Memories of the Old School Freestyle Music Scene (1980s-90s) Musical Expressions Embraced by Chicana10 Youth in San Antonio BBL 3023 .901 April 28, 2009 Final - Oral History Project Music Interview Transcript Interviewer: Melissa Casarez Interviewee: Crirtina Casarez Date: April 16, 2009 Page 1 2 Melissa: My name is Melissa Casarez and this is Cristina Casarez and we are gonna talk about freestyle. Q. 1 What were your earliest memories of Freestyle music? Cristina: Um... that would be .... l would say around .... l know I said twelve earlier but it's more like fourteen ...p robably fourteen or fifteen years old. Um... and I believe the first time I heard about it was like in school with my friends. That's usually where you hear everything from when you're young...y ou kinda pick it up from your peers and what's going on during that time ...what's popular Melissa: Q.2 What drew your attention to freestyle? Like, why Freestyle? Cristina: Um..... l guess the beat. Because it's got a Latin, like a Latin kick to it and that ....come being Hispanic or Mexican descent um that's just something that really caught my attention and I just love music in general. Um but when you have something you can move to and it's got a good rhythm um.... that usually attracts my attention. Melissa: Among the teens in your High School, who listened to the music? Who was its prime audience? Cristina: Um .... l would say .... it was probably more the Hispanic um background. Um ....and like I said earlier, it's because of....y ou know... the rhythm and beat that it had to it. Urn....y ou mostly heard the music like on our side of town, more like on the Westside, Northwest side. That's usually where it was most popular. Um....and....that I would say that was the prime audience. Page 1 3 Melissa: And the West and South sides of town in San Antonio are primarily Hispanic? Cristina: Right, that's where mostly you would find the more of the Hispanic race on the west and south side of town. That's where you would see it. They had shows um like dance offs and things like that ... sometimes at the malls you would see it. Um ... during school dances is where you would see it. Um ...even like, when they had ....they had teen clubs that you could go to. That's where people would get together and kinda come up with routines and things like that, so. Melissa: That was popular? Cristina: Yeah, that was the in thing. Melissa: What other types of music were also popular at that time - the popular stuff? Not Freestyle. Cristina: Other things that were popular were probably like hip hop, like the early version of hip hop and rap, like Vanilla Ice, um MC Hammer who's around that time. Um some of the stuff that was still popular was some of the artists that kinda moved into the 90s late 80s early 90s like Madonna. Um, she started off more like New Wave dance music. She's got a mix of you know of her music she changes like every decade she changes her style um so she was of the ones that kind of migrated over into this era. Melissa: Urn... l was gonna ask you to name some artists but you just did -okay. Melissa: What were the years freestyle was popular? Do you remember? Page 1 4 Cristina: Um that would probably be about 90, 1 would say 90 - 91.... um .... is probably what I remember most. That was the time I was 15-16 years old. And, um I remember going to like Quinceneras, um or weddings and things like that. You would see all the young kids, they were around our age group, um whenever they played the freestyle music, and of course most of it was DJ the way it was introduced in those kinds of functions. So um you would see all the kids rush out to the dance floor and you would see them draw their little teams, with their little friends. Birthday parties, um school dances and things like that. So I was probably around middle school just entering high school when that happened. Melissa: Can you name a few um freestyle artists or groups popular among the youth? Cristina: Um yeah, it would be like Cynthia and Johnny 0. was one of them. Another one was George Lammond. Um Who was your favorite - like artist? Oh I have a lot of favorites. I have a lot of favorite but it was mostly like Debbie Deb, Lisa Lisa. Um .... because they had a, they had a consistent beat a lot of their songs were the same so you can be dancing to one song and switch to another one and you could just keep going and going and going. Urn where as other artists they kinda switched it up a little bit some of it was slow some of it was like a medium beat and some of it was fast. But majority of them were, um mostly all of them they were good artists. But my favorite would be like Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Debbie Deb. Melissa: What were the lyrics and music mainly about? Page 1 5 Cristina: Urn ...... in freestyle, mostly about love. Relationships... um love ...boyfriend and girlfriend kind of thing.... urn getting hurt. Urn the beginning of love, the middle of love .... that's what I remember the lyrics being about. Melissa: Do you know where the freestyle music originated from? Cristina: Urn from what I remember hearing um mostly like from Miami. Um because it ..... it came ... it has a lot of the Cuban, like the Cubano beat. Um Miami and some were Puerto Rican, so you would find some of it like in New York. Melissa: Do you know like any local freestyle artists here in San Antonio? Cristina: I know we have some. Urn I think I don't remember the names of them. Urn I think ....I heard of one or two like from here from San Antonio but it's like those one hit wonders where you hear them once and they kinda disappear. Um so I don't know any specific names or anything. Melissa: Okay, okay Melissa: Was there any meaning behind how a person dressed - like was there a specific style that was popular? Cristina: Urn not really a specific style. It was just you'd have to have clothes were you could move pretty comfortably in urn where you could be pretty flexible. So a lot of it was like baggy pants urn a lot of the times it was like Khaki's is what they would wear. Because it was comfortable, it was loose fitting. Urn but it was basically just like t-shirts, it had to be clothes you were. ...you felt comfortable in and the caps for the guys. Some of the girls wore caps too Page 1 6 um but the guys definitely they wore ....they wore their caps backwards, sideways. Um but that was ... it was like the fashion trend for that time frame. Melissa: What were the other um the teen styles that represented other music genres at the time? For example, was there a punk scene in school? Cristina: There was a new wave. It was new wave. That was more like what they refer like to as skaters at the time. They would wear, like the character shirts and they would wear the shorts, like the long shorts to the knees with the high tops. You would see all these weird hair styles.... um the multi-colored hair. Melissa: So it was more new wave versus freestyle? Cristina: Yeah, right, it was new wave and sometimes people confuse the two um the two genres but you really have to the beat to be able to distinguish one from the other. So, because new wave was more like dipeche mode urn and what was the other one, I know d4pZche mode and .... l forget some of the other ones ....like Soft cell.... Soft cell was another one that was considered new wave they were ones that sang Tainted Love. So those were some of the songs. Kinda like the music you would hear in those movies like Pretty in Pink ... yeah ... like the Breakfast Club, stuff like that. And if you've seen the Breakfast Club, then you've seen how some of them dressed and that was kinda like the new wave's image. Melissa: And, how about the rock scene? Do you remember the rock scene? Cristina: Yes. The rock scene during that time was like Metallica, urn some ACDC, ACDC is kind of like an old rock group but they just keep on going throughout the years they're kinda Page 1 7 like the Madonna of rock. So, they change up their style but definitely Metallica was part of um the rock.... the rock group and um some of the ...some of the new wave music sometimes you could categorize it, some of the artists you could possibly categorize them in the rock genre as well because of the sound sometimes of their music. Melissa: And with like rock - how would those kids dress? Cristina: Rock was mostly....y ou would see them in black .... urn black attire... um jeans ....t- shirts ....um just very very casual very laid back. Tennis shoes or if not you would see some with hiker boots is what they would call them like the steel toe boots and things like that.