Razabilly Boogie: The Latino rockabilly scene · rockabilly licks and slapping bass rhythms, often...

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Transcript of Razabilly Boogie: The Latino rockabilly scene · rockabilly licks and slapping bass rhythms, often...

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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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