Editorial Observer
American Stories, From Mexican Roots The first song on the new album “American Horizon” sends you right away to a place you’ve never been and might never want to leave: a tropical countryside under a full moon, where men come down from hills on horseback and women gather by a lagoon, full of anticipation that a warm, dark evening will become, through music and dance, a night of light and heat.
The song, “La Luna,” is sung in Spanish by, of all people, Taj Mahal, the African-American blues master. Though not a native speaker, he cradles the words in his gravel voice, and when he sings of the moonlight as “muy sensual,” and of this “baile celestial,” this heavenly dance, he clearly knows what he’s talking about, and so do you.
That’s the strange beauty of “American Horizon,” by a little-known Mexican-American folk-roots group, Los Cenzontles, with guest appearances by Taj Mahal and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. It both honors and upends traditional Mexican music, tapping deep roots as it flowers into something completely new, and distinctly American.
What may be more remarkable is that Los Cenzontles — The Mockingbirds — is not the creation of some music label’s cross-marketing department, but a tiny storefront nonprofit organization for young people in San Pablo, Calif., a heavily immigrant and Hispanic neighborhood outside Oakland.
There’s a whole story, much too long to tell here, of what Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center has accomplished since it began 20 years ago. Its founder, Eugene Rodriguez, is a third-generation Mexican-American, a classical guitarist who wanted to create a haven for youths in a community scarred by gang violence, graffiti and drugs.
It started out simply as a safe place where children could learn dance and music and do their homework. It’s still that — a humble space in a noisy strip mall, with couches and stuffed chairs to flop into and small stages where students can drum and strum and sing.
But the organization has steadily gained a reputation for excellence in reinvigorating musical traditions ignored or left for dead in their home country. It has gone to Mexico looking for maestros. And it has grown some young maestros of its own, like Hugo Arroyo, one of the best players anywhere of the jarana, a ukulele-like instrument from Veracruz, and Lucina Rodriguez, a singer and expert in zapateado dancing.
The group’s touring band is still the barest blip on the music scene. But it has attracted an array of friends and enthusiastic collaborators, who also include Los Tigres del Norte, the giants of norteño music, and Linda Ronstadt. In January, the group is performing in Glasgow with the Chieftains and Ry Cooder.
Ms. Ronstadt, who long ago left rock ’n’ roll to explore her Mexican-American musical roots, lives in the Bay Area and has often dropped in at Los Cenzontles to sing. She said the organization gives young people the gift of an identity in an area bleak with poverty and rootlessness. “They know who they are when they come out of there,” she said. “ ‘I play jarana.’ ‘I’m the one that’s teaching those kids how to dance.’ ”
“They’re making modern music, but it’s very securely rooted in tradition.”
It is telling that the musicians who have befriended Los Cenzontles are known as innovative traditionalists. To Mr. Rodriguez, to freeze folklore is to kill it. That is clear on all the songs on this album. Mr. Hidalgo plays ukulele on “Tecolote,” a traditional Mexican dance song. On “Sueños” (“Dreams”), Ms. Rodriguez and Fabiola Trujillo trill like a doo-wop chorus, yet the bluesy song never loses its Mexican feel.
On “Voy Caminando” (“I Go Walking”), Taj Mahal plays banjo, an instrument unknown to Mexican music, and the rhythm is supplied by shoe dancers, their stomping beat summoning old Spain or Appalachia. The song tells of a young migrant who leaves home, his parents, their little plot of land, to find his future on the other side, America.
It’s a new song, and an old story — the perfect fit for a country that has been renewed by immigration, but also perplexed and sometimes frightened by it. Some have declared the surge in immigrant Spanish-speakers as the end of America as we know it. But as “American Horizon” shows, it’s just another new beginning. (link to article, scroll down the page to hear one of the songs)
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