{"id":6665,"date":"2015-09-25T15:55:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T15:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=6665"},"modified":"2015-09-26T15:00:51","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T15:00:51","slug":"los-lobos-the-powerful-and-beautiful-social-comment-of-gates-of-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=6665","title":{"rendered":"Los Lobos: The powerful and beautiful social comment of &#8220;Gates of Gold&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fcbkbttn_buttons_block\" id=\"fcbkbttn_left\"><div class=\"fcbkbttn_button\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Kevin Lynch\" target=\"_blank\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/facebook-button-plugin\/images\/large-facebook-ico.png\" alt=\"Fb-Button\" \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><div class=\"fcbkbttn_like fcbkbttn_large_button\"><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=6665\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\" layout=\"button_count\"  size=\"large\"><\/fb:like><\/div><div class=\"fb-share-button fcbkbttn_large_button \" data-href=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=6665\" data-type=\"button_count\" data-size=\"large\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"main-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/test-nodep.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/styles\/large\/s3\/images\/main_image\/article\/loslobos.jpg?itok=xyFkDlob\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"body field\">\n<p>A cartoon strip by Brian McFadden that ran in\u00a0<em>The New York Times\u00a0<\/em>on Sept. 6 depicted a forlorn Statue of Liberty greeting a boatload of immigrants with a sign reading \u201cHuddled Masses No Longer Welcome.\u201d It\u2019s timely, considering a new groundswell of build-a-border-wall, anti-immigrant politicians, and it all raises the question: What does it mean to be an American?<\/p>\n<p>Here in the roots music sphere, the great Mexican-American band Los Lobos raises the same question, as well as others. Especially:\u00a0What would this country be without its deep, meaningful roots in many other nations?<\/p>\n<p>Los Lobos\u2019 brilliant new album,\u00a0<em>Gates of Gold <\/em>(released Sept. 25 on 429 Records),\u00a0speaks volumes toward defining how America\u2019s complex roots music culture feeds into the backbone of our national identity. It is possibly their best since 1992\u2019s\u00a0<em>Kiko, <\/em>and it reflects our national presumption of exceptionalism. Indeed, few American music groups embody \u201cAmerican exceptionalism\u201d \u2013 in the best sense of that fraught term \u2013 more than Los Lobos. All its longtime members are second-generation Americans. Without the 14th amendment, enacted in 1865 to guarantee birthright citizenship, there might never have been a Los Lobos.\u00a0Luckily, the promise of America has granted us their artistic legacy and their centrality to American culture.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Wolves at the Door<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Formed in 1973, Los Lobos remains amazingly vital and defiantly resourceful in their reimagining of American roots music. \u201cThe Wolves\u201d have comprised the same men for decades: frontman Louis Perez; keyboardist Steve Berlin; singer, lead guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist David Hidalgo; singer-songwriter\/guitarist Cesar Rosas; and bassist\/guitarron player Conrad Lozano. They are too mature and knowing now to produce something like the innocent jubilation that bubbles up from their cover of the traditional \u201cLa Bamba\u201d \u2013 a teenage rock and roll hit for Richie Valens during the \u201chappy days\u201d of the 1950s.<\/p>\n<div class=\"float-right\">\n<div class=\"video-container youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"embedly-embed\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.embedly.com\/widgets\/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FhnQ0vZbABKA%3Ffeature%3Doembed&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhnQ0vZbABKA%26feature%3Dyoutu.be&amp;image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FhnQ0vZbABKA%2Fhqdefault.jpg&amp;key=c390dd1996eb40908f72cd697f27028a&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=youtube\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>In the early 1980s, trailblazing roots music producer T Bone Burnett, who scouted them in Los Angeles for Slash\/Warner Bros. Records, was struck by Los Lobos\u2019 potential.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were the killingest\u00a0band in town at that point,\u201d Burnett recounts in Chris Morris\u2019s excellent first-ever critical biography\u00a0<em>Los Lobos: Dream in Blue,<\/em>\u00a0published this year by University of Texas Press.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith David Hidalgo,\u201d Burnett continues, \u201cyou knew immediately that this was one of the most amazing guitarists, musicians, ever. That was not hard to tell. Cesar [Rosas] was such a bad, bad man. The whole band was great. Louie [Perez] is a killer writer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Burnett\u2019s musical viewpoint and sensibility have helped shape much of the best of American music since that time. And Los Lobos dwells at the center of that whorl of roots, fed by a wellspring that has sustained them well, and for much longer than many others.