Rolas de Aztlán: Songs of the Chicano Movement (review)

For anyone interested in how music and political movements form symbiotic relationships, this recording offers the first culturally-compiled cross-sampling of the politically-charged music of the Chicano Movement. Twelve tracks are derived from LPs published in the 1960s and 70s; three tracks from the 1980s; and four from the 1990s. Among the source recordings are El Movimiento Chicano (1973), ¡Sí Se puede! (Yes We Can) (1977), ¡Viva la Causa! Sounds of the Delano Grape Strike, featuring El Teatro Campesino (1966), ¡Huelga en General! Songs of the United Farm Workers (1976), Mestizo (1974), and Chicano Music All Day (1985), to mention only a few. The question that will undoubtedly arise, and which I attempt to address, is "why this particular selection?"

It is with affection that I refer to the "hit parade" of the Chicano Movement that is represented in the very excellent compilation Rolas de Aztlán: Songs of the Chicano Movement, compiled, annotated, and produced by Estevan César Azcona and Russell Rodríguez. Azcona authors the liner notes and collaborates with Rodríguez on individual song notes, lyrics, and translations. Rola refers to a song in slang typical of the Movimiento; the term is derived from a rola as the piano roll that equaled a single song. These are the rolas, the compositions and performances that rolled out of the Chicano Movement when the Movimiento was in full force during the early 1970s. Aztlán, a term attributed to Chicano activist poet Alurista (b. 1954), refers to a mythical place in the north where the people lived before they went south to become the Aztecas, imperial rulers of Tenochtitlán, on the present site of Mexico City. As a political concept, Aztlán lays claim to a mythical ancestral Chicano homeland on this side of the U.S. – Mexico border, and to the greatness attained by the Aztec Empire in Tenochtitlán and beyond. (David Carrasco, Religious Studies professor at Harvard, is part of a research team investigating a recent archeological find, an Aztec map that indicates the location of such a homeland.)

Far from emphasizing grandeur of anything but spirit, the compilation includes the best-known and cherished songs of the Movement, focusing primarily on the struggles of the Farm Workers in California, and on a variety of other topics that specifically address the ethos of a Chicano consciousness firmly rooted in indigenous and mestizo realities. Chicano activist musicians like those featured on the CD and others, like Jesús "Chuy" Martínez, now of Albuquerque, who played with Teatro Campesino in those days, have continued to perform these songs in concerts and for appropriate occasions.

The richness of Azcona's and Rodríguez's research notes stands out in the 37-page booklet that accompanies the CD. It includes photographs and information about the musical groups and genres important to the movimiento, with a focus on huelga or strike songs and corridos or narrative ballads that documented "the roles played by important individuals and events" (6). Azcona provides a brief history of the music of the Movement, and delineates the "ideology of Chicanismo, a cultural nationalist response to the oppression, exploitation, and racism that constituted ethnic Mexicans' experience in the United States" (ibid.). He provides succinct information on the ensembles that formed and led the music, "directly connecting movimiento music with protest-song movements throughout Latin America" (7). This compilation comprises an excellent contribution to that general topic.

The second section of the booklet includes individual notes for each song, with English and Spanish translations. Below I discuss the content of a few selections on the CD, padded with information from the liner notes, which offer enough for a comprehensive lecture in a folklore, ethnomusicology, anthropology, or ethnic studies high school or college class. I attempt to illustrate some of the ways that the selections reflect their significance as part of the compilation...