Female Announcer: >>From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [Silence] Peggy Bulger: >>Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the "Homegrown: Music of America Concert Series" that is produced by the American Folklife Center. I'm Peggy Bulger, I'm director of the American Folklife Center here at the Library [of Congress] and this is a project that we have-- it's an acquisitions project for the Library. We are webcasting, we're recording all of the concerts to be a new collection that is really the best of traditional music and dance at the turn of the 21st century. So that when a hundred years from now our researchers come to the Library they'll be able to look at these and see these performances and they'll be able to know what we had in terms of folk music and folk dance. >>That's my cue to tell you to please turn off your cell phones-- if you have any kind of electronic gewgaws please turn them off because they'll be recorded for posterity on the Library's website and in our collections. >>What we do with these concerts is we work with the state folklorists around the country. Many of you may not know that almost every state has a folklife office that works with traditional musicians and artists in their own state documenting and supporting the traditions of that state into the future. So we're able to just work with ten states a year-- we have ten concerts and year. >>And this year's-- we're very, very happy that we're going to be showcasing [audio problems]-- hello, hello, hello, hello, [taps the mic] we were doing really good [laughs]. No. >>All right, who stepped on the line? [Laughs] >>We'll be, ah, there we go, magic! [Laughs] >>As I was saying before, we're really happy to be working with the great state of California and with the Alliance for California Traditional Arts which is a wonderful, wonderful organization, a nonprofit organization in the state that's been doing incredible work in the community. And I'm going to be introducing Amy Kitchener who is the director of ACTA and is bringing to us the two wonderful groups who represent Chicanos and Chicano music in California. So please help me welcome Amy Kitchener. [Applause] Amy Kitchener: >>Welcome. It's really great to be back in my hometown and to be here presenting artists from the state of California. And as a child I always enjoyed all of the amazing free folklife concerts that happen here in the capital. And I never could have imagined that I would have been bringing artists from California. So I just wanted to thank the American Folklife Center and also we've had additional support from Smithsonian Folkways, the nonprofit recording label of the Smithsonian Institution; thank you, Dan[Daniel Sheehy]-- he's sitting down here in the front row. [Applause] >>And I'd also like to recognize Radio Bilingue which is the Spanish-language National Public Radio service who will be broadcasting this concert later this month. With that we'll be reaching audiences-- primarily Spanish-speaking audiences-- all over the U.S., Mexico, and Canada with over 200 affiliates. >>So in thinking about one of the privileges that I have as the state folklorist is to work with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and to identify artists to represent our state here in the series. And that was a very hard decision knowing the richness and the incredible talent that we have in our state. >>And so we have a great concert prepared for you with two bands representing Chicano music. And I thought that this would be a great opportunity to share music that has left a really big footprint on our state with the whole country. I'm going to introduce my colleague Russell Rodriguez who is a specialist and an artist practitioner in the tradition to tell you more about the groups that we have here today. Thank you. Russell? [Applause] Russell Rodriguez: >>Thank you very much. It's, it's again, an honor for all of us to be here I think and specifically to celebrate Chicano music here in the Nation's Capital. I think that I will give you a real quick synopsis of a way to think about Chicano music because you know it's not a genre, style or form but it's, you know, it's an expression that arises out of community. And what we're going to see today specifically out of specific locations and specific time eras of, of when people were struggling and participating in a pursuit of, of, of, for a civil society. And this is what these two ensembles-- there providing us music. Chicano music that serves as a repository of collective memory. It also, you know, calls into, you know, it illuminates how communities are called into action. >>And so the first group that's going to be playing is Agustin Lira and Alma. And Agustin Lira is, you know, I think of Agustin as the composer of the "soundtrack" of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. I mean, if we think about the march from Delano to Sacramento in 1966 when farm workers, you know, went up Highway 5 up to Sacramento, it was Agustin Lira that wrote all those songs that they were, you know, he provided the musical foundation for all that singing-- all