<\/p>\n<p>The personal story of the band\u2019s primary lyricist, Perez, illustrates\u00a0much of this, as do the songs that he\u2019s created with co-songwriter Hidalgo since\u00a01984, when their astonishing debut\u00a0album,\u00a0<em>How Will the Wolf Survive?<\/em>, was surpassed only by Bruce\u00a0Springsteen&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Born in the U.S.A.<\/em>\u00a0and Prince&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Purple Rain<\/em>\u00a0for best album in\u00a0<em>The Village Voice\u00a0<\/em>Pazz and Jop Poll. <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>&#8216;s critics\u2019 poll\u00a0declared\u00a0them both band\u00a0of the year and best new artist.<\/p>\n<p>No question, they were \u2013 and are \u2013 a\u00a0great rock band with magnificent strains of multi-cultural music genres and masterful\u00a0songwriting.\u00a0In the title song from that \u201984 debut, Perez\u00a0cast a scenario of fear and determination in the image of a wolf, which resonated\u00a0metaphorically and asserted the band\u2019s identity as Mexican-Americans.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Standing in the pouring rain<br \/>\nAll alone in a world that&#8217;s changed<br \/>\nRunning scared, now forced to hide<br \/>\nIn a land where he once stood with pride<br \/>\nBut he&#8217;ll find his way by the morning light<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The song asked Americans to help keep hope and truth alive, as did the same recording\u2019s more hopeful immigrant song \u201cA Matter of Time.\u201d Few songwriters have addressed the American immigrant experience so well since, though Perez says that the title song from <em>Gates of Gold<\/em> is another worthy metaphor:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Far away beyond those hills is a mystery untold<br \/>\nFar off almost out of sight, there\u2019s beauty to behold<br \/>\nWhich way to go, can\u2019t say that I know<br \/>\nMama, come gently rock my soul<br \/>\nand tell me please, what we\u2019ll find behind those gates of gold.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"float-right image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.americansongwriter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Los-Lobos-Gates-of-Gold-Artwork-1031x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Over the phone from his home in Los Angeles, Perez told me he doesn\u2019t want to reduce the song to any single interpretation. Yet the notion of the \u201cgates of gold\u201d as signifying the American dream for a Mexican immigrant underlies the song\u2019s genesis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is evocative but not deliberate,\u201d Perez says. \u201cBut I can\u2019t deny I was thinking of my parents. They were immigrants from Mexico, so I had that sense of their experience as a challenge. I saw what they went through, and my father\u2019s early death had something to do with that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Though it clearly speaks to the immigrant experience, the gates of gold image can be understood in a broader sense, Perez believes, considering any human\u2019s journey through this life, which is universally laden with both potential glory and disaster. The uncertain path of an undocumented immigrant reflects that of every man, woman, and child.\u00a0Despite the gilded image it presents, the music in the album\u2019s title song is unpretentious.<\/p>\n<p>It opens with plaintive but chipper mandolin by Hidalgo, and then a funky shuffle beat unfolds. It\u2019s a road song, and sounds like a person plodding toward destiny in a beat-up car, or riding a burro, or trudging on foot. The music evokes not the proverbial dream, but rather the persistence and perseverance of the human spirit. Maybe the dream is tucked away in a tattered back pocket.<\/p>\n<p>Over the song\u2019s rhythm, Hidalgo\u2019s sweet tenor voice sings hopefully yet warily: \u201cSome say it\u2019s a place where you never grow old.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The album\u2019s cover, a photograph by Perez himself, shows a humble dirt road curving toward a magnificently radiant sunrise. Inside, another photo on the CD itself \u2013 this one by Noe Montes \u2013provides a hazy, atmospheric aerial view of a smog-covered Los Angeles freeway. This is the same place that singer-songwriter Guy Clark famously hoped to escape \u2013 a road to the future, in another richly metaphorical American song.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps there\u2019s no chart-topping hit like \u201cLa Bamba\u201d on\u00a0<em>Gates of Gold,<\/em> but the album brims with musical texture, surprise, ingenuity, poetry, and melodic and harmonic intrigue. One might imagine it as a great, heaving American banner: as if Betsy Ross had re-woven the nation\u2019s symbolic fabric with 300 years of history \u2013 all the strands of glory, suffering, and tragedy that America has become.