All about the son... jarocho and otherwise

Grooves and good vibra here in the wake of the Self Help Graphics storm. Para empezar, I offer a strident shout out to Nico of Los Poets del Norte and his partner Mayra, who operates Teocintli, a cultural space and store in Boyle Heights that offers clothing, accessories, books and other relevant gear as well as a small gallery space. They recently relocated from a smaller home a block away, and the grand re-opening was well attended. Got my eye on one of Nico's paintings neart the register, so "hands off," please! Just keeding... Regrettably, I couldn't stay long enough to catch the poetry performances or the music from Buyepongo, but the art exhibition was definitely worth the trip over the hill.

The community meeting at Self Help reminded all of us just how important it is to create ownership of our own cultural spaces. The influx of investors who merely seek to "flip" property for a profit is a historical fact and since we weren't even safe in the hands of the church, it's time to remind all the well-connected and politically installed Chicanos that they have an important roll to play financially, that they shouldn't just come around when they're looking for votes or want some high quality and somehow still inexpensive art to decorate their fancy homes. They should get behind and on board a capitalization project that would create enough funding for a permanent Self Help home on the East Side.

Diatribes and tirades and soapboxes aside, the música jarocha showcase held at Trópico de Nopal last Sunday was pure sonic deliciousness. Reyes and his family should be proud of the space they have built from the ground up. The backyard at Trópico was awash in the sound of jarana and tololoche the likes of which had not likely ever been seen or heard in LA's Rampart vecindad. Of course, with Son de Madera having already played McArther Park as part of the Levitt Pavillion summer concert series and the unequivocably stunnng performance on the same stage last night by Quetzal, it's safe to say that son jarocho and sonfusión Chicano inspired by son jarocho are fast finding an audience in that neck o' the cityscape. And speaking of which, I can't miss CAVA, a band led by Claudia Gonzalez, whose older sister Martha sings lead vocals with Quetzal. CAVA performing tonight at the Zona Rosa Caffe in Pasadena, not too far from this little second floor redoubt in el sereno... Claudia also lends vocals to Mentiritas, the band I profiled for Tu Ciudad magazine and will have to do so again somewhere else since Ciudad's August issue (where the story was slated to run) was never published. For now, you can check out the piece on the Mentiritas page. I send special thanks to artist Rick Mobbs for the image above called "The Kiss of the Fourth Wind." I've borrowed it for a flyer to announce the "Literoticana Chicana: una noche de luz, deseo y lengua" poetry event I helped put together at East Side Luv on August 14th with Ruben Funkahuatl Guevara and maestra Gloria Alvarez. More on that shortly.

Calling All Superhero Hoop Girls to Self Help

Calling all superhero Hoop Girls! We need your sassy, take-no-prisoners strength. We're in a crutch. Right about now, your fuerza and in-it-to-win-it incandescence would come in quite handy. Can you please take a small leave of absence from the stage and the pages of the brilliant new play by Gabriela López, the production I was fortunate enough to catch at a closing Casa 0101 performance? You see, the nefarious powers that be over at the LA Archdiocese have sold Self Help Graphics & Art out from under the community to some nameless, faceless real estate developer and investor who says he wants to get $30,000 (!!!!!) a month in rent and that the artists, community members and world renowned art programs that have called the building at César Chávez (Brooklyn) and Gage home for 30 years are going to have to vacate the premises at the end of the year. With no prior discussion or warning, the Sisters of St. Francis, Mount Alverno allowed the LA Archodiocese to hawk the building on the block for a whole lot less than the original $1.5 million asking price they quoted to members of the Self Help board of directors back in 2007. There are even some who say the money is being used to help the church settle lawsuits stemming from the abuse scandals.

The community is aghast. How could the cruel and allegedly Christian leaders let a priceless cultural legacy go so easily? How on earth could they have tossed a glittering institution that has nurtured two generations of artists into the wind without so much as a discussion? Why would they have shuttered or attempted to shutter a center responsible for the creation of so much beauty within a neighborhood that has suffered marginalization and neglect for a century? With no attempt at engaging the real stakeholders, they kept the deal secret and even asked the new owner to stay away from the property until the sale was final. How's that for desgraciadamente descarado?