those songs that they were singing as they marched up to the Nation's [sic]-- to the State's Capital. >>And together Agustin, Agustin-- who is a National Heritage Fellow-- is accompanied by Patricia, Patricia Wells Solorzano who provides this wonderful texture of vocals and guitar to the ensemble. And then Ravi Knypstra, Knypstra, who also brings a different vibrant energy in rhythm and style to this ensemble. Please help me introduce Agustin Lira and Alma. [Applause] Agustin Lira: >>Thank you. [Trio tunes their instruments] Agustin Lira: >>In 1965, I joined the United Farm Workers led by Csar Chavez and Delores Huerta and a lot of other folks who directed the organization. And I was really blown away because when I went to the picket lines I saw a lot of different individuals there. But when I was younger I had always seen Mexican Americans-- Chicanos-- struggle for survival. But I had never seen anyone struggle for their rights until the time I was nineteen. And it floored me. It blew me away to see grandmothers, uncles, tias, tios on the picket lines and it really inspired me. So I began to write songs to describe that wonderful feeling that it was to fight for your freedom, to fight for better wages. To be free as the wind, "Ser Como El Aire Libre." [Music, song in Spanish] [Applause] Agustin Lira: >>In 1848, the United States and Mexico signed the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which guaranteed the cultural rights of Mexican Americans in this country. Of course, it didn't happen that way and the United States took Mexico's-- over half of Mexico's territory just because they could. And since then, and even before then, Mexican Americans, Chicanos, have been struggling for their rights in this country. >>During the 1960s I wrote this song and it was an emblem song that was sung throughout the Southwest and even in Mexico, throughout the country, this country. "Quihubo raza!" "Hello Race!" in which it talks-- it just says plainly Mexican Americans do not want to lose their culture, they don't want to lose their heritage. But the way that I put it is: "Y el Mexicano, hacerse gringo, no puede"-- the Mexican does not want to become a gringo. [Music, singing in Spanish] Agustin Lira: >>I grew up around the San Joaquin Valley, mostly in the Fresno Area. And when I was 18 and 19 I was looking for a job in Fresno and couldn't find anything, like most Mexican Americans. There wasn't much opportunity. So I decided to try to join the Army and to try to get, you know, something going with the Navy also. But they turned me down. I said, "Why are you turning me down?" He said, "Because you're not a citizen." I said, "I'm not a citizen?" He said, "No, you're not." "Oh man!" It saved me because when I went to Delano, California, I wrote this song at that time and it's called, "Summer Winds." It was the first song that I'd written against the war. Working in Delano, California, made me very aware of the situation in Vietnam. And at that time, whether I was a citizen or not, they really were putting a lot of pressure on me. This is my first song against war, period. [Music, singing in English] [Applause] Agustin Lira: >>Thank you, thank you very much. [Silence] Agustin Lira: >>Columbus came to this country and he put a banner in the ground and says, "I've discovered this place." How do you discover people that have been there for thousands of years? I guess maybe you could say it was a self-discovery, huh? But it's not much of a discovery other than that for people who have been here thousands of years. [Strums guitar] Agustin Lira: >>Mexican Americans are indigenous people also. That fact is not known very much but they are. And our ancestors have been here for thousands of years. So, when Columbus was there on the shore with the banner stuck in the ground, claiming it for Spain and the New World, he didn't look way off in the distance on the sand. On the shore there was a tiny little speck and it was like a bell ringing in the distance and then all of a sudden the picture becomes clear, approaching you see that. You hear: "Tacos, tostitos, tamales." [Laughter] [Strums guitar] Agustin Lira: >>"I Have Been Here Forever" [Music, singing in English] [Applause] Agustin Lira: >>I grew up in the so-called American educational system and I never saw, ever saw, any stories or photographs that were speaking in a positive way about Mexican Americans, Chicanos, in this country. I went through the entire educational system-- I think I did see something about Francisco Villa but it was all negative. He was a monster and a killer and all those different kinds of things. And it's very difficult to grow up without having those types of models that told you that you are a human being, that you come from some place, that you have a culture and a heritage. It's very important. >>So I decided to write songs-- we decided to put music together that would reflect our struggles in our community. This one is about Gregorio Cortez. There was a film made about Gregorio Cortez and he was chased throughout the Texas area by the Rangers and all kinds of people-- dogs and trains. They