Razabilly Boogie: The Latino rockabilly scene · rockabilly licks and slapping bass rhythms, often...
Transcript of Razabilly Boogie: The Latino rockabilly scene · rockabilly licks and slapping bass rhythms, often...
boom | fa l l 2 012 91
F or Los Angeles rockabilly fans coming of age at the turn of this century,
Rudolpho’s was the place to see and be seen. The Silverlake establishment, a
nondescript Mexican restaurant by day, transformed by night into the “Be Bop
Battlin’ Ball,” a rollicking 1950s-style nightclub serving stiff drinks alongside obscure
music from rock and roll’s very infancy. Patrons packed the venue to capacity attired
in their best vintage ensembles, drinking, dancing, and singing along to the records
of Johnny Burnette, Janis Martin, and Bunker Hill. With hot rods lining the parking
lot outside, young musicians could be found inside demonstrating their mastery of
rockabilly licks and slapping bass rhythms, often joined by an original 1950s artist
booked for the night. Some outsiders may have been surprised to discover that such a
vibrant Los Angeles following existed for a genre of music fifty years past its prime. But
it seems likely that most were shocked, or at least pleasantly surprised, to discover that
Rudolpho’s patrons were almost exclusively young working-class Latinas and Latinos.
Rockabilly shows at Rudolpho’s came to an end in 2002, but the Los Angeles
rockabilly scene has since come to be considered one of the most dynamic in the
world. While contemporary rockabilly scenes are prominent throughout California,
on any given weekend in the greater Los Angeles area someone somewhere is
hosting a rockabilly show for a packed house of predominantly Latino patrons. And
whereas most local scenes have to wait weeks, if not months, to see live bands
perform fifties music, it’s Los Angeles that has the most consistent access to
original 1950s performers as well as scores of contemporary rockabilly bands and
disc jockeys.1 Combined with the homebred Kustom Kulture scene of hot-rodding,
rockabilly in Los Angeles is a full-fledged regional phenomenon, with thousands
of aficionados ranging from casual observers to diehard fanatics—and the majority
are Latinos.
The contemporary rockabilly revival was born in the de-industrial Great Britain
of the 1970s and has grown from a small circle of fans to a worldwide network of
Boom: A Journal of California, Vol. 2, Number 3, pps 90–97. ISSN 2153-8018, electronic ISSN 2153-764X.
© 2012 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for
permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and
Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/boom.2012.2.3.90.
C o n t e s t e d G r o u n d
nicholas f. centino
Razabilly Boogie
The Latino rockabilly scene
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wondering why working-class Raza youth in the urban
metropolis of twenty-first century Los Angeles are
attracted to the music of rural, Southern white musicians
of the mid-twentieth century. After all, rockabilly is
categorized as country western music, a genre all too
often—and often wrongly—racialized as music by
and for white people.3 In many ways, this racialization
stretches back to rockabilly’s birth in the American
South of the mid-1950s, when the term rockabilly was
derisively coined by white disk jockeys to describe music
by white artists appropriating black sounds. The “rock”
in rockabilly reflected the black rocking rhythm and
blues tradition, and the “billy” gestured to the hillbilly
or country tradition. The amalgamation of traditions is
most often exemplified by elvis Presley’s first record: one
side featured the popular rhythm and blues (read black)
song “That’s All Right” performed with white country
local scenes throughout the global north. With its working-
class aesthetics, shoebox hot rods, and bass-slapping
rhythms, rockabilly enthusiasts have crafted their own
identity, drawing elements from 1950s Americana. yet,
despite claims to a relatively marginal and invisible status,
the rockabilly scene is nowhere near an underground
phenomenon. An estimated 20,000 attendees took part
in the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender of 2012. Viva
Las Vegas is a yearly four-day festival promoted by UK-
born DJ and promoter Tom Ingram, and it is just one of
the genre’s dozens of large-scale weekend festivals held
worldwide.2
The logic of incongruity
The seemingly incongruous pairing of rockabilly music
with Latino and Latina fans has left many casual observers
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inflections, while the other featured the country and
western tune, “Blue Moon of Kentucky” performed in a
black rhythm and blues style. It is this type of hybridity
that may still resonate decades later with Latinos and
Latinas, an audience well familiar with cultural mestizaje.