Hoop Girls, we're flashing the silver-gold hoop signal, the golden beam of circular power into the Gotham-Metropolis-Boyle Heights night sky because you are, like so many of us in Eagle Rock, Highland Park, El Sereno, and Lincoln Heights, the children Self Help. We came of age with knowledge of ateliers and silkscreens and the selfless dedication of one Sister Karen Boccalero, who nurtured and trained and cajoled a multitude of artists who have been our role models, mentors and teachers. We beseech you because the profiteers are trying to turn back the clock. Property is at a premium and they know the subway is coming. It's a blatant landgrab and the officeholders (many of our own, in fact) think we're going to roll over on the East Side just because they took the farm in South Central away with nary a scuffle. Hoop Girls, we call on you as masters of the universe who can fight crime and overcome the idiocy of politicians and businessmen while balancing on four-inch heels and mastering the art of how to wear the four-inch hoop earring with unparalleled style and grace. Please hear our plea. Would it be possible to bring that ensemble magic, that trancendent love, care and concern that enveloped audiences and inspired us with its truth to Self Help for a final stand?

LA County Supervisor Gloria Molina, demonstrating a bit of Hoop Girl panache herself, has promised to help make the church answer for its ungodly and seemingly intentional disregard for Self Help, this when the organization has been in comeback mode for over a year with several successful print shows and cultural celebrations behind it, enough to make the glimmer of hope and a phoenix-like rise from the bumpy transitions it weathered for a minute there a distinct probability and not just a possiblity...

Next episode: Will Supervisor Molina deliver on her Hoop Girl promise? Will the Mayor and Council Member José Huizar do the right thing and join the forces with the Hoop Girl justice league? Will Self Help find a new home on the East Side? Tune in next week for answers to these and many other life or death questions... (special thanks to artist and blogger Ed Fuentes for the SHG press conference photo above)

Nostalgia and the farce of July

It is sadness and hope at the same time. It is the winded glow that comes from an afternoon climb to the hilltop pond at Debs Park alongside the decent and kind profesor Felipe Castruita, for the stunning views of Highland Park, the downtown LA skyline, Montecito Heights and El Sereno from a place as tall and serene as you will find en esta tierra de mil lomas. This the day after the first Proyecto Jardín Wednesday capoeira workshop I've ever attended. Talk about toe-up! So then June 28th, tres días despues, it was once again essential Los, and it began on Saturday morning with kids who are currently detained at Eastlake Juvenile Hall, where a fifteen year old girl who had just read my dog-eared copy of Bless Me, Ultima, said that it didn't matter if she was locked up or not because her mind and her imagination were free. Wisdom from the mouths of children... Immediately thereafter, I tended bar at a backyard wedding. The groom was a periodista friend and an LA newcomer from Oklahoma who met and fell in love with a beautiful colombiana during his first visit there a little over a year ago. Michael is a child of the bible belt holy rollers and another testament to the transformative power of Los Angeles. Although he struggled with his vows in Spanish, there were few dry eyes there. Best wishes for the happy couple from opposite ends of the universe.

In the face of all the hoopla about a McCain visit to Colombia and the release of prisoners by the guerrilla forces, there's the unspoken undercurrent. While the media talks about some sort of daring rescue, I see no proof. Some have even said that there was a hefty ransom paid and that McCain was the bagman. The released military contractors (read mercenaries ala Blackwater) can now go on CNN and talk about how they were held hostage by terrorists. Let's bring the farce of Iraq closer to home so we can create more unfounded fear and somehow link Hugo Chavez. We can't let him get all the credit for getting prisoners of war released, now can we?

All of which brings us to the Xicano Records & Film Farce of July, which reminds us that all the patriotic hoopla is once again a way to distract the numbed and medicated masses glued to their screens. Should we mindlessly admire celebratory fireworks against the backdrop of a useless war that bankrupts our nation and enriches the war profiteers while everyday folk struggle just to come up with gas money? Anyguey, enough of the ranting. I would have liked to hear the musical and poetic presentations at both Farce of July events held in LA last Friday but missed both. Y en mi opinión humilde, it was good sign that we, as angelinos, could support and provide decent sized audiences for at least two events staged to create that kind of awareness. My nephew, who works at a progressive radio station in Buffalo, New York, took his new bride to Canada for the 4th and rode a ferris wheel. "I went to Canada to celebrate," he told his mother, my sister Joanne.

Many who dropped by the closing night celebration at Antigua Cultural Coffee House, here in El Sereno a week before the chantaje del cuatro de julio will recall that the assembled crowd was so joyful and upbeat, spilling out onto the street for Luis Vega's incendiary public performance art piece that LAPD even dispatched a helicopter to buzz the sky over us and flash the ghetto buster light on the huge contingent of former patrons who had come to say goodbye. Too many people enjoying the jaraner@s or the reggae grooves of Pachamama to handle or what? I should be glad I live in a country that sends the po-po just because we came out in strength and peace to support a neighborhood business that was literally being forced out to make way for a Starbuck$ or a Coffee Bean? NO creo yo, chuy.