could not catch him and they could not find him. But at that time, though the authorities were really frustrated, the Mexican people were opening their balconies and going: "Hey, hallelujah brothers. Finally, something is going on," you know? So, "Gregorio Cortez." [Music, singing in Spanish] [Applause] Agustin Lira: >>Thank you very much. My uncle, Jose Hernandez, was a World War II hero. He was also a survivor of the Bataan Death March in which over 150,000 Filipinos lost their lives and were taken by the Japanese as prisoners. About 70,000 American soldiers also died in Bataan during the forced march. My uncle survived the horror of the war and being in prison to return to the United States to walk into a restaurant and to be refused service. Of course, I didn't know about that when I was a child. So, when he and I were working in the fields together, I was 10, 9, I noticed that my uncle he was getting old before his time. That's what this song is about, it's about my uncle. It's called "The Old Man." [Silence] [Tunes instrument] [Music, song in English] [Applause] Agustin Lira: >>They are telling us we're done here. Thank you very much. [Applause] Thea Austen: >>[Off camera] Thank you, Agustin Lira and Alma. Thea Austen: >>Thank you. So we are waiting-- we're switching bands now. I'm going to ask Russell to come down and he's going to tell you a little bit-- Russell? Ah, there you are-- about the next band. Russell Rodriguez: >>Let's hear it for Agustin Lira and Alma. [Applause] Russell Rodriguez: >>I think, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of Chicano artists that have contributed to the musical fabric of the United States. And, I mean, historically we think about Pedro Gonzalez in the early 1920s with the radio show in LA [Los Angeles].Don Tosti and Lalo Guerrero in the 1940s with their big bands and their combos. Of course, Ritchie Valens and "La Bamba" in the late 1950s; Santana, Los Lobos. And they've created this incredible history and lineage of Chicano music in the United States. But again, I want to emphasize where Agustin Lira and Alma and the group Quetzal emerging from these very specific communities and the songs that they're writing are about those experiences. You know, all these songs about the farm workers struggle and immigration rights. And, and in a very specific way the group that we're going to hear, Quetzal, follows in that lineage of talking about those struggles. But not only struggles but the celebrations and the, and the joy of being part of the Chicano community, you know. And that experience, you know, of growing up in a place like East Los Angeles that is this incredible crossroad of cultural roots that's influence by Mexican music, traditional music, and popular music-- U.S. popular music, African American music. >>I mean, black music in the Chicano community is, is such a-- there's such a rich dialogue between these communities, and what's been going on. You know, doo whop groups like, you know, Tiarra redoing the Intruder's song "Together." Or groups like Cannibal and the Headhunters. You talk to the guy Scar [Richard Lopez], one of the members of Cannibal and the Headhunters, and he'll say, "No Man, I learned how to sing with the black brothers down the street from where I lived. These are the guys who taught me how to sing music." >>And this was also, I mean, one of the things that Quetzal promotes is the idea of cultural alliances, community alliances, with, with those other communities that are struggling, and, you know, having that particular type of experience in the United States that's similar to theirs. >>So, please help me welcome Tylana Enomoto, Quetzal Flores, Juan Perez, Camilo Moreno, and Martha Gonzalez. This is the group, Quetzal. [Applause] Martha Gonzalez: >>This song is titled "Cinco." It's a pleasure for us to be here. This song is titled "Cinco," and it's about a future that we hope never comes to pass. The song starts off as a child is running through a very, very hot earth looking for shade. As he's taking people through this small town and the people begin to ask-- this in the very far off future, a future that we don't hope happens. People are asking, "What is that?" And he starts explaining, "Oh, these use to be these things called trees, and this was water. And water use to run, you know, more easily, and they were called flowers." And so we obviously never hope that comes to pass, this is called "Cinco." [Music, singing in Spanish] [Applause] Martha Gonzalez: >>Thank you. All right. So I failed to mention what the chorus says, it says: "He's gone, he's gone. Man doesn't exist anymore." Humanity is all done, so who knows what kind of child that was, or might be, or won't be. We're going to take care of our earth, all right! >>So, this next song is called "Migra" and it's about, it's about, it's about people. It's about human beings and people trying to make a life for themselves, for their children, for their own future. And how we are all affected by these immigration-- and how immigration policies hurt many, many people and sometimes are destructive to communities and that's what this song