While Presley and his white contemporaries are
remembered as rockabilly artists, you can hear the same
hybridity in the music of contemporary black artists, such
as Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline” or Muddy Waters’s “I Can’t
Be Satisfied.”4 Muddy Waters, however, is remembered as
a bluesman while Chuck Berry is emblematic of rock and
roll; their use of hybridity in the 1950s is largely forgotten
or overlooked in contrast to their white counterparts. To
the credit of many rockabilly DJs who are cognizant of this
history, black musicians are equally celebrated, and their
songs and records are played alongside those of white
musicians. yet blackness remains a mark of difference
in the rockabilly scene. While eddie Cochran and Gene
Vincent are rarely referred to as white rock and rollers, it is
not uncommon to hear to the music of Kid Thomas or Roy
Gaines referred to as black rock and roll.5
The racial shift
While the Los Angeles rockabilly scene of the 1990s
was never explicitly racist or xenophobic, it did serve as
a recruiting ground for white supremacist groups. The
1990s saw an explosion in the neo-Nazi hate music
scene, with a handful of bands such as Orange County’s
youngland performing rockabilly. Banking on the music’s
Southern white roots, the Confederate flag became a
recurring symbol in the scene, appearing everywhere from
belt buckles to tattoos.6 White supremacist groups sought
to capitalize on white working-class anxieties evidenced
by the passage of California’s Proposition 187 (denying
basic healthcare and education rights to undocumented
immigrants), Proposition 227 (eliminating bilingual
education), and Proposition 209 (an anti-affirmative
action measure). White working-class hostility against
immigrants in California of the 1990s reached heights
unseen since the 1920s. In Los Angeles County alone,
a reported 23.5 percent increase in hate crimes occurred
against Latinas and Latinos in 1994.7 The relationship
still persists, as popular rockabilly festivals such as the
Hootenanny in Irvine and Kustom Kulture gatherings,
like West Coast Kustom’s Cruisin’ Nationals in Santa
Maria, are popular haunts for members of Southern
Californian hate groups.
But most LA scene veterans can also demarcate a racial
shift in the scene, largely solidified by California’s turn, at the
turn of this century, from majority white to majority brown.
In Southern California, the presence of people of color in
the rockabilly scene, although notable, was nevertheless
considered marginal and negligible. With the exception of
Rosie Flores, the biracial Robert Williams of Big Sandy and
his Fly-Rite Boys, The Paladin’s Dave Gonzales, and a few
others, Southern California Latinos did not see themselves
reflected on rockabilly stages in the early to mid 1990s.
After the turn of the century, the Los Angeles rockabilly
scene experienced a tremendous demographic shift toward
a majority Chicana/o and Latina/o makeup. This shift also
It did serve as a recruiting ground for white
supremacist groups.
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happened to take place during a political era of xenophobia
and intensified attacks on civil rights. In the introduction
to her compiled series of photographs, The Rockabillies,
Jenner Greenberg noted that her own interactions with the
scene coincided with the first term of George W. Bush’s
presidency and the intense xenophobia associated with the
War on Terror following the events of 9/11.8
For many Latinos, Rudolpho’s was one of a small handful
of venues that provided an accepting place for Raza fans of
rockabilly. Located in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood
of Silver Lake, inside Rudolpho’s, La Raza out-rockabillied
rockabilly. Dubbing their promotion of “Be Bop Battlin’
Ball,” event promoters Vito Lorenzo and Gonzalo Gonzales
and their patrons turned to the core elements of the scene’s
British roots to create sonic and aesthetic alternatives to
what represented rockabilly in the United States. With the
tagline “It doesn’t get closer to the real ’50s than this!” the
promoters of the Be Bop Battlin’ Ball fully embraced the
British model.
Rudolpho’s patrons rejected the “mainstream”
American rockabilly style for actual vintage clothing that
is more specific and obscure. eschewing the cuffed jeans
and solid white T-shirts synonymous with the archetypical
American greaser, the Fonz from the television show
Happy Days, male patrons opted for double-welted suede
loafers, high-waisted gabardine trousers, flap pocket
shirts, and two-toned rayon Hollywood jackets, emulating
what the european rockabilly scene dubbed the hepkat: a
gendered identity meant to apply to a hard partying, rock
and roller who always dressed in vintage 1950s American
teenage fashions, drove a hot rod, collected vintage
records, and had a healthy disdain for modern aesthetics.