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018<strong>The Gears in this Engine\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Perez notes that a huge actual American expulsion of Mexican immigrants happened right after The Great Depression, the mass deportation of up to 2 million Mexicans, more than half of them American citizens, by some estimates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s something overlooked in history,\u201d Perez asserts. \u201cLater, Mexican people were invited here through the\u00a0<em>bracero<\/em>\u00a0[manual worker] program initiated during World War II to import workers from Mexico to work in agriculture and railroad, a lot of manual work that a lot of American males had done who were fighting in the war. And yet, my father was a soldier fighting in the Philippines, and he earned a medal for valor. Latinos fought right alongside white Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perez notes that John Kennedy won a Purple Heart for his celebrated heroism on PT 109. Then he quips: \u201cAs I like to say about it, JFK got a book and a movie out of it; my father got malaria.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMexican-Americans have been here for a long, long time,\u201d Perez says.\u00a0 \u201cOur presence in the U.S. has always been a point of contention. Part of it is the proximity \u2013 we\u2019re a chalk line away from Mexico. People don\u2019t look at migration coming from Asia or Europe \u2026 [as posing] a threat. In the bracero program during World War II, they reached out for the best, most skilled workers. Americans learned a lot from those Hispanic workers. So we pay our taxes. People lose sight of how we make the gears in this engine turn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Which brings Perez to Los Lobos: \u201cThe group\u2019s legacy reflects what it means to be an American band with a tradition that drew from our own contemporary experience. We made a tapestry of music, which somehow we made our own.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Gates of Gold<\/em> extends that tapestry like a stunning artifact wrought by master song and story weavers. The mastery shouldn\u2019t surprise, but the group\u2019s creative ingenuity continues to bear extraordinarily felicitous moments of music and Perez\u2019s lyrical turns of phrase and idea. He even has a forthcoming book of various lyrics, prose, and drawings. The working title is\u00a0<em>Good Morning Aztlan,\u00a0<\/em>the same as the 2002 Los Lobos CD, \u201cbecause that title song was a bittersweet portrait of people and life in East Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perez\u2019s roots as a storyteller \u201cgo back to my family,\u201d he says. \u201cMy mother played her folkloric Mexican songs a lot. My dad died when I was eight of a heart attack, in the family kitchen. So I needed to find something to fill a gap. I started thinking about things and imagining and writing little stories, about our life in the barrio.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perez met Cesar Rosas in middle school, but his songwriting began \u201cwhen David [Hidalgo] and I were in high school and we were sort of hippies and both interested in the same kinds of music, especially left-of-center things like Ry Cooder\u2019s\u00a0<em>Into the Purple Valley\u00a0<\/em>and Fairport Convention.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe formed [our] band to do traditional Mexican music, which was really unusual for the time, for young kids to be doing music of a previous generation. So this gave us a foundation in terms of musical roots.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Los Lobos also loved much of the new rock fermenting in the era, including Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and the Grateful Dead, as well as the blues greats. Hidalgo was a prodigy of sorts, adept at guitars, mandolin, fiddle, accordion, and melodica. That helped cement the band\u2019s sound, but it also had to do with growing up in East Los Angeles, which was a rich wellspring of experience to respond to creatively.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBoyle Heights, just east of the L.A. River, before it became primarily Mexican-American, was a Jewish community,\u201d he adds. \u201cI remember the Cantor\u2019s Deli and pickle barrels and the Jewish Community Center. Mexican-American and Jewish communities merged to a certain degree. My uncle Jimmy Santiago married a Jewish woman named Ida Ginsberg. I have a half-Jewish, half-Mexican cousin. There were Russian, Serbian, and Japanese communities. I have Japanese friends. We all co-mingled, like in New York City.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe created a\u00a0<em>barrio,<\/em>\u00a0which is Spanish for \u2018neighborhood.\u2019 Mexican restaurants arose, but the process can become a multivalent thing, or a bad thing. Sometimes you can draw a chalk line around yourselves, which can be unfortunate, though you feel comfortable and safe.