Good times
Chicano tradition comes full circle at La Paz
This is a tale of war and huelga.
It centers on a time when most Mexican-Americans proudly called themselves “Chicano,” marched by the thousands for United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez, idolized the Brown Berets and flashed the closed-fist Chicano power salute.
It was the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when many Latinos struggled on college campuses, in city halls and on urban streets for various political and social issues, such as better pay for farm workers, an end to the Vietnam War and access to higher education.
Over the last few decades, many of the long-haired college protestors who sported berets, shouted “viva la raza!” and wore Ernesto “Che” Guevara T-shirts, have toned down their activism. Although they may still remember the Chicano handshake, they turned into doctors, business owners, lawyers and college professors with graying hair, bifocals and retirement portfolios.
But a slice of the Chicano Movement will return to Kern County from 2 to 8. p.m. on June 14 when the funk group WAR rolls into Keene’s National Chavez Center — headquarters of la huelga — and headlines the Second Annual Song and Celebration Outdoor Festival. The center — formerly known as Nuestra Señora de la Paz — is a fitting place for the event. A major part of the Chicano struggle focused on the United Farm Workers union and its president, Cesar Chavez.
The center, 29700 Woodford-Tehachapi Road in Keene, is in the middle of expanding its role to include activities that aren’t related to unionism and social activism, according to Paul Chavez, Cesar Chavez’s son and the head of the National Farm Worker Service Center, a branch of the Farm Workers Movement founded by his father.
“It’s part of our move to make La Paz not just a place for union work, but a place that can house cultural performances,” said Paul Chavez. “We know life isn’t just made of struggle. We know that there are times when you need to flourish and grow, and for that, you need the arts.”
The festival will also feature the music of Kern County groups Mento Buru and Rock A Mole. Tickets are $20 and will benefit the foundation. They can be purchased by calling the National Chavez Center at 823-6134. Food and beverages will be available at the event, sponsored by Budweiser, Bud Light, MÁS, Benz, Inc., the Cesar Chavez Foundation and Bakotopia.
The festival includes wine tasting at a separate cost of $20. Wines to be sampled include those from the new Black Eagle label. The wines are produced under United Farm Workers’ contracts that guarantee decent pay, full benefits and protections for wine grape and all farm workers. Each wine tasting ticket includes a commemorative glass.
Another of the day’s activities is a new photo exhibition chronicling Cesar Chavez’s 1968 fast. To rededicate his movement to nonviolence, Chavez went without food for 25 days, breaking the fast with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy at a Catholic Mass attended by about 8,000 people.
Funk and farm workers seem like an unusual combination, but the Chicano Movement was steeped in song and dance from the beginning.
Cesar Chavez recognized the importance of combining song and “si se puede” in his often-quoted prayer of the “Farm Workers’ Struggle,” which says in part:
“Bring forth song and celebration;
So that the Spirit will be alive among us.”
The Song and Celebration Outdoor Festival took its name from that prayer.
Call it Chicano music or the Brown Sound, but musicians like Lalo Guerrero and later Malo, Sapo, Aztlan, El Chicano, Los Lobos, Tierra and Santana served to energize Chicano activists much as songs like James Brown’s seminal “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” motivated African-Americans.
Latino music and political activism have a relationship that stretches for centuries, according to Jess Nieto, executive director of Bakersfield’s Heritage of American Educational and Cultural Foundation and a professor at Cal State Long Beach.
“There’s a strong linkage to Chicanos and Latin Americans,” said Nieto, who has lectured on the subject and is writing a book on Kern County’s Chicano history.
From story telling, to Mexican songs known as corridos, to salsa, to norteño music and mariachi, such music with a message has three characteristics, said Nieto. It identifies a problem, calls for unity, and advocates direct social-political action to solve it.
“They all reflect to some extent one or two or all of these elements,” said Nieto. “We can say it’s not just traditional folk and community expressions.”
Although WAR was not strictly a Chicano group, many of the group’s songs have resonated with Hispanics over the last four decades. WAR songs formed part of the soundtrack of many Latinos’ lives.
