| Primavera Music Series: Visiting Artists Strike
Chord of Diversity
Chicano/Latino music may often be associated with a warm Spanish guitar plucked alongside the skipping notes of an accordion, but as many students have found out this semester through the interactive Primavera Music Series, the genre runs much deeper than that.
The Chicana/Chicano Studies and Music Departments have secured top artists such as “Money Mark,” also known as Mark Ramos Nishita, who made his name while working with the Beastie Boys, and Marcos Loya, a well known musician and composer for theater and movies, including Once Upon a Time in Mexico, for the semester-long program to not only share their music but the life experiences that forged such works.
Loya came to campus to teach the Chicano/Latino Music class for the Chicana/Chicano Studies Department this year (Dateline, 12/12/05; click here) and was instrumental in bringing the five other artists to campus for the Primavera series. As he explains, it’s the dynamic nature of such music that makes it impossible to peg it as one thing or another. “What we’re really trying to do is show the diversity of Chicano/Latino music, while also showing the thread that ties it all together. We’re trying to open the students’ minds to all these beautiful styles of music and their roots,” he says.
 The program kicked off on Feb. 1 with Guillermo Cespedes’ discussion of Afro-Latin music, where African American and Latino music merge. Both Loya and
Irene Vasquez, professor and chair, Chicana/Chicano Studies, say such fusion is at the heart of the program and Chicano/Latino music in general, which draws its influences from genres as divergent as rhythm and blues, jazz, rock, and even punk. The recent emergence of reggaeton, a genre that combines Latin music with hip-hop, and its chart-topping artists like “Daddy Yankee,” further supports such a focus.
While hoping to bridge divides between cultures through the focus on fusion, Vasquez references a performance by Loya last year as the seed from which the program was born. The audience’s reaction to Loya showed her that a series of such performances mixed in with discussion and lecture could provide much more than entertainment for students. “I realized that music is a very contagious art form. When you hear it, you not only want to get up and dance and move to it, but it can also have a deep impact on people,” she says.
Providing an example, she refers to the most recent Primavera performance by Martha and Quetzal Flores, in which Martha Flores explained she was able to avoid the troubles and pitfalls of living in an inner city East L.A. community when she stepped into her music. Today, that music reflects such an upbringing and can help audience members who have also faced such life challenges.
“A program like this can allow students to connect with the music and these performers. They can find some sort of self-meaning in a chaotic world,” says Vasquez, who also suggests that music often has activist roots, in which it can educate and put voice to social and political issues.
Avant-garde musician Gustavo Aguilar will come to campus next on April 12.
His presentation is titled “Performing Chicano Identity.” A week later, Nishita will deliver “Getting something from nothing: pop music, movie soundtracks and noise.” In addition to his work as a keyboard player with the Beastie Boys, Nishita has developed a strong following in trip-hop and other electronic-based music genres, all of which will be a part of his presentation. The series will close with Loya’s presentation, “Chicano/Latino music from the heartland,” in celebration of Cinco de Mayo on May 4.
According to Vasquez, the strong response of this year’s program has the department planning for next year, thus making Primavera an annual program a foregone conclusion. Next spring, she hopes to attract Chicano/Latino composers who are instrumental in the development of music but typically do not receive the attention of performers.
The Primavera Music Series is free and open to the public. Performances will be in room A-103, the recital hall on the first floor of La Corte Hall, at 7 p.m.
Cal State Dominguez Hills is at 1000 E. Victoria Street, off Avalon Boulevard between the 91 and 405 freeways and east of the 110 freeway at the 190th Street exit (190th becomes East Victoria). La Corte Hall is across from parking lot six, accessible from the Tamcliff Street-Toro Center Drive entrance off East Victoria Street. Parking is $3 and parking permits are available from the yellow dispensing machines at the perimeters of parking lots. For more information on the event, call (310) 243-3326 or (310) 243-3327. Those numbers will be staffed until 6 p.m. on the day of the event.
For more information on Chicana/o Studies, visit http://www.cla.csudh.edu/dnp/chicana_o_studies/courses.asp?dcID=16.
-Ryan Brandt
Photo above: Marcos Loya, visiting artist, Chicana/o Studies, will present "Chicano/Latino Music from the Heartland" on May 4; photo by Severo Perez
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