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was a lot of oppression early on,\u201d he continues. \u201cMy mother never wanted to talk about her experience because it was too painful. They\u2019d rather have their parents and children become part of the American scheme of things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the early \u201960s, Perez\u2019s mother put him in a Catholic parochial school, partly because the public school system discouraged, even punished, young people for speaking Spanish. As the cultural renaissance of the 1960s began, young Mexican-Americans in East L.A. joined in a huge walkout to protest the way the system was working in schools. The high schools seemed to overlook minority students as college-prep material, Perez says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey just sent them to shop classes, put them on the track to become laborers. But the white high school kids were college-bound.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday there are Latino political leaders all over the country,\u201d he adds. \u201cThe entire American system has to take a look at who we really are. We are a cross-pollination of many different cultures.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a rich community because we had all this tradition. I grew up listening to Mexican folkloric music because my mother loved it. I grew up across the street from our Lady of Guadalupe Church, which had many devotional songs. Mexican music on the weekends wafted through the air. Like many kids growing up in the U.S., we wanted to reject anything that represented [our] parents. But a lot of kids now, more than ever in East Los Angeles, totally embrace their culture. And now people like me have children who realize we need to be proud of our culture rather than sanitize ourselves. Unfortunately, political messages today say we pose a threat, that we\u2019re criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Like a Family<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"float-right image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.wolfgangsvault.com\/cvfeatures\/los-lobos-021814.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"float-right image\"><em>Los Lobos in the early years (L-R, Louie Perez, Steve Berlin, David Hidalgo, Conrad Lozano and Cesar Rosas.)<\/em><\/div>\n<p>The final member in the band\u2019s lineup, Steve Berlin. arrived in 1982, with a Jewish Russian-American experience not unlike the East L.A. Chicanos.<\/p>\n<p>Largely self-taught, as a teenager in Philadelphia Berlin played in a band that he says was \u201cfairly advanced for the time.\u201d They never recorded anything, but several of his bandmates later played with Frank Zappa. Berlin landed in Los Angeles with a version of the group called the Soul Survivors. When he encountered Los Lobos, Berlin had been working with Dave Alvin\u2019s Los Angeles-based band the Blasters \u2013 which introduced Los Lobos to L.A.\u2019s punk scene.<\/p>\n<p>Berlin felt as though he was being underutilized by the Blasters, and his presence in Los Lobos flowed more easily. As the group\u2019s only non-Hispanic member, Berlin feels profound kinship with his Chicano bandmates and the stories underlying Perez\u2019s numerous songs about the culture.<\/p>\n<p>Berlin\u2019s Russian father was the last of 11 children and the first born in America. The elder Berlin could have been derisively deemed an \u201canchor baby\u201d by politicians like Jeb Bush and Donald Trump; his son Steven grew up in the middle of America\u2019s McCarthy-era Cold War versus Russia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe grew up in a typical second-generation American household, trying to do [the] best we could,\u201d Berlin says. \u201cWe saw our parents struggle and they figured out how to make our lives way better than theirs were. [They emphasized] the idea of sticking with it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou see your parents live through shit and you resolve to do the best you can,\u201d he adds. \u201cIn a weird way, it may reflect why [Los Lobos is] still together after all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To the band\u2019s credit, when Berlin joined, it was a nearly seamless fit for the Jewish musician from Philly. Berlin\u2019s saxophone played with Hidalgo\u2019s accordion in a way that has become a signature Los Lobos sound, like a vocal trait that\u2019s almost genetic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was always kind of amazing to me, even in the early days,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThere was no hazing process or anything. We spoke a musical language that surpassed whatever cultural differences [existed]. They went to school together, so my experience was different. But they always made me feel very at home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike a family,\u201d Berlin adds, \u201cnot every day was a picnic and we had our squabbles, but somehow we muddled through and are still here 40-odd years later.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Roots and Branches<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And, 40 years later, Los Lobos is well-loved both in Americana music and the Latin-American music community. They own four Grammy Awards and have\u00a0recorded and performed with many major artists and at numerous major festivals. This year, the Americana Music Association presented them with a Lifetime Achievement Award for performance.