Cut to the "Nostalgia" exhibition at Lilia Ramírez' First Street Studios which opened on Saturday, July 5th with a set of unplugged and spine-tingling music from El-Haru Kuroi. If you thought the Herban Mother-lode show was a smash, the selection of paintings, prints and photographs gathered for the current exhibition are irridescent in their ability to evoke sadness over lost lives and loves as well as melancholy over the immutable past while embracing optimism simultaneously. The show includes work by Javier Barboza, Cesar Gonzalez, Rogelio Gutierrez, Jennifer Gutierrez Morgan, Andrea LaHue, Rosalie Lopez, Manuel Lopez, Rick Mendoza, Esmeralda Montes, Stephen Romio, Victor Rosas, Alexander Schaefer, Mariacruz Velasco and Rosalie Villegas. "Nostalgia" runs through July 26th.

Before 'n after

The crash landing in dizzy-land after the magia of a visit to tierra liberada comes suffused with mixed feelings. Have to say, at the onset, that it's always refreshing to read compa' Jimmy Mendiola's critical take on the pop cultura tip. Recently annointed with a kudo in Ciudad Magazine's "Best of Latino LA" issue, his blog--monikered with a tongue-in-cheek "Ken Burns Hates Mexicans" sobriquet--is right on in pointing out how we are truthfully devoid of Chican@ superheroes. His criticism of the brown folk dearth in New York-generated rock histories deserves mention. And I particularly enjoy his terse, unadorned writing style. It's in that spirit that I almost feel like offering up a joke about how Ciudad fingered his blog for notice and then went belly up. While I personally disagree with JMs blanket dismissal of Journey as a serious musical standard, I can condone the efforts to separate punk rebellion from the '80s extension of the oldies heart-thump songs that fueled Whittier Blvd. cruises and crushes and heartbreaks while many of us were in diapers far away from East LA. That said, or as Jimmy often adroitly observes in classic Marvel Comic guru Stan Lee-speak "Nuff Said."

The last three weeks, while defined by post-poetry withdrawal symptoms have also been largely balanced by what seems to be an explosion on the cultural front. From the exhibition at LACMA of art by Chicano painters from the personal collection of Cheech Marin (picture above: "Chino Latino" 2000 by Chaz Bojorquez) to the black-and-brown "Changing Ties" show at Ave. 50 as well as the eye-popping "Rebel Legacies" show of abstract Latino art curated by Ave. 50 director Kathy Gallegos at the Pharmaka Gallery in downtown LA, there has been very little time to breathe. Toss in a healthy mix of music and theatre at California Plaza's "Grand Performances" that included former Tijuana No rocker Ceci Bastida, new work from playwright-actor-director Adelina Anthony and music from Seun Kuti & Fela's Egypt 80 and the mercury in LA's ahts-n-kultcha thermometer skyrockets. Makes one dizzy just getting from one show or worthy cause-related event to the next.

As a sweat-drenched and stirring example, this recent weekend began with a stop Friday night at Cal Plaza for Egypt 80 and a barrage of African beats. Saturday started with a Very Be Careful headliner performance at El Cariso County Park during the Tia Chucha Cafe Cultural's third annual Celebrating Words Festival held out in Sylmar which was followed by a garden party to celebrate the 80th birthday of Don Normark, a photographer who was on hand to document when Chicano families were being evicted and having their homes razed in 1949 to make way for Dodger Stadium. The Highland Park hilltop backyard was literally aglow with about 75 friends and artists for a sit down, serve-yourself-on-real-china and crystalware affair that rivaled the poshest La Brea Avenue art happening. Flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts were the encouraged optional attire. Sunday found me at a Cornfields park in Chinatown for an equally lovely birthday potluck BBQ in honor of Daniel González, a printmaker and artist who turned 28 and was recently commissioned to create a public art piece for a station on the new Metro Expo line. Meanwhile Ave. 50 hosted Trekking LA's summer-long demonstration of traditional comida eaten in LA's distinct art communties by hiring a Pachuca, Hidaldo family now-based in Riverside to prepare barbacoa in a fire pit filled with maguey cactus leaves. It smoked for 12 hours and guests who didn't eat lamb or chicken could still make due with grilled veggies. Trekking LA is a project of LA Commons, which art and stories to help foster better understanding between communities.