Women patrons refused their greaser counterparts’ cotton
cherry or polka dot print sundresses and simple Betty
Page hairstyles for printed cable knit pullover sweaters,
rayon cocktail dresses, and elaborate victory curls from
the 1940s.
Recording artists were booked and expected to perform
their original rock and roll or rockabilly material from
the 1950s. New artists were booked only if they played
and looked like vintage artists; artists who experimented
with modern elements or cross genre pollenization like
psychobilly (a hybrid of punk and rockabilly) were strictly
prohibited. Both men and women practiced to perfect
vintage 1950s dances of the bop, stroll, and jive to perform
with precision accuracy. And yet, ironically, despite the
attempts of Raza Rockabilly enthusiasts to strive for a sense
of historical authenticity through leisure, their legitimacy
as “true” Americans with claims to citizenship was being
shunned in the political realm.
While Rudolpho’s and other venues provided physical
space for Latinos to stake their claims to rockabilly, the
Internet provided a virtual world where those stakes could
be claimed on a broader scale. By the early 2000s, the
Internet had become more accessible and user friendly.
Online services such as yahoo! group listervs provided
rockabilly promoters, who once relied solely on physical
flyers and word of mouth, with another venue to advertise
their upcoming events. However, with the creation of
free webhosting services in the early 2000s, and social
networking sites, anyone with access to a computer could
broadcast themselves and their identity to the world at
large. Developed by Ruth Hernandez from Whittier and
erick Sánchez from Santa Ana, “Razabilly” was a MSN-
hosted user-based forum and website where fans could
share their love for rockabilly music and style. Infused with
a campy tongue-in-cheek spirit evidenced in its wordplay
title, “Razabilly” allowed its users to post upcoming events,
discussion topics, and pictures.
Social networking sites such as Friendster and MySpace
provided anyone with access to a computer their own mini-
web page, where they could upload pictures of themselves,
compose their own self-descriptions, talk about their
interests, and interact with other members of the respective
site’s membership. Instead of the off chance that a fan
could stumble upon a rockabilly show only during specific
hours on a specific night, MySpace provided a virtual
rockabilly scene that could be discovered at any hour of the
day. Images on MySpace of brown bodies in the rockabilly
scene normalized the demographic shift that was occurring
and depicted the scene as Raza-friendly.
Through physical venues like Rudolpho’s and through
virtual portals like “Razabilly,” Latinas and Latinos not
only crafted spaces where they themselves made up a
critical mass, they also deftly positioned themselves as the
American torch bearers in an international rockabilly scene.
As Los Angeles-based bands, disc jockeys, and rockabilly
La Raza out-rockabillied
rockabilly.
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fans traveled internationally to festivals, they transformed
the representational face of the United States, the birthplace
of all things rockabilly—from white to brown.
Rewriting history
Significantly, the invocation of the scene’s British roots
and strict guidelines to what is and is not rockabilly
provided Latinos with the space to radically alter the
scene to fit their needs. With an understood ownership
of the scene, they were free to adapt the scene and makes
changes as they saw fit. Disc jockeys began playing 45s of
Lalo Guerrero and Gloria Rios alongside Glenn Glenn and
Joe Clay. Latinos looked for their own icons to emulate from
the golden age of Mexican cinema—Pedro Infante and Tin
Tan instead of elvis Presley and James Dean. A single
white streak in dark hair, in honor of US-born dancer
yolanda “Tongolele” Montes, became a common sight
amongst Raza rockabilly women. For those enthusiasts,
the experience of the 1950s was reimagined through their
own eyes, shaped by their own unique vantage point. Of
course, the relationship between Chicanos and Latinos
and rock and roll music in California is a long and
fruitful one. yet, while rockabilly music had always had
fans within La Raza, the appeal of embodying the era of
that music each and every day was new. While low-riding
They transformed the representational face of
the United States, the birthplace of all things
rockabilly—from white to brown.
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enthusiasts could pay homage by incorporating and
modifying elements of bygone eras into their own
contemporary style, Raza rockabilly fans sought to fully
re-create those looks and performances.
