Posted on July 19, 2008 -Sunday night started off a little slow, maybe because it was the earliest I’d managed to show up at the Chamizal this summer. Maybe it was because I’d stayed up way too late on Saturday night but went to 10 a.m. Mass anyway, with never a moment for nap in between. I’d been looking forward to this concert, but couldn’t quite get myself to settle into it. The sunshine had a hard edge; menacing clouds hanging off the eastern slopes of the Franklins threatened an early end to the concert. The band started off their set in minor keys. They seemed tentative, nervous. The sound was muddy through the PA. I’d only had one beer. It was hard to dance.
Excuses set in.
One of the first songs the band played was “Seven Directions” off their "91.5 MexFm" record. (Don’t hold me to the exact details of this. Remember, I was trying to dance and drink beer, not take notes.) At the time it felt like a poor choice to lead off with. The song has a meditative feel, inward looking. Not a good number to get the crowds off their lawn chairs and blankets. The dance floor was sparsely populated.
In retrospect it seemed a good way for Radio La Chusma to introduce themselves to the crowd. The song is a tribute to our ancestors, a thanks for putting us here, or there, in the Chamizal on a beautiful Sunday evening with the sun slipping into twilight and a flirtatious bank of clouds draped off the rugged right shoulder of the Franklins. A good band setting the mood with minor keys. The dancing gets easier. We had more neighbors on the dance floor.
Radio La Chusma is, unabashedly, a band that is proud of its roots. You can see this on the cover of "91.5 MexFm": it features an FM radio tower broadcasting from the top on an Aztec temple. The band stands proudly on the shoulders of giants.
And this gets to the root of the packed lawn at the Chamizal that night. It was a good crowd. Over here, the skinny hipsters in their Mick Jagger jeans, nursing the 30-pack of Bud Light. Over there, a gay couple on a blanket, hugging the way you would hope people would feel comfortable hugging their loved one. Down there, some old folks from down the block. Families everywhere. Featuring generations from Benny Goodman to Beck.
Everyone enjoying the same band.
How does that happen?
The band seemed relieved at the traditional 15-minute Chamizal set break. I was too. We wandered back to our blanket squat off stage right. Everyone took their breath.
El Paso has a unique ability to find brotherhood in music. There is an El Paso Sound, a musical common denominator that unites the city. The city has a peculiar nostalgia—as it stands at a crossroads on the border—for the musics of the U.S. and Mexico. That nostalgia finds its expression in the music played early in the career of one Steve Crosno. Crosno managed to recognize that people in El Paso wanted to hear a mixture of blues, norteño, pop and carribean music. El Paso being the place where all those different sounds jumble up together. So he created a unique playlist of doo-wop and early rock’n’roll that took the region by storm. Other deejays had a hand in this too; you can still find some that practice the art form in El Paso. When I was a teenager, I listened to the KBUENA’s Oldies Show on Sundays for my fix. But lately their play lists seem mechanical. I prefer the adept deejaying of Mike Guerrero on his Sunday afternoon “Fox Jukebox” show on 92.3. The El Paso Sound, like Mass, is most frequently practiced on Sundays.
El Paso relies on this music as a cultural touchstone.
And that’s the genius of La Chusma. Knowing that touchstone, but finding their own thing to add to it. Something entirely new, yet familiar.
Things looked up when the band started its second set. I ate the burrito I brought for dinner. Had another beer. The band moved into the serious dance numbers now. “Keep Movin’.” “Get Lively.” “We Sing.”
The concrete dance floor hit capacity. Then hit it again. And again.
Things got sweaty.
And then, Ernie Tinajero—the band’s singer and driving force—stepped away from the mike and turned things over to vocalist Selina Nevarez and fiddle player David Angerstein for the perfect El Paso medley: the Penguin’s doo-wop classic “Earth Angel” and James Brown’s “Try Me”. (The band also features Charlie Villanueva holding down the bass, Scott Marestein on drums, Scoop on lead guitar, and a recently added percussion player from Colombia.) Perfect because they were songs that the old folks knew. Perfect because the skinny kids stayed on the dance floor. Perfect because it was the El Paso Sound.
And especially perfect for the songs they set up. They followed the medley with the “Wooly-Bully” inspired “Cruisin,” featuring the crowd on the chorus: “Down Alameda / Down La Montana / Down el Paisano / Siempre el verano / We go cruisin…”
The crowd was ecstatic, pushing the band for more and more. Until finally the set was finished and the band left the stage for an obligatory pause before launching into their encore. They had saved another medley for the finale, this time one that was based around “54-56 That’s My Number” by Toots and the Maytals. Toots started singing in the 50s at a time when Jamaica was awash in its own jumble of musics: Motown beamed down from high-powered U.S. radio stations, jazz, and remnants of the music that African slaves had carried with them over the years. Bands like Toots and the Maytals took that hodgepodge of sounds and turned it into their own Jamaican Sound, a sound that now washes back to El Paso and influences our sound.
Somewhere in this, I looked around and saw Ernie’s wife, glowing from the recent birth of their child and her first night out since, and this newspaper’s own editor, his three-year old son perched on a hip. Then two attorneys dancing in their middle-aged romance. And a cholo spinning a morenita from uptown. And a white girl dancing better than the rest of them, so free and easy.
Meanwhile, the clouds had fallen into a full embrace with the mountain ridge, readying themselves for a gentle kiss goodnight, their rains still intact.
Note: This essay was originally published in Newspaper Tree, El Paso's online newspaper.