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps a more palpable sign of their influence is the Los Lobos Cinco de Mayo Festival, begun in May 2012, at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, where the band played some of its first gigs. Groups performing with Los Lobos at the inaugural festival included Los Santos Cecelia, a young East L.A. group that follows Los Lobos\u2019 original neo-folkloric model and won a Grammy award in 2014 for their first album,\u00a0<em>Trienta Dias<\/em>. Also present was Mariachi El Bronx, which blends traditional mariachi and punk rock and has included drummer David Hidalgo Jr. who plays on Gates of Gold (however Enrique &#8220;Bugs&#8221; Gonzalez remains the band&#8217;s touring drummer).<\/p>\n<p>Other participants have included roots-gospel-rock steel guitarist Robert Randolph and Los Super Seven, a Tex-Mex super group that included Lobos among their personnel. A third Cinco de Mayo event occurred in 2014 with popular Los Angeles Chicano rock band Ozomatli.<\/p>\n<p>One younger group that Los Lobos has profoundly influenced is Quetzal, which won a Grammy for their magnificent 2012 album\u00a0<em>Imaginaries,<\/em>\u00a0produced by Berlin.<\/p>\n<div class=\"full image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kcet.org\/updaily\/socal_focus\/Quetzal_group_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<p><em>The Grammy-winning group Quetzal <\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFour homies from the neighborhood sticking it out for over 40 years has been inspiring to witness,\u201d\u00a0says the group\u2019s founder, Quetzal Flores. His group, which radiates a strong feminist ethos, also\u00a0thinks of themselves as a kind of family.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe relationships built as a result of the music and band are based on a deep-rooted love and respect for each other.\u201d Flores says. \u201cBand members don\u2019t always agree or see eye to eye, but there is a general understanding that gives us the space to participate and support one another in music and life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What first impressed Flores about Los Lobos\u2019 music is how \u201ctheir seamless embodiment of the Chicano experience through sound and poetry is in a stratosphere of its own.\u00a0\u00a0I remember the first time I heard \u2018Be Still\u2019 [from\u00a0<em>The Neighborhood<\/em>].\u00a0I was getting hit from all sides.\u00a0\u00a0The complexity of growing up of Mexican descent while absorbing the beauty of the black American traditions resonated with my core.\u00a0It gave birth to how Quetzal has imagined and reimagined itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last October, Los Lobos chose to perform their 1988 album, the all-Spanish\u00a0<em>La Pistola y El Corazon<\/em>, in its entirety during a concert in Milwaukee\u2019s Sharon Lynne Wilson Center of the Arts. The\u00a0concert brimmed with joy, passion, and darker emotions. One sensed these compadres reaching deep inside themselves, giving it all up to the audience, even if many didn\u2019t comprehend the Spanish lyrics.<\/p>\n<p>When I asked Perez about the decision to perform that full album in Wisconsin, his answer was matter-of-fact: \u201cWe thought it was time to revisit this recording because this was an important part of who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"6666\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?attachment_id=6666\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Los-Lobos-w-Kev.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"6016,4000\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;4.5&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;NIKON D3200&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1412320920&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;32&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;3200&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.016666666666667&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Los Lobos w Kev\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Los-Lobos-w-Kev-1024x681.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6666\" src=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Los-Lobos-w-Kev.jpg\" alt=\"Los Lobos w Kev\" width=\"6016\" height=\"4000\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Los-Lobos-w-Kev.jpg 6016w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Los-Lobos-w-Kev-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Los-Lobos-w-Kev-1024x681.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Los-Lobos-w-Kev-451x300.jpg 451w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 6016px) 100vw, 6016px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>I got this photo op with Los Lobos before their &#8220;La Pistola y El Corazon&#8221; concert at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center last October (L-R, David Hidalgo, Louie Perez, Cesar Rosas, Kevin Lynch, and Conrad Lozano. Not pictured: Steve Berlin). Photo courtesy of the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Los Lobos made the\u00a0<em>La Pistola<\/em>\u00a0record right after they had a number one hit with their cover of \u201cLa Bamba.