East Los musicians Las Cafeteras have long made political progress a signature element of their sound and the band’s new single continues the tradition.
If I Was President — released on Monday, Presidents Day — starts with the son jarocho song Señor Presidente and “then flows into a bilingual hip hop-folk fusion, with lyrics that make you dream, think, come up with alternatives.”
East Los homies Las Cafeteras are back with a son jarocho version of the Woody Guthrie’s classic This Land Is Your land with acoustic aplomb and some updated Spanglish lyrics:
Mas…Las Cafeteras: This Land Is Your Land (music video + lyrics)
A row of bald-headed, broad-shouldered young men stand together in the middle of a small smoky dance club called Sound Base. They wear well pressed Dickies pants, Locs (wrap-around shades), extra-long flannel shirts or long cotton athletic shirts in black and gray. A few had T-shirts with images of lowrider cars as well as cholas and cholos. In the club’s parking lot, adjacent to a lumberyard, several lowered 1950s and 1960s Detroit-built cars display airbrushed murals and shiny chrome, the one exception being a caramel brown 1941 Chevy truck.
On the stage are two members of Quetzal, one of East Los Angeles’ most popular bands: Quetzal Flores and his long-time companion, Martha Gonzalez. Flores strums a jarana, a traditional stringed instrument from the Mexican Gulf port state of Veracruz. Gonzalez is seated astride a cajon, also used extensively in the Son Jarocho tradition of that state, and thumps with her hands and fingers a driving cadenced beat as she sings in Spanish and English, words heavily tinged with Mexican/Xicano cultural and political significance.