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My grandfather spent some time in El Paso, Fort Bliss specifically during his time in the service in the late 1940's. Some of his musical tastes definitely were influenced by his time in the south-southwest, as he would play cassettes of Tex-Mex music in between his choice of Mexican music stations on the AM radio in the central valley of California. He would play his radio with these stations on as he would shuttle his grandkids around from house to house visitng family and having a good time. The five of us, my two cousins, two brothers, and me would pile into his green van and go caravaning around the unincorporated farm lands and family homes of Merced County. A trip to the convenience store for candy for each of us to pick and either a tall can or four pack of Michelob for grandpa ("the champagne of beer") would fuel us the whole day through.  

I listen to an absolute pile of jazz these days, and it has only grown in the past few years. But at my core are two distinct musical threads that are soundtracks to growing up and becoming me, as a child. My mother's Beatles records, and this amalgamation of all the old country and various genre's of Mexican music I heard around me. Pedro Infante, Marty Robbins, Jim Reeves, Little Joe, Johnny Cash, Charley Pride, Los Tigres Del Norte, Vicente Fernandez, Tom T. Hall, and more. Kind of a leap to Eric Dolphy and Bill Evans...or is it? 

At some point in high school the light bulb went off for me for both jazz and classic Mexican folk music. Los Lobos released an album, "La Pistola Y El Corazon", a remarkable tribute to the folk music they grew up with and that so many of us did too. (I'll share about the origins of my jazz inclinations some other time). But with this album I really really connected to my own heritage and to the music my family, like my grandfather, revered and enjoyed. And it started with the instrumentation. 

To call Los Lobos master instrumentalists is to do them an injustice. They are an American heritage machine, part historic repository, part post-modern auteurs, all the while thriving experts of every instrument and style of play that has every tickled their fancy as a band for more than 50 years. And somehow these guys have combined eveything my grandfather used to listen to, my parents, my relatives, and even more. Sure they're from East LA (so is my grandpa!), but they've captured and grown music that speaks to what was, what could be, and what is for so many of us who's families are from Michoacan, Zacatecas, Durango, Coahuila, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, the fields, the factories, the canneries, and more. Their music has always said "here is what it looks like going forward, knowing exactly where you came from."

Anyways, this is a rad pic of Cesar Rosas from Los Lobos (a phenomenal guitarist and singer) and the great accordion/singer Flaco Jimenez, one of the dean's of Conjunto music. These two are architects to music that is as much a part of me as any part of my physiology or history. Royalty, with boots and jeans and the soil underneath them.