#tejano-and-rb-fusion

#tejano-and-rb-fusion

Eliades Ochoa's aura is so powerful that under the generous rays of sunlight streaming through the large window on this March morning, he evokes a Western film.

It makes me feel proud, simply because of the specific time we're in right now. It definitely takes a lot of courage for kids my age to represent their culture. Anthony Benitez, an 18-year-old violin student born in the United States to Mexican immigrants, expressed how the academy provides a meaningful outlet for cultural expression amid punitive immigration enforcement affecting Latino and immigrant families across the country.

Pianist Dr. Gabriela Calderón and violinist Dr. Catalina Barraza celebrate the rich musical heritage of Latin America.

L.A.'s Spaghetti Cumbia, a five-piece party band that combines cumbia, punk rock, ska and their love for spaghetti western soundtracks a la Ennio Morricone.

The first is George Frideric Handel's beloved "Zadok The Priest" written for the coronation of England's King George II. The second takes the audience forward in time to 1936's "Dona Nobis Pacem," an emotional plea for peace composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams with words from the poetry of Walt Whitman.

It is a dance tradition, but it's very much culturally rooted. It's also for many, if not all, the people involved, a spiritual practice. But even in different (dance) groups that hold to different ways of being, we still collaborate together - we still work together to uplift the culture.

Launched during his years teaching at Stanford in the mid-1980s, the Rockin' Jalapeno Band drew upon his earlier career as an R&B musician in San Antonio, and later, Las Vegas. But the inveterately curious Cuéllar kept expanding the Rockin' Jalapeno sound, deepening its connections to New Orleans grooves, jazz, and soul. Over the decades, the group included dozens of top Bay Area musicians, including many who went on to lead their own bands, and became known as a sure-fire act for fundraisers, community events, rallies and protests.

Mariachi El Bronx, the mariachi alter ego of LA punk band The Bronx, are about to release Mariachi El Bronx IV, their first album in 12 years, this Friday (2/13) via ATO. They'll also be playing Kimmel tonight (2/12) and livestreaming their Tijuana album release show on Veeps on Saturday (2/14), and to help usher in the release of this new LP, Mariachi El Bronx vocalist Matt Caughthran has made us a list of five of his favorite albums of all time.

January is the month where music is moving underneath the surface, feeling out the venues, plotting and planning for those great days under the sun, at a festival. If you are a globe-trotting DJ or band, January is the month you're finishing up those FaceTime calls with managers and bookers, and plotting out which month you'll be on the road playing the Empty Bottle in Chicago, the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA, or the Continental Club in Austin, TX.

Born William Anthony Colón Román on April 28, 1950, to Puerto Rican parents in New York City, Colón first picked up the trumpet in school. It seemed like a natural choice for the former bugle-playing Boy Scout, who attended the youth program at the suggestion of his grandmother. "So I could learn how to be a good boy," said Colón in a 1988 interview with Associated Press.

In the just-named Grammy Album of the Year, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS-which Bad Bunny has declared his " most Puerto Rican album " to date-the supernova reggaetonero painted an evocative portrait of the Caribbean island, while declaring to a whopping 8.6 million listeners: "VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR" (I'm going to bring you to Puerto Rico). And he did. Last year, a record-breaking number of tourists-7,486,000 to be exact-visited Puerto Rico's tropical shores.