Living in Spanglish by Ed Morales

Author:Ed Morales
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2012-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

As the ’70s ended, Spanglish culture was thoroughly invading the American musics of the postwar and post-civil rights era, rock and roll, and hip-hop. There had always been a Latin sound in rock and roll, from the Beatles’ ballads to their covering of the Isleys’ “Twist and Shout,” to Love’s “Back Again” (which was covered by the late Selena’s husband Chris Perez in a 1999 album), to the Doors’ “Break on Through to the Other Side,” a weird overlapping of bossa nova and clave rhythm. In fact, one of the purest Latin rock stylings ever was done by the blind Puerto Rican singer Jose Feliciano when he covered the Doors’ “Light My Fire.” (Ironically, Feliciano was the first musician, well before Jimi Hendrix, who performed rock-inflected version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” a very ’60s phenomenon.)

Rock history is dotted with a list of participants and folklore that cry out in Spanglish epithets. Obvious examples are the Spanish-descended Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead’s use of clave on “Not Fade Away” (a song by Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash with Ritchie Valens); Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing,” in which he actually engages in Spanglish, rattling off several cool slang words, including “chevere” which was the Spanglish equivalent of “groovy”; and Steely Dan’s “The Royal Scam,” which sang the praises of the noble underdog role of Nuyoricans in Manhattan.

But there were other, less obvious manifestations of Spanglish in rock history. Redbone, who had a ’70s pop-rock hit, “Come and Get Your Love,” often appeared in Native-American garb, but were really Chicanos. “?” and the Mysterians, another Chicano group, this time from Detroit, had a huge hit with “96 Tears,” another primitive rock song that many critics have identified as seminal to the punk aesthetic. The original lead singer of Black Flag, which became one of Los Angeles’s major contributions to hard-core punk, was Ron Reyes, a rare L.A. Puerto Rican. The invention of the scissors-cut holes in T-shirts, a London and New York punk staple, was attributed to a Puerto Rican tailor named Frenchy who accompanied the New York Dolls on a European tour. “Blitzkrieg Bop,” one of the Ramones’ signature tunes, is a dead ringer for Ritchie Valens’s “Come On Let’s Go.” Even the “artistic director” of the Ramones, the man who designed their famous pseudo-military logo was Chihuahua, Mexico-born Arturo Vega. The lead guitarist of Roxy Music, one of London’s seminal post-glam, modern rock bands, was Phil Manzanera, of Colombian descent, who was raised English.

But the most important Latin rocker was Santana, who is still the only musician to successfully combine Afro-Cuban rhythms with rock instrumentation. He was a key icon for the Spanglish flock that was drawn to the counterculture, and his performances were among the best of the classic rock bands. Although Santana is a spectacular instrumentalist, he’s not a great songwriter, and didn’t have that narrative voice that made a significant impact in an era of singer/songwriters wielding electric guitars. While

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