If you get out to one thing this coming weekend, check out the goodbye event at Antigua. We're all upset that it's closing down since it was the source of so much El Sereno pride and leaves a hole in the cultural and politically active community that calls this beloved neighborhood home.

Encuentro Mundial & Chronic Cubanitis

Still reeling with the euphoria of it all. Que les puedo decir? Imagine poetry in the original Guaraní delivered with quiet elegance and dignity by Suzy Delgado, an elder, poet and journalist from Paraguay. Just imagine contemporary poems shared in Mapuche and Aymara from the altiplanos or Wayú desde Colombia offered selflessly by indigenous bards and word warriors who represent the soul of the hemisphere. From El Sereno to the sierra andina where the eagle and the condor soar as one, I bask in the afterglow. Suficiente decir que en algunos lugares, los poetas son bienvenidos como sagrados sacerdotes. Never before have I felt so welcome. As a result, I'll have a poem appearing in a Peruvian literary magazine. I'll eventually make my way to Madrid for a "lectura" organized on by a poet originally from Las Islas Canarias. If that were not enough to celebrate, uno de mis mejores camaradas, Francisco of Smokin' Mirrors, and I will one day be able to share a documentary on the state of poetry in the world today and its urgency in our time. I'm thankful to the grandmothers and grandfathers, to all my relations, for providing the doorway and the words with which to express my amazement and gratitude. Stay tuned for oblique references and periodic stammerings in a effort to share at least slivers and snippets of the glorious cascade, the fusilade of spoken word and glistening verse I was blessed by only recently as a participant en un encuentro increíble.

Respite from the Sun

From the jam-packed Very Be Careful show on Friday at Grandstar's Firecracker in Chinatown to the Amsterdam Cafe in the North Hollywood arts district on Sunday for an afternoon of poetry, there was no avoiding the extreme heat that laid low the greater LA-area. At the moment, the much cooler sound of an El Sereno rooster accompanies the hint of fog under partially overcast skies. He must think it's the breaking of a longer-than-average dawn. This contrasts with the smoking VBC fusilade of Colombian cumbia and happy-fingered accordion riffs which was brief but beautiful. Unexpectedly caught sight, from across the room, of a healthy contingent from Proyecto Jardin, a squad of white-clad artisans and community comadres who support, nurture and cultivate--literally--the independent Boyle Heights green space and gather once a month for the Mercado Caracol to break bread while trading/selling books, jewelry, crafts and herbal products. Bumped into Azul and his camera yet again for an equally pleasant surprise. Of course, the foursome I was part of raced madly thereafter to Eastside Luv for last call with Guillermo "Pata de Perro" Uribe, whose entirely too hip and too cool night spot was the subject of an LA Times feature the following day. Felicidades to Guillermo and Arlene. You have to love an in-house DJ that plays Morrisey and Ramón Ayala back to back. And what's with all these husband and wife teams showing the rest of us how that sort of thing is possible? Unfortunately, I missed the Mentiritas show there the next night, but that's another story. Do yourself a favor and catch Lysa Flores there this Friday if you can't make the history of LA DJ culture event on Thursday.

Running on Firecracker fumes and residual Eastside Luv glow from the night before, I still managed to catch the last part of the First Annual Latino Student Film Festival at Lincoln High School in Lincoln Heights, the neighborhood directly south of here on Saturday morning. Organized by Harry Liflan and the Latin-American Cinemateca of LA, the one-day fest was chock-full of future directors, producers and writers. Alternately touching and hilarious, the short films were marked by uncanny understanding of teen angst and its place in the world as a harbinger of passion and the creative spirit. And the vegetarian tamales I brought home are off the hizinges.