is about, "Migra." [Music, singing in Spanish] [Applause] [Silence] Martha Gonzalez: >>All right. So, as Chicanos, I think that you can hear in our music that we have different elements. And those different elements, sound elements, represent different experiences, right? And I think that gos the same for religion, or for spirituality. There are so many Chicanos that I know that sort if combine their belief systems, right? Some people combine their Catholicism with Regla de Ocha or Santeria, right? And mix that with indigenous concepts as well. And they build their altars-- or their altares, they focus and then they channel their energy in that way. So, that's what this next song is about. It's called "Para Sanar" which means "to heal." And this song is about healing by any means necessary, right? So when you're depressed, or there's a situation going on, you know, a typical Chicano will go to a curandera which is like a shaman, female shaman, a sobadora-- someone who massages bones or muscles [laughs]. They'll go to the priest. And then they'll go to maybe a witch doctor as well, or a santero. You know, by any means necessary. So that's what this song is about. [Spanish word]. [Music, singing in Spanish] [Applause] Martha Gonzalez: >>Tylana Enomoto, en la violin, and vocals. [Applause] [Silence] >>Can I have a Raise? [laughs, out of breath]. Quetzal Flores-- that's the leader, right there. Thank you so much. >>So, as musicians we take our role in the community very seriously. In that way we're a lot like a cenzontle which is the name of this title track. A cenzontle is like a mockingbird. He sings other birds' songs as he travels. So over the course of his life he can learn hundreds and hundreds of songs and he sing them [during] different time periods as he travels. So that's something that we do and have done for many years as musicians and that is that we take stories-- sometimes our own, starting with our own. And then people that we meet, and struggles that we educate ourselves about, and other things and then we share them just like we are doing with you today and that we hope you are enjoying. This next song is called "Cenzontle" and it's about that. It's about what we do as musicians and how seriously we take it, how important it is. [Music, singing in Spanish] [Applause] Martha Gonzalez: >>"Cenzontle." I'd like to introduce-- thank you so much-- elements of this music. Most of the elements that you are hearing are jarocho, son jarocho-inspired. son jarocho music is, Dr. Rodriguez talked about this earlier, it's music from south Veracruz, Mexico, it's native to the state of Veracruz in Mexico. And this is a very small version-- you're probably wondering what the heck I'm stomping on-- but it's a very small version of a tarima, it's a tarima. >>The instrument Quetzal is playing is called a jarana and that's also an instrument, a very important instrument from the son jarocho tradition. And the person who is playing it, his name is Quetzal Flores, give it up for Quetzal Flores, you all. [Applause] >>And,I'll keep introducing everybody else, of course. "El Unico"-- the wonderful bass player from East LA, also Mott Street, Juan Perez. [Applause] >>And, of course, from Columbia-- we get everything in Los Angeles, we have Camilo Moreno on percussion. [Applause] >>And of course, the beautiful, the talented Tylana Enomoto, again on violin and vocals. [Applause] >>Oh, and myself. My name is Martha Gonzalez, as the soloist. >>All right. So we just had the pleasure and the great honor of being recorded by Smithsonian Folkways and Daniel Sheehy, Dr. Daniel Sheehy who's actually here today. And our album will be out soon [February 2012] on the Smithsonian Folkways label. >>And this next song that we're going to play for you is on that album as well as a lot of other ones that we've just played. And it's called "Tragafuegos"-- and it was inspired after watching-- while traveling in Mexico, and we've traveled there many times. But for some reason once I became a mother there were certain things that really reached me. Walking through the streets-- or really anywhere in Mexico, and seeing children-- men, women and children, but especially children-- being fire breathers in the middle of many crowded and dangerous intersections. And that's what a tragafuego is, it's a fire breather. And, not in the really fun, cool sense of the circus life, but in the very dangerous and poor urban streets in Mexico City or anywhere in the, in the country. And it makes you think about: Did these people grow up dreaming that they would be fire breathers? Or, what do these children aspire to? And then seeing workers here also on the streets, or people trying to make a living, what is it that they-- what dreams do they have that maybe they've put on hold? Or maybe they've stopped dreaming. So it just kind of makes you think about workers of the world, right? That is what this song is about. [Music, singing in Spanish] [Applause] Martha Gonzalez: >>Thank you very much. We are Quetzal. Look for us on Smithsonian Folkways. Female Announcer: >>This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.