The Latino Rockabilly Scene Downloaded from by Guest on 25 September 2021
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Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 Boom0203_10.indd 90 20/09/12 5:34 PM Contested Ground nicholas f. centino Razabilly Boogie The Latino rockabilly scene Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 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 F 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 P HOTOGRAPH By NICHOLAS F. CeNTINO 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. boom | f a l l 2 012 91 Boom0203_10.indd 91 20/09/12 5:34 PM Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 P HOTOGRAPH By NICHOLAS F. CeNTINO local scenes throughout the global north. With its working- wondering why working-class Raza youth in the urban class aesthetics, shoebox hot rods, and bass-slapping metropolis of twenty-first century Los Angeles are rhythms, rockabilly enthusiasts have crafted their own attracted to the music of rural, Southern white musicians identity, drawing elements from 1950s Americana. yet, of the mid-twentieth century. After all, rockabilly is despite claims to a relatively marginal and invisible status, categorized as country western music, a genre all too the rockabilly scene is nowhere near an underground often—and often wrongly—racialized as music by phenomenon. An estimated 20,000 attendees took part and for white people.3 In many ways, this racialization in the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender of 2012. Viva stretches back to rockabilly’s birth in the American Las Vegas is a yearly four-day festival promoted by UK- South of the mid-1950s, when the term rockabilly was born DJ and promoter Tom Ingram, and it is just one of derisively coined by white disk jockeys to describe music the genre’s dozens of large-scale weekend festivals held by white artists appropriating black sounds. The “rock” worldwide.2 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 The logic of incongruity most often exemplified bye lvis Presley’s first record: one The seemingly incongruous pairing of rockabilly music side featured the popular rhythm and blues (read black) with Latino and Latina fans has left many casual observers song “That’s All Right” performed with white country 92 b o o m C a l i f o r n i a . C o m Boom0203_10.indd 92 20/09/12 5:34 PM It did serve as a recruiting ground for white supremacist groups. inflections, while the other featured the country and unseen since the 1920s. In Los Angeles County alone, western tune, “Blue Moon of Kentucky” performed in a a reported 23.5 percent increase in hate crimes occurred black rhythm and blues style. It is this type of hybridity against Latinas and Latinos in 1994.7 The relationship that may still resonate decades later with Latinos and still persists, as popular rockabilly festivals such as the Latinas, an audience well familiar with cultural mestizaje. Hootenanny in Irvine and Kustom Kulture gatherings, While Presley and his white contemporaries are like West Coast Kustom’s Cruisin’ Nationals in Santa remembered as rockabilly artists, you can hear the same Maria, are popular haunts for members of Southern hybridity in the music of contemporary black artists, such Californian hate groups. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 as Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline” or Muddy Waters’s “I Can’t But most LA scene veterans can also demarcate a racial Be Satisfied.”4 Muddy Waters, however, is remembered as shift in the scene, largely solidified by California’s turn, at the a bluesman while Chuck Berry is emblematic of rock and turn of this century, from majority white to majority brown. roll; their use of hybridity in the 1950s is largely forgotten In Southern California, the presence of people of color in or overlooked in contrast to their white counterparts. To the rockabilly scene, although notable, was nevertheless the credit of many rockabilly DJs who are cognizant of this considered marginal and negligible. With the exception of history, black musicians are equally celebrated, and their Rosie Flores, the biracial Robert Williams of Big Sandy and songs and records are played alongside those of white his Fly-Rite Boys, The Paladin’s Dave Gonzales, and a few musicians. yet blackness remains a mark of difference others, Southern California Latinos did not see themselves in the rockabilly scene. While eddie Cochran and Gene reflected on rockabilly stages in the early to mid 1990s. Vincent are rarely referred to as white rock and rollers, it is After the turn of the century, the Los Angeles rockabilly not uncommon to hear to the music of Kid Thomas or Roy scene experienced a tremendous demographic shift toward Gaines referred to as black rock and roll.5 a majority Chicana/o and Latina/o makeup. This shift also 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 P HOTOGRAPH By NICHOLAS F. CeNTINO boom | f a l l 2 012 93 Boom0203_10.indd 93 20/09/12 5:34 PM La Raza out-rockabillied with modern elements or cross genre pollenization like psychobilly (a hybrid of punk and rockabilly) were strictly rockabilly. 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 happened to take place during a political era of xenophobia attempts of Raza Rockabilly enthusiasts to strive for a sense and intensified attacks on civil rights. In the introduction of historical authenticity through leisure, their legitimacy to her compiled series of photographs, The Rockabillies, as “true” Americans with claims to citizenship was being Jenner Greenberg noted that her own interactions with the shunned in the political realm. scene coincided with the first term of George W. Bush’s While Rudolpho’s and other venues provided physical presidency and the intense xenophobia associated with the space for Latinos to stake their claims to rockabilly, the War on Terror following the events of 9/11.8 Internet provided a virtual world where those stakes could Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 For many Latinos, Rudolpho’s was one of a small handful be claimed on a broader scale.