What Latino who was in his teens and 20s during the 1970s and ’80s didn’t nurse a shattered heart over “So,” sip a frosty drink while soaking in the rays of a July sun to “Summer,” or reflexively reach for the hydraulic switch when “Low Rider” blared over the radio? While those songs don’t touch on ethnicity, others like “Cinco de Mayo” and “East L.A.” deal directly with celebratory Hispanic themes.
But WAR also took on social issues important to many Hispanics with songs like “The World is a Ghetto,” “Slipping Into Darkness” and “Me and Baby Brother,” where the singer laments that they “shot down baby brother, and they call it law and order” long before anyone had heard of Rodney King.
Then there were the playful themes. “Hey Senorita” tells the story of a Latino woman who laments in Spanish that she can’t go out on a date with the singer because her parents are too strict. The voice of the hero’s sidekick in “Cisco Kid” asks his partner, “Cisco, pasa la botella — Cisco, pass the bottle.”
At first, the Grammy-award winning group Los Lobos was scheduled to play at the festival, but when the band backed out, the organizers turned to WAR. Monica Parra, the Chavez Center’s conference and event manager, said the choice was obvious.
“We wanted someone that has a connection and supports our beliefs,” said Parra.
Parra was referring to WAR’s Latin percussionist Marcos J. Reyes, who grew up in the farm town of Lamont, honed his skills working with various Bakersfield bands, and has strong connections with the UFW.
Reyes’ family supported the Farm Worker Movement from the beginning. His mother, Alicia, and father, Pascual, who died in 1994, picketed with the UFW, and his brother, Isaac Reyes, was once arrested in a demonstration. His mother appears briefly among the crowd in the Grammy-nominated UFW documentary “Fighting for Our Lives.”
For Reyes, performing near the graveside of Cesar Chavez will be like coming home.
“My mom always mentioned that when she found out how spiritual (Cesar Chavez) was, his spiritual side, that’s what she admired about him,” said Reyes in a telephone interview just before hopping on plane to perform in Michigan.
Reyes has been immersed the UFW since he was a child. For decades his parents worked in the fields, and although his father left when he got a job with Southern Pacific Railroad, their support for the UFW never wavered. When UFW supporter Nagi Daifullah was slain by a Kern County Sheriff’s Deputy outside the Smoke House Bar in Lamont in 1973, Alicia Reyes crafted black UFW eagle flags for the funeral.
At the same time, Reyes imbibed the Latin-laced funk and rock of that era. While his family marched and rallied for Chavez, his older brother, Isaac, also listened to the songs of WAR, Santana, El Chicano and Malo. WAR keyboardist and front man Lonnie Jordan — the only remaining original member — was a particular inspiration.
Before long, the younger brother was listening, too.
“Isaac would play it in his low rider,” Reyes remembered. “He would play it in our garage, so that music is what got me interested in playing with the congas.”
Still in grammar school, Reyes was too young to picket, but he absorbed the lessons of his family. One time, he and a group of friends sat on their bicycles as a caravan of UFW flag-waving cars drove by. The boys couldn’t join the adults inside the vehicles, but they still showed their support by raising their fists in a Chicano power salute.
“My parents and brothers were talking about what the whole cause was, and it was (about) better conditions and pay for the farm workers,” he said.
Although Reyes has performed with WAR for 10 years, this year was particularly memorable. On April 21, WAR reunited with one of its founders, veteran rocker Eric Burdon, at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Eric Burdon and WAR — as the group was originally named — had not played together in more than 35 years.
With Burdon on stage, the group launched into its most well known hit of that era, “Spill the Wine,” and even ventured into earlier Burdon material such as “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “House of the Rising Sun,” which the singer recorded with the Animals.
Although he travels the world, Reyes will be glad to return to Kern County, where for decades his family has been devoted to Cesar Chavez.
“Cesar was someone who cared for people,” he said. “He cared for somebody, and he did something about it.”
Comments or suggestions? Send Leonel Martinez e-mail at: lmartinez@bakersfield.com or leave a message at 395-7631.