SOUNDTRACK: Y LA BAMBA-NONCOMM 2019 (May 14, 2019).
I have been hearing a lot about Y La Bamba lately and for some reason I didn’t realize that they sang in Spanish (which is why I thought it was an odd name for an English-speaking band). I know WXPN has been playing some of their songs, perhaps I only heard “My Death” and “Orca” which are in English and which they did not play at NonComm.
But they do sing in Spanish and they bring a wonderfully diverse sound to these Spanish lyrics. And they are not simply casually Spanish either, as their mission statement explains “BEING A CHICANA, MEXICAN AMERICAN HAS BEEN AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE A STRENGTHENING JOURNEY. I AM LEARNING HOW TO CELEBRATE MY BEAUTY, HISTORY, BE AND HEAL FROM WITHIN IT.” Nor are they exclusively Spanish. “I WRITE IN SPANISH BECAUSE IT WANTS TO BE SUNG, I WRITE IN ENGLISH BECAUSE IT WANTS TO BE SAID.”
Lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Luz Elena Mendoza is the daughter of immigrants from Michoacán, and she has channeled into her music her Mexican-American heritage and her many frustrations with American culture.
And she demands the audience’s respect. I would have found this particular set very uncomfortable as Mendoza, called out talkers in the back of the room, demanded silence and respect. I’m all for silence and respect for bands during shows. In fact I wish more bands would demand it, but this was really uncomfortable to listen to and I wasn’t even there.
Demanding silence form the drinkers at the bar, she said “I don’t come here to waste my time, […] you hear me?” She waited for the crowd’s attention. “You hear me? […] OK. Because that’s real. I’m not here to be cool, to give you something that you think might be cool. I’m here to give you my parents’ story.”
This is all pretty awesome, but since nearly all of the songs they sang were in Spanish, I’m not sure how much the audience really got out of what she was singing.
The blurb describes their music as a “mix of indie-punk, música mexicana and raw emotional storytelling” while Mendoza sings and raps in Spanish and English, railing against misogyny, patriarchy, and white ignorance.
Y La Bamba were at their most intense last night when Mendoza rapped in unison with keyboardist Julia Mendiolea, including on their fiery opener, “Paloma Negra”(“Black Pigeon”).
There’s some gentle echoing guitars (Ryan Oxford) and some bouncy synths underneath their very fast rapping.
As the raging “Paloma Negra” concluded, drummer Miguel Jimenez-Cruz instantly slid into a sly tresillo groove that marked the introduction to “Boca Llena,”
Later, “Bruja de Brujas” introduced all kinds of cool sounds in the bass (Zack Teran) and the percussion. It was funky and fun. The song ended with a
a wash of echoing cymbals and guitars that finally coalesced into the arrival of “Cuatro Crazy,”
This was the first (and only) song sung in English. It was quiet with the two singers singing in a gentle falsetto over washes of guitar.
A blend of phasers, distortion and delay lines infused the band’s guitar and vocal sounds with an electric energy, and helped Mendiolea’s synth provide a brooding ambient backdrop for the spoken-word “Santa Sal.” This was spoken in English, but it had some echoing and it was a little hard to follow.
It was during the introduction to “Una Letra” that Mendoza started to get angry with the crowd.
As she introduced the ballad “Una Letra,” Mendoza explained to the crowd, “It’s about domestic violence. It’s about my mom writing a letter to me, wishing […] for me to have the good things that she couldn’t have. And if those don’t want to hear this story, and you’re here to listen, then I don’t know what you’re doing here.” Mendoza and her bandmates gently repeated, “No se sabe. No se sabe, se comprende.” — “You don’t know. You don’t know and you don’t understand.”
Again, she has every right to be annoyed that she’s telling these personal stories and people are apparently ignoring her. But again, it’s hard to “hear the story” if you don’t understand the language.
This is when she launched into her “I don’t come here to waste my time, […] you hear me?” tirade. But It felt a little better when she sent her anger to someone who should know better.