\u201d \u201cSome writers said we committed professional suicide with\u00a0<em>La Pistola<\/em>,\u201d Perez adds, \u201cbut we felt it gave us the freedom to go back to what we have done in our earliest days.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we created\u00a0<em>La Pistola<\/em>, we had to make a decision. Were we going to be a pop band and play \u2018La Bamba\u2019 and sell corn chips for the rest of our lives and live comfortably? No, we couldn\u2019t do that. I like the idea of\u00a0<em>La Pistola<\/em>\u00a0because the record would be available all over the world, like somebody in Kyoto listening to\u00a0<em>norte<\/em><em>\u1fc6<\/em><em>o<\/em>\u00a0music. So it was great.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pure Expression<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Los Lobos developed the ability to reach deep back into their Latino roots while still feeding their ever-potent musical impulses, thanks to a crucial under-recognized figure, Jesus \u201cXuy\u201d Leyba, Berlin says. Leyba, who managed Los Lobos for a number of years, was \u201cthe band&#8217;s patriarch. He was the guy who, in his way, told the guys to dream bigger. He was one of the first Chicano studies professors. He was an amazing human being, like a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King \u2013 a genuinely gifted soul.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"float-right image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cps-static.rovicorp.com\/3\/JPG_400\/MI0003\/515\/MI0003515963.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Guided by a larger light, Los Lobos\u2019 winding road led to an artistic peak, the 1992 album\u00a0<em>Kiko.<\/em> The landmark album was partly a reaction to the laborious and unsatisfying experience of creating the previous album,\u00a0<em>The Neighborhood.\u00a0<\/em>Despite guest spots from such notables as John Hiatt and Levon Helm, <em>The Neighborhood<\/em> suffered from over-production.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt that point,\u201d Perez remembers, \u201cwe had to clean the slate. We approached the next project, which became\u00a0<em>Kiko,\u00a0<\/em>and we went into it with abandon. \u2026 We met producer Mitchell Froom and engineer Tchad Blake, who were interested in the same thing: a very eclectic and artful production. We wanted to do something completely different, that wasn\u2019t tempered by somebody saying \u2018this is what we need to do.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat record was a way to open up a channel for pure expression. I didn\u2019t have to feel oppressed by the technology. We went in to use the studio as a musical instrument. Rather than laying down tracks, we tried using the studio as its own medium.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was reading a lot of Japanese literature, and the song \u2018Saint Behind the Glass\u2019 is based on a Japanese thing, with repeating echoes, round and round. A lot of reviews talked about\u00a0<em>Kiko<\/em>\u00a0having a magic-realist quality, like [Colombian novelist] Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which I thought was cool, but I don\u2019t know if we could live up to those standards. It was a heady thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They decided to tackle <em>Gates of Gold<\/em>, their first studio album since\u00a0<em>Tin Can Trust<\/em>\u00a0in 2010, with a similar philosophy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were getting closer to the recording date and David called me and said, do you have anything yet? And I said, \u2018I was going to ask you the same thing,\u2019\u201d Perez laughs.<\/p>\n<p>With pressure mounting, these old pros knew how to respond: First, they huddled in a rented writing room behind a nearby bookstore. Perez and Hidalgo began creating songs. They set some aside unfinished, while others came quicker, right in the studio with the blinking recording machines, bandmates, studio musicians, engineer, and assistants hovering. They did this in six different studio locations across North America, in California, Texas, Nashville, and Ontario.<\/p>\n<p>For the fairly wrenching yet arresting album opener, \u201cMade to Break Your Heart,\u201d Perez says, \u201cwe agreed this was [going to be] a kind of retro thing. David was listening to Stephen Stills\u2019 Manassas and Quicksilver Messenger Service\u00a0bands and Mike Bloomfield\u2019s innovative instrumental \u2018East-West\u2019 [with the Butterfield Blues Band]. So the slow section becomes this guitar opus. It was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"6667\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?attachment_id=6667\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/The_Paul_Butterfield_Blues_Band_-_East-West.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"500,500\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"The_Paul_Butterfield_Blues_Band_-_East-West\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/The_Paul_Butterfield_Blues_Band_-_East-West.