FELIX CONTRERAS, HOST:
The period between 1969 and 1972 saw the release of some of the most influential albums in contemporary music. The walls between rock, jazz and soul were seemingly very flexible and were often treated as recommendations rather than rules. It was also a very fertile and creative period during which Latin musicians also made a profound impact on mainstream American culture. So this week, we're going to hop into the Wayback Machine and set the dial for 50 years ago to tell the story of three 1971 releases that not only reflected their times but also contributed to the sound of that era.
From NPR Music, this is ALT.LATINO. I'm Felix Contreras. And this week, we're going to take a closer listen to the albums "Revolución" by El Chicano, "All Day Music" by War and "Santana III" by Santana. Altogether, they tell a story of political awakenings, self-determination and musical cross-pollinations. And to get us started, let's listen to an early version of what we now call an Afro Latino hybrid. This is the track "Nappy Head" from the band War.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NAPPY HEAD")
WAR: (Vocalizing).
CONTRERAS: Joining me this week to help explain the stories of these three albums is Jesse "Chuy" Varela, a longtime jazz and Latin music journalist, current deejay at NPR member station KCSM in San Mateo and a longtime friend of mine. Chuy, welcome to ALT.LATINO, bro.
JESSE VARELA, BYLINE: Well, it's an honor, Felix, to be here with you. You are somebody that has been a contemporary. We both grew up, you know, here in Northern California and have seen many very positive and enlightening changes. And I'm glad that you are there, you know, producing this great show for the gente, bro.
CONTRERAS: Thanks so much, man. OK. Set the scene for us - 1971. What was happening in Chicano communities around the southwest back then?
VARELA: Well, 1971, I was a sophomore in high school. And I remember it was music to party and have fun with, you know? This - for us, you know, in the Bay Area, you know, the whole hippie revolution had already hit in the late '60s, you know? So around 1969, we got hip to Santana, but it was around 1971 where the whole culture changed. All of a sudden, we grew our hair long, you know, and we called ourselves hippie lowriders because, you know, we had lowriders. We had long hair. We were smoking weed. We had tie-dyed T-shirts. We had, you know, our sandals, you know? Remember, we used to wear our guarachis, you know, with our little Levi's. And, you know, that was our uniform, and it was about having fun with the music. And the music really was inspiring, man.
CONTRERAS: What about you personally? 'Cause a lot of this music that we're going to talk about is specifically El Chicano. Well, I mean, how much more direct can you get when you name a band El Chicano? They were definitely in the moment with the Chicano movement that was happening. How did that affect you in terms of your sense of identity and your community as well?
VARELA: Well, you know, I grew up in a little town, you know, outside of San Francisco called Martinez. And Martinez was very isolated. The neighborhood that I lived in, there were a lot of Mexicanos there. And, you know, we all knew each other. We all came together. And in particular, there was a family right down the street where their big brother, Javier, had gone to UC Berkeley, you know? He had gotten a scholarship and went to UC Berkeley and was there at the time when there were all these, you know, uprisings, if you will, for People's Park and demonstrations against the Vietnam War. And he would come home on the weekends, and he would bring these piles of records. So he's the one that first brought, you know, the Santana records for us to listen to, the Malo records for us to listen to. So we're all in the basement of his house, you know, fumando grifa, and listening to these jams.
But he's also telling us, man, about what this Chicano movement is all about. And UC Berkeley at the time was really one of the very pivotal places where, you know, there was a lot of organizing and then particularly a lot of publication. You know, there were these magazines that had come up called El Grito - Octavio Romano and his press, you know? And so he would bring some of those books. And so we're all of a sudden looking through the books, and there's, you know, these poems by José Montoya. Here is, you know, these poems by people like Alurista - you know, people that we're not even hip to. But we're looking at it, and this is waking us up to who we are becoming - affirming the word Chicano in particular. And we're also learning about the struggles that are going on with our gente - the United Farm Workers union, you know, what's going on in the Vietnam War, you know, with the indiscriminate killing of Chicanos in the Vietnam War. But it was - you know, this big brother, man, you know, who went to school, came back in line. He
VARELA: brought it back home. And that in itself, man, was a very, very important way for us to be able to grow from that, you know?
