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What does music sound like when it's created by activists' It sounds like this. The music group known as Quetzal was created in Los Angeles in the 1990s. The Rodney King police beating trial and the subsequent riots had shaken the city. And as people came together to heal there was a Chicano arts renaissance. That's when the group was created by Quetzal Flores, a Chicano who was raised by two activist parents from the sixties and seventies. After the Zapatista uprising in Mexico in 1994, the LA Chicano arts scene became even more politicized and Quetzal became the premier group to play for political fund raisers. But politics has given way to a focus to creating music. Quetzal second release entitled 'Sing the Real' is a mix of social conscious with Mexican traditional, rock, folk, and Afro-Caribbean influences. With us on Latino USA today is Martha Gonzalez, lead vocalist and conga player, Gabriel Gonzalez, also lead vocalist, and Quetzal Flores, the founder of the group. (Repeat)

The alternative music of Julieta Venegas. Julieta Venegas is a singer-songwriter and classically trained musician from Mexico City. She got her start with Mexican punk group Tijuana No!, but it is with the release of her second solo album 'Bueninvento' where Venegas has been recognized as an up and coming artist in Latin alternative music scene. Julieta Venegas was born in Long Beach, California but she was raised in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico. She was influenced early on, not only by listening to music on U.S. radio stations from across the border, but also by the Mexican music she heard at home, and by the border experience itself. (Repeat)

Antibalas means anti-bullets, or bullet-proof, in Spanish. It's also the name of a Brooklyn based Afrobeat orchestra that takes its politics as seriously as its music. Antibalas came together partly in response to the death of Nigerian Fela Kuti, the founder of the Afrobeat sound. Joining us today in the studio is conga player and vocalist Duke Amayo, conga player Fernando Velez, and percussionist Ernesto Abreu. (Repeat)

So what would you get if you combined a traditional Mexican record, a modern electronic cd, and mixed in some 1970's funk' Well you would get one of Mexico's hottest bands ' it's called Kinky. Latino USA's Andrea Valdez recently met-up with Kinky in California and she has this profile.

Repository Details

Part of the Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at Austin Repository

Contact:
2300 Red River Street
Austin Texas 78712 United States
(512) 495-4578