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6667\" src=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/The_Paul_Butterfield_Blues_Band_-_East-West.jpg\" alt=\"The_Paul_Butterfield_Blues_Band_-_East-West\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/The_Paul_Butterfield_Blues_Band_-_East-West.jpg 500w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/The_Paul_Butterfield_Blues_Band_-_East-West-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/The_Paul_Butterfield_Blues_Band_-_East-West-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Indeed, Hidalgo\u2019s guitar solo on that track travels light years in just a few bars \u2013 the thick, bluesy guitar texture bespeaks Stills&#8217; brilliant short-lived Manassas group, and the song transcends its failed-love theme with an expansive mood akin to \u201cEast-West\u201d and the tides of time, where the sea \u201cwashed away our names in the sand.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"ivantest float-right\">\n<div class=\"soundcloud\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"embedly-embed\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.embedly.com\/widgets\/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fw.soundcloud.com%2Fplayer%2F%3Fvisual%3Dtrue%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fapi.soundcloud.com%252Ftracks%252F225450342%26show_artwork%3Dtrue&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fvicente-fox%2Fwhen-we-were-free&amp;image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.sndcdn.com%2Fartworks-000130630799-e94obz-t500x500.jpg&amp;key=c390dd1996eb40908f72cd697f27028a&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=soundcloud\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The hippest-sounding tune on\u00a0<em>Gates of Gold<\/em>\u00a0is \u201cWhen We Were Free,\u201d with its slippery, jazzy backbeat provided by guest percussionist Marcos Reyes and guest drummer David Hidalgo Jr., who plays throughout the recording. Berlin\u2019s sax blows sultry and sweet amid the song\u2019s deliciously complex rhythm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were early L.A. clubs that combined R&amp;B and blues in a certain way, with such names as Johnny Otis and Bobby Blue Bland,\u201d Berlin explains. \u201cSo David said, \u2018I kind of hear it as that sort of thing.\u2019 That put me in mind of the Jazz Crusaders. So we [asked], \u2018How would the Jazz Crusaders play it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another song with ingenious sonic magic reminiscent of\u00a0<em>Kiko<\/em>\u00a0is \u201cThere I Go,\u201d driven by an intriguing electronic smear sound that dances around Hidalgo\u2019s vocals \u2013 something that Berlin conjured up from his electronic keyboards.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, roots-genre maestro Cesar Rosas peppers the album with two Spanish-sung romances and two\u00a0heart-bloodied blues, \u201cI Believed You So\u201d and \u201cMean Mis-Treater Boogie Blues,\u201d which rides a ZZ Top-style boogie groove, like a man driving his lovelorn frustrations into the night.<\/p>\n<p>A Perez-Hidalgo mini-epic, \u201cSong of the Sun\u201d bears a mournful melody and imagines a dystopia one might fear in the nightmare of the realpolitik-run-amok, terrorist extremism, and climate change toward which the globe seems tilting. Perez decided to grapple with the daunting perspective by employing a literary device \u2013 a creation myth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d he says. \u201cThe song evokes where we are now and where we come from. It starts with the notion of a creation myth, which begins with an element, like water or fire. It also is not necessarily talking about [the] environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In unrhymed free verse, the narrator depicts a scene as an attuned reportorial witness:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When fire came to be born<br \/>\nand it felt so hot on me<br \/>\nthen burned the flesh of men<br \/>\nfrom their bones<br \/>\nand left their souls to wander\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIt gets a little heavy, but if I think too much about it I might change the truth of it,\u201d Perez says. \u201cSo we left well enough alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The song redeems its bleakness with a beautiful closing water image. And we should be thankful, because these wolf survivors can see the fire next time, right through the rain. They can see what humanity might face, what it might lose, if it doesn\u2019t change its ways with the world. The dream-like gates of gold also flicker with flames.<\/p>\n<p>If Perez prefers to address his sense of the world through lyric and metaphor, his disciple Quetzal Flores sees how the Los Lobos method emerges as socio-political truth. \u201cSo much of the immigration debate is driven by political agenda in the electoral sense,\u201d Flores says.\u00a0\u201cLos Lobos is driven by the human agenda.\u00a0\u00a0This is why a song like\u00a0\u2018A Matter of Time\u2019 is as relevant today as it was when it was written.