CONTRERAS: Let's take these records one by one, and I want to start with El Chicano, 1971, "Revolución." Their first album was almost all instrumental. And the second album, it just seems to be a more refined idea and mixing in a little bit more soul and a little bit more Afro-Cuban, Afro-Caribbean stuff. What is your assessment now of that album looking back on it, you know, with everything that you've learned during your career doing radio?
VARELA: Well, I think that, you know, when you look at the band El Chicano, this was a great band that was coming together but that was also seeing what was going on in the streets of LA. And in the streets of LA is where you really saw the emergence of a very radical Chicano movement. The emergence of the Brown Berets was equitable to what happened with the Black Panthers in Oakland. I mean, this was a very radical - pick up arms, defend your community - and people really went for it. So when all of a sudden you get an anthem like "Don't Put Me Down 'Cause I'm Brown," hear what I say, all of a sudden, man, your fist goes up. All of a sudden, we have these ideas that, you know, we need to empower ourselves to get - break down the walls of this racism and segregation that is belittling us. That song in itself was something that was really quite empowering.
But then you had the beauty of "Sabor A Mi," you know, Ersi Arvizu. That was the ultimate love song. Cachetito a cachetito, we used to say - cheek to cheek - 'cause it was a song that you fell in love with. And so they had those things going, and then they had these great instrumentals that were just hard and driving and grooving, you know? And they were excellent musicians. It had musicality. It had a message. And it had that great front cover with Emiliano Zapata y Pancho Villa. Who could ask for more? And it was brown.
(LAUGHTER)
CONTRERAS: What a classic album cover, man.
El Chicano, showing their jazz roots from the album "Revolución." This is a jazz tune written by Ray Bryant. It's called "Cubano Chant" here on ALT.LATINO.
(SOUNDBITE OF EL CHICANO SONG, "CUBANO CHANT")
CONTRERAS: That was "Cubano Chant" from El Chicano, and you're listening to ALT.LATINO. I'm Felix Contreras. And we're talking about three albums that made a difference in 1971 and are still an influence on Latin music in the new millennium. Our guide is Jesse "Chuy" Varela. And next up, we unpack the cultural crossover of War - an African American band with a Latin sound.
VARELA: Well, you know, War really was a band that reflected the streets - not of East LA but of Watts. Watts was originally was a Mexican American neighborhood. It was actually during World War II with a migration of African Americans to come and work in the shipyards that the neighborhood began to change. And so, as a result, there's always been this cross-section of influence between African Americans and Chicanos in Watts, in south central Los Angeles. There were these cultural changes that happened in the way people dressed, the way people talked.
So War was a band that was listening to all these things. They were listening to what was happening in the barrio. They were listening to what was happening in their community. And they put it together with a great sound that, really, when you look at it, it's a Latinized James Brown 'cause JB was the bottom line for everybody. That was the funk, and the funk continued to evolve. El Chicano drew from it, as did War. But War really exemplified, you know, that, hey, here's the way that you can put this out to get people down. But their message "Slippin' Into Darkness" - they also put out, you know, a look at the community in a way that, you know, really, you know, made people wake up, if you will, to what was going on. And they continued in that trajectory, really reflecting what the community was all about - you know, "Low Rider."
Later on, they even did the song "Cinco De Mayo," I mean, because they also realized that there was a Latino community, a Chicano community that was embracing them, and they spoke to them. But it also crossed over to their community as well. So it really created a point of unity. And I think that was the beauty of War - that it created a point of unity between African Americans and Chicanos where, hey, you know, we're in the same neighborhood. Hey, let's come together. And the thing with them, too, is that they also really brought the sweet soul sound. Those vocals, man.
CONTRERAS: Yeah.