“I’m very disappointed in Morrissey,” she went on to refer to a 2018 interview that Fiona Dodwell conducted with the former Smiths frontman, for which he has received intense backlash. In the interview, Morrissey aligned himself with a UK political movement known as For Britain and dismissed the many critics who have deemed the movement extremist and racist. Morrissey performed at NonCOMM just a few hours before Y La Bamba on Tuesday night, before a crowd that presumably included some of the same listeners who attended the Y La Bamba set. “I’ve been a huge fan of Morrissey and I just heard him talk,” Mendoza continued, “He thinks that ‘racism’ is just a childish word that we use against one another. He’s a white man with so much privilege! I am so disappointed!”
I had wondered if anyone would allude to Morrissey’s recent politics statements and thought no one had. But Mendoza did not hold back.
I don’t know if Morrissey had anything to do with the next song but “Soñadora” shimmied ans swayed and Mendoza’s voice soared to new heights. “Corazón, corazón,” she and her bandmates chanted.
What is particularly unsettling is that on the recording, people sound respectful, but apparently she is unhappy with the crowd.
Before a gentle solo rendition of “Entre Los Dos,” she said
“I politely ask for everyone’s silence,” she said. But as the bar and the back the room remained noisy, she continued, “Because what are we doing here? … People wanna have their drinks, but I’m really asking — just giving benefit of the doubt — just everyone’s silence. To actually listen to what’s happening…. If you saw, ‘Y La Bamba is playing,’ and you saw what record I put out, and you got to read the story — you got to hear that it’s for women.” This prompted shouts of approval from several voices in the room, but Mendoza seemed intent on getting the attention of even more of the crowd. “You know? Right? Right? Isn’t that what we’re here for? … Let’s remember that, OK? Come on, we’re not children anymore. You know what I’m saying?”
She strummed her guitar softly and continued on with the song, but stopped singing again at one point to remind the room, “I’m not gonna play my song until everyone gets the point … I’m making my point, and I’m gonna make my point everywhere I go. It’s not really about like, you know, hearing me sing, it’s about listening. Like, yeah, if I get to sing, cool. But it’s about listening … and it’s really hard. Like, nobody even knows what I’m talking about back there. No one.” She then addressed those closest to the stage. “But I see you! I see those who are in the front. I see you. I hear you, with your heart.”
Of all of the comment she made, I though this was the most powerful and could be used in any context
After Mendoza completed “Entre Los Dos”, Jimenez-Cruz began a low drum roll and Oxford’s electric guitar shuddered back to life. Before the band began their final two numbers, Mendoza looked to front row of the crowd with resolve. “You guys wanna help me sing this song?”
“When I show up here, it starts right here. When I ask for silence I really wanna be taken seriously. When I am out there walking out on the street, I am not going to count on it. “
That’s pretty powerful and reasonable thing to say. But she seems so pissed when she says it that it’ hard to know how to respond to her request that everyone sing a long to a pretty melody of “dadada da da da” “Riosueltos” is a great rocking rap-filled song. It was my favorite of the set, with its cool bass and guitar.
The set ends with “De Lejos”an upbeat dancey number with some great wild guitar work.
Before this show I was curious about Y La Bamba, but I can tell they are not a band I need to see live–I wonder if she’ll demand the same respect at XPNFest, when people are not there just to see them.
[READ: May 3, 2019] “Green Ash Tree”
The July/August issue of The Walrus is the Summer Reading issue. This year’s issue had three short stories and three poems as special features.
I don’t normally write about poems. Certainly not ones that appear in magazines (this blog would be all poetry if did that). But for a summer reading issue that features three poets, since I wrote about the other two, I figured I should include this one as well.
Of the three, I feel like I “got” this one the least.
A tree never dies
except in our neighborhood. Green ash,
stripped in old age, all branches
cleanly lopped by saws: a torso standing
Upon being aware of this poor specimen (more…)
I Just Read About That... 