance from its home state of Veracruz such as son, fandango and zapateado, but other similar music such as son from the west of Mexico and the “mitote folkorico” is also in the repertoire. Members of the group have done research about traditional music and dance as well as composed their own original pieces.
Son mexicano is a style of Mexican folk music and dance that encompasses various regional genres, all of which are called son. The term son literally means "sound" in Spanish, and is also applied to other unrelated genres, most notably son cubano.
Las Cafeteras is a Chicano band from East Los Angeles, California. Their music fuses spoken word and folk music, with traditional Son jarocho and zapateado dancing.
Cambalache is a Son Jarocho band based in East Los Angeles, California. They are the one of key bands at the center of the son jarocho explosion in Los Angeles in 2010s.
Martha Gonzalez is a Chicana artist, activist, musician and feminist music theorist. She is an associate professor in the Intercollegiate Department of Chicana/o Latina/o Studies at Scripps College. She is also a lead singer, percussionist, and songwriter for the band Quetzal, which won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop, Rock or Album in 2013. In 2022, Gonzalez was named a MacArthur Fellow by the MacArthur Foundation.
Emma Pérez is an American author and professor, known for her work in queer Chicana feminist studies.
Son Armado is a Mexican-American cultural organization dedicated to the proliferation of the Son Jarocho Fandango, an education-based art form that revolves around celebrations and community gatherings known as Fandangos. Son Armado is based in Austin, Texas.