VARELA: You know, they really had it going on.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL DAY MUSIC")
WAR: (Singing) Music is what we like to play. Yeah, yeah. All day, all day, all day, all day, all day.
CONTRERAS: You are listening to ALT.LATINO. I'm Felix Contreras. I'm talking to my brother Chuy Varela about three albums in particular from 1971. Before we move on, I did some research. And I wanted to read out a list of, like, some of the other albums that came out in 1971 so people get an idea of the span of the types of music that was out there and that we were all listening to. Like, we weren't listening to one thing. We were listening to everything. So check this out. It's a - I'm going to go through this. And this is just a partial list, all right - "Sticky Fingers" from the Rolling Stones, "Who's Next" from The Who, "Led Zeppelin IV" with "Stairway To Heaven," Joni Mitchell, "Blue," "LA Woman" from The Doors, "What's Going On" from Marvin Gaye, "Masters Of Reality" (ph), Black Sabbath, "Live At The Fillmore East" (ph) from The Allman Brothers, "Madman Across The Water" from Elton John. Janis Joplin released her "Pearl" album - "Imagine" from John Lennon, "Maggot Brain" from Funkadelic and even Mahavishnu's "The Inner Mounting Flame" from the Mahavishnu Orchestra. And that's '71, man. I mean, look at all those great records. They're, like - they're all pivotal in their own way. That's - and we're just - we're going to the record store and taking all that stuff in. I don't know that you can recreate that kind of variety and that kind of imagination with so many groundbreaking records, man.
VARELA: And, you know, the thing, too, Felix, that we have to give credit to particularly here in the Bay Area was freeform radio.
CONTRERAS: Oh, man.
VARELA: We called it underground radio. And Tom Donohue - bless him - who had been, you know, a straight-ahead disc jockey with KYA - he was the guy that was the emcee for the Beatles at the Cow Palace. You know, he started this whole idea of freeform radio. It really almost was like a tie-dye T-shirt - all these different colors running into each other. And you would put it on, and you didn't have to turn it off. And you got turned on to so many different kinds of music that it was really cool.
CONTRERAS: And finally, we come to the third album by Santana called simply "Santana III." And while the other Latin rock bands of the era were just starting to get noticed nationally, Santana had already released two albums that pioneered the mashup of Africa, the Caribbean, the blues and the psychedelic sounds of late 1960s San Francisco. Chuy Varela, what's your take on "Santana III"?
VARELA: Well, for me, really, "Santana III" was the epitome of what the Santana sound was. It incorporated other elements that were part of what the Bay Area was all about. You know, this was at a time when salsa is starting to emerge to the forefront. Fania Records is starting to become a viable force in dance music - in Latin dance music. But you've also got these powerhouse guitar players. You've got Neal Schon, man - you know, went on to form Journey, you know, with Gregg Rolie. You've got Carlos, you know? And that is the last album that this configuration of musicians would make that really were what was a reflection of the San Francisco Mission District sound, if you will.
CONTRERAS: While Carlos Santana would go on to drastically change the musical direction of the band, in 1971, their album, like the other two we talked about by El Chicano and War, are musical moments captured in time, full of the bravado of youth and the power of the brown and Black communities flexing their political and social awakenings. And the intensity of that power is on full display on this track, "Everybody's Everything" from "Santana III."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EVERYBODY'S EVERYTHING")
SANTANA: (Singing) Seems like everybody's waiting for the new change to come around, come around, come around, come around, waiting for the day when the king, queen of soul's singing round, singing round, singing round, singing round, singing round, singing round for everyone, yeah.
CONTRERAS: My thanks once again to Jesse Chuy Varela from radio station KCSM in San Mateo, Calif. Chuy, as always, thank you so much for your wisdom, your knowledge and your friendship, bro. Thank you so much. You have been listening to ALT.LATINO from NPR Music. I'm Felix Contreras. As always, thank you so much for listening. And, folks, please be careful out there. Vax up, keep your distance, and stay safe.
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