Qwik-ee Round Up: I'll save the personal take on Linda Arreola's "Vaguely Chicana" exhibit, which closed on Saturday afternoon at Trópico de Nopal Gallery and the Vexing show which opened at the Claremont Museum of Art on Saturday night for another post. Suffice it simply to say here that Arreola is an El Sereno neighbor whose work is con[text]ually divine in its geometric and mathematical precision. At the other end of the spectrum, the Claremont exhibition is intended to highlight the contributions of women to the underground LA Chicano punk scene during the late 70s and early 80s as well as the bastard, hybrid art spawned by that era. Much of the work, which ruptured outward into the mainstream consciouness with an LA Weekly article on ASCO and again with the opening of "Phantom Sightings" at LACMA, is reprised, but not a rehash. Despite the fact that at least two of the show's curators were children being reared in places other than LA when the scene unfolded, the exhibition is extremely well put together. The research was spot on. The raucous opening night performances by queen of Chicano rock Lysa Flores and Alice Bags were fever pitch odes to the Sex Pistols and Clash-inspired turbulence I flirted with in high school while at the same time, I was ordering by mail a compilation album titled Los Angelinos: The Eastside Renaissance, a 1983 issue that included tunes by both The Brat and The Plugz. And who will ever match Alice Bags neé Alicia Armendáriz shouting "Chinga tu madre" in a song at the top of her lungs repeatedly then joking about the need to end her set because the vehicle from the senior citizen's home was waiting for her outside?

In the sin verguenza, mire lo que hice department, I read a few poems at the Amsterdam Cafe in the North Hollywood (NOHO... How pretensious is that?) Arts District on Sunday alongside Gloria Alvarez who has been like a sister, a literary co-conspirator and all-around comandante brillante through a tumultuous year, and Gabriela Jauregui, a heavy-duty wordslinger packed into a tiny, five-foot frame all decked out in a gauzy white dress, red undergarments and cat-eye glasses. Her book, Controlled Decay, is available on Chris Abani's Black Goat poetry series. Born and raised in Mexico City, she out-Conrads Conrad with an urgent, dangerously sublime command of el idioma de los gringos. Her poems are visceral yet captivatingly femenine. Obviously, being educated at some of the best schools in two countries as part of the elite, privileged class is no hindrance. But hers is a language that trancends, that couples freedom and liberation and dreams of a society without class distinctions or exploitation. Muscular and at times venturing compellingly into the realm of the pyrotechnic, her work is necessary frontburner reading and at the leading edge of Latina letters in the U.S. Props to Rafael Alvarado for coordinating the monthly Amsterdam event.

Dualities and Line Drawing

Have to begin this post with a resounding plug for Alberto Ibarra and Christi Burgos, who celebrate 13 years of matrimony and art. Beto is a founding member of Teatro Chusma in East LA, and they both make stunning visual work they've grouped together for a show called "Giving Birth to Duality." The husband and wife collaborative exhibition is currently on display at Antigua Cultural Coffee House here in El Sereno and features serigraphy and painting as well as the vivid 3-D paper mache pieces Burgos creates as the force behind Mayan Inspirations. I wasn't able to make the opening, but the work will remain on exhibit for the next few weeks. Be sure to check the wedding photo that pictures the happy couple in front of a classic bomb lowrider straight from the 1940s. Kind of makes you proud to be in LA.

"Herban Mother-Lode," a photo exhibition at First Street Studios in the heart of Boyle Heights featuring work by several photographers I admire, opened last Saturday with a daylight outdoor performance by East LA's favored musical sons Ollin and beats by Spaceways Radio DJ Carlos Nino. The exhibition offer eye-catching and thoughtful work by Sandra de la Loza, Dalila Mendez, Heriberto Oriol and his son Esteban Oriol. Definitely worth checking out. I plan to stop by for a second look myself. It was definitely cool to finally catch up with Azul, the artist behind the "Peace in Iraq" photo project.

Of course, the weekend would not have been complete without a predictable stop at Ave. 50 after the Boyle Heights run for a showing of new work from The Los De Abajo Printmaking Collective, an informal group working out of Self-Help Graphics. "Drawing the Line," as the exhibition is titled, is a tantalizing show of experimental prints that use line as a point of departure for exploration and examination of social demarcations, internal and external emotional states as well as the intersections of art with political and personal ideologies or transfigurations. Among the artists exhibiting are José Lozano, Emelda Gutierrez, Judith Durán, Kay Brown, Poli Marichal (who will also be part of the "Maestras" show opening in several weeks at Self-Help), Mariana Sadowsky, Antonio Escalante, Victor Rojas and fellow Echospace Poetry Collective member Don Newton.

Emelda Gutierrez and Kay Brown deserve mention here because I had not yet realized how singularly powerful and evocative their respective print work has become. Beyond that, I'm wearing a nugget-sized quartz crystal in a brass wire setting that hangs from a leather chord around my neck these days. It is a gift from the hyper-energetic Gutierrez, and it has become the amulet that fuses both poetic and earthly energy for me as the waves of melancholy nostalgia and fear-laced sadness are gradually replaced with peace and light and joy.