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Steve Berlin minces no words. \u201cYou look at Donald Trump and Scott Walker and most everybody else in the Republican Party, and what they\u2019re saying is both politically impossible and physically impossible,\u201d Berlin says. \u201cTo deport 11 million people and to get the Mexican government to build a wall \u2026 . Obviously they\u2019re trying to appeal to the least-informed people in this country, and they think that\u2019s a ticket to success.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod help all of us if any of them get close to the levers of power,\u201d he adds. \u201cNot only do I think they don\u2019t have a clue, they don\u2019t have a single policy success to point to. Some of these governors have wrecked their own states.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd right now, Mexico\u2019s economy is doing so well,\u201d he adds. \u201cIf you look more than an inch deep, the so-called immigration problem is that many Mexican workers are going back to Mexico, because they can get better work there than they can here. The economic problem is nothing like what Donald Trump is presenting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But a billionaire real estate-mogul-turned-politician is light years away from the immigrant experience. America has millions of stories like those of Los Lobos, which underscores the band\u2019s essence to this nation\u2019s culture, especially in a political season clamoring for \u201coutsider\u201d leadership. For this band, such inspiration might come from someone like the goddess invoked in the album\u2019s final song<em>.<\/em>\u00a0Named \u201cMagdalena,\u201d she possesses a Madonna\u2019s grace, suggesting our deliverance may lie in the hands of a woman. With chest-heaving power chords, singer Hidalgo implores a woman with \u201cmidnight eyes black like coal\u201d to help him in his spiritual quest. \u201cTake my clothes,\u201d he sings, \u201cgive away my jewels and all the gold. Let me walk along the holy road.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The long artistic pilgrimage of Los Lobos has demonstrated that they\u2019re not in it for the money, especially with the decisions made after \u201cLa Bamba.\u201d\u00a0The stunning new recording reminds us they\u2019ve succeeded on their own terms, taking their place among the greatest of a true creative class that believes in the power of\u00a0<em>la familia\u00a0<\/em>in the largest sense,\u00a0that which \u201ctakes a village,\u201d as one more reflective American presidential candidate once said, quoting an African adage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is so much trust and intuition we have between each other through 40 years,\u201d Perez says. \u201cI give so much credit to the rest of the band. We\u2019re family. My son says, that\u2019s Uncle Conrad. That says that Conrad is my brother. All we\u2019re trying to do is make music and make some difference in this tiny space in this world, and bring joy to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Burnett, in <em>Los Lobos: Dream in Blue<\/em>, sums up the group\u2019s legacy: \u201cI think Los Lobos have written some of the best social commentary music of the last half-century. They carried out a very courageous tradition, extraordinarily gracefully. \u2026 By their very existence, they were a social comment, and they lived up to that.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"ivantest full\">\n<div class=\"soundcloud\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"embedly-embed\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.embedly.com\/widgets\/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fw.soundcloud.com%2Fplayer%2F%3Furl%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fapi.soundcloud.com%252Ftracks%252F214706139%26auto_play%3Dfalse%26show_artwork%3Dtrue%26visual%3Dtrue%26origin%3Dtwitter&amp;src_secure=1&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Floslobos%2Fgates-of-gold&amp;image=https%3A%2F%2Fi1.sndcdn.com%2Fartworks-000123235630-j7wvlv-t500x500.jpg&amp;key=c390dd1996eb40908f72cd697f27028a&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=soundcloud\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div class=\"soundcloud\"><strong><em>This article was originally commissioned and published by NoDepression.com. Thanks to ND editor Kim Reuhl, Los Lobos, Kurt Nishimura, Chris Morris and\u00a0The Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts.<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A cartoon strip by Brian McFadden that ran in\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0on Sept. 6 depicted a forlorn Statue of Liberty greeting a boatload of immigrants with a sign reading \u201cHuddled Masses No Longer Welcome.\u201d It\u2019s timely, considering a new groundswell &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=6665\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-1Jv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6665"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6676,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6665\/revisions\/6676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}