Blame it on los blues

I just got through reading Blues People by Amiri Baraka and Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Davis. What does this have to do with rock en español, you ask. Considering that rock-n-roll, ska, and so many other beloved musical genres grew out of African and African-American musical traditions, the answer is: everything. But I won’t go on here about how Elvis “borrowed” his style and rhythm from his African-American contemporaries or how the working class British kids grew their ska out of the slower Jamaican version of the same. We’ll save those topics for another time because what’s on my mind at this moment is the blues and my dad blasting BB King from a portable tape deck in 1987 as we sat around a campfire at Yosemite National Park. And Dad was drinking. And signing. And shouting and talking back to the recording just as if he were at a live show. And that was the night I became aware of how much this music meant to him, my dad, who grew up in East L.A. listening to the working class anthems of his time.

Of course, I can’t think in this direction without also thinking of El Tri. And Enrique Bunbury. And Pappo. And this song that features the timeless blues themes of amor fracasado and getting the hell out of town.


"A.D.O" - El Tri

Bunbury, of course draws more indirectly from the blues legacy, although he makes an explicit nod to this palate in the song “Palo de Mayo”—about the Afro-Nicaraguan dance—in the line in which he sings, “igual que sin dolor ya no hay blues.” I would add that without blues, jazz, and swing, there is also no Bunbury.


"Carmen Jones" - Enrique Bunbury

Of course this brings up interesting questions of the international manifestations of appropriation. I’ve always felt a little strange about Bunbury’s reliance on using Latin American and African American musical traditions, even if he is a genius. El Tri, on the other hand, has always hard core represented for the working class, and because of this (and because they are Mexican and not Spanish), it has never bothered me that Alex Lora’s music borrows so unabashedly from the blues. As for Pappo, I don’t know enough about him or his music to comment extensively, but here’s a song, complete with inverted call and response, that speaks for itself.


"Mi Vieja" - Pappo


excerpt...

Mi vieja va a plaza con pancartas
con las pancartas que yo mismo le arme
Ella protesta porque ya esta harta
de que le afanen una y otra vez
de que le afanen una y otra vez

En una de las manifestaciones
vino la cana y se la quiso llevar
por reclamar lo que le corresponde
Se vuelve loco nos quiere matar
Me vuelvo loco y los quiero matar

Nadie se atreva a tocar a mi vieja
porque mi vieja es lo mas grande que hay.


(My mom goes to the plaza with placards
with the placards that I myself armed her with
she protests because she’s fed up
with being worked so hard
with being worked so hard

During one of the demonstrations
the police came and wanted to take her away
for demanding what belongs to her
They go crazy and they want to kill us
I go crazy and want to kill them

Nobody better dare touch my mom
‘cuz my mom is the greatest there is)