In many ways, Raza rockabilly provided a way for Los
Angeles Latinos to rewrite themselves into the history of
Los Angeles and rewrite Los Angeles into the history of
rock and roll. While black and white rockabilly and rock
and roll musicians experimented with each other’s sounds
in the segregated South, groups like the Silhouettes
(Ritchie Valens’s original band) and the Rhythm Rockers
were racially mixed, reflecting the multiracial makeup of
the urban areas they descended from. In Los Angeles, rock
and roll served as an alternative culture operating against
hegemonic racial segregation and discrimination. Far from
novel, black and brown shared cultural expressions were
ordinary and to be expected, due to shared neighborhoods,
schools, and social spaces.
Through rediscovering, and in many ways embodying
these artists, Raza rockabilly enthusiasts engage with their
own past. For many, the cultural practices of Razabilly not
only reflect musical and aesthetic interests, but also speak
to one’s identity as a Chicano or Latino. Thus, race holds
an equally important role in the construction of the Raza
rockabilly that both parallels and surpasses the traditional
rockabilly arrangement of clothing, hair, makeup, and
tattoos. Given that so much of their past has been stricken
from the institutional historical record, and their very
presence in certain Los Angeles communities is being
wiped clean through gentrification, this strong and creative
musical movement is all the more significant. As memory
made flesh, the Raza rockabilly enthusiast provokes Los
Angelenos to recognize their own immediate history as
well to consider all the unfulfilled promises of equality
made to people of color since the era of the civil rights
movement.b
Notes
The Chicano Studies Institute at UC Santa Barbara provided
financial support for this dissertation research. The following
people provided guidance and inspiration: Dolores Inés
Casillas, Theresa Gaye Johnson, George Lipsitz, and Juan
Vicente Palerm.
1 While he is not a focus of this article, credit must be given to
“Rockin’” Ronnie Weiser for seeking out original Los Angeles-
based rockabilly artists and encouraging them to perform and
record again in the 1970s. Weiser is best witnessed at his most
eccentric zaniness in elizabeth Blozan’s documentary on Los
Angeles Rockabilly, Rebel Beat: The Story of L.A. Rockabilly
(Betty Vision, 2007).
2 I utilize “Raza” and “Latina/Latino” as pan-ethnic terms to
refer to people of Mexican, Caribbean, and Central and South
American descent living in the United States. I typically pair
Chicano and Latino due to the unique position that the border
experience and culture of Chicanas and Chicanos have in Los
Angeles, as well as its relationship to American rock and roll.
3 See Peter La Chapelle’s Proud to Be An Okie: Cultural Politics,
Country Music and Migration to Souther California for an
exploration on the role played by both African American and
Mexican American musical traditional on country western
musicians. Peter La Chapelle, Proud to Be An Okie: Cultural
Politics, Country Music and Migration to Souther California
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
4 According to George Lipsitz, rock and roll was born out of
the same blue-collar industrial landscape that Chicana/os
and Latina/os found themselves in after World War II. In the
migrations and resettlements of working peoples, transplanted
cultures mixed with local expressions in ways that were
previously restricted. Lipsitz argues that encoded protest
found within rock and roll songs resonated with working-class
listeners of all colors. He writes, “From its tradition of social
criticism to its sense of time, from its cultivation of community
to its elevation of emotion, rock-and-roll music embodies a
dialogic process of active remembering. It derives its comedic
and dramatic tension from working-class vernacular traditions,
and it carries on a prejudice in favor of community, collectivity,
and creativity in its very forms and constructs.” George Lipsitz,
Raza rockabilly provided a way for Los Angeles
Latinos to rewrite themselves into the history of
Los Angeles.
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Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture
(Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press,
1990), 116.
5 George Lipsitz has published an excellent study of the centrality
of whiteness in US culture. George Lipsitz, The Possessive
Investment in Whiteness How White People Profit from Identity
Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).
6 emily Dutton, director, Desperate Generation: The 10th Anniversary
(Mad Fabricators. 2006).
7 Anna Pegler-Gordon, “In Sight of America: Photography and
U.S. Immigration Policy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan,
2002), 346.
8 Greenberg remembered, “. . . as an artist and a liberal—in fact
as a human being—I felt defeated and hopeless. All I wanted
was to escape into the vivid world depicted in my grandmother’s
photographs.” Jennifer Greenburg, The Rockabillies (Chicago:
Center for American Places, 2010), xi.
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