Introduction
The Adaptive Significance of Friendship
I have not as yet mentioned a circumstance which influenced my
whole career more than any other. This was my friendship with
Professor Henslow.
Charles Darwin, Recollections of the
Development of My Mind and Character
In the late spring of 1876, nearly seventeen years after his first publication
of On the Origin of Species and following decades of careful description of
the natural world, Charles Darwin sat down to write a sketch of his life. He
devoted only sixty pages to the topic, detailing his early encounters with
the natural world, his compulsive beetle collecting, his lackluster attempt
at earning a medical degree, and his five years of voyaging on H.M.S.
Beagle. However, when Darwin described the circumstance that most
influenced his intellectual career, he focused not on his encounters with
books or the natural world, but rather on a friendship—his intimate bond
with his Cambridge mentor and fellow naturalist John Henslow. Grounded
in a shared passion for the natural world, the friendship between Darwin
and Henslow developed at Cambridge over frequent walks, country expeditions, and home visits, as the two pondered questions in religion and
natural science. Their friendship lasted from 1828 until Henslow’s death
in 1861, and over the years, Henslow played a singular role in Darwin’s
intellectual development. In addition to introducing Darwin to the scientific study of geology, botany, and zoology, Henslow arranged Darwin’s
position on the H.M.S. Beagle, where the young scientist would ultimately
make observations critical to his theory of natural selection.
An astute and meticulous observer of the natural world, Darwin recognized the importance of friendships everywhere in the story of his
personal development. Darwin’s friends introduced him to new ideas,
provided academic opportunities, and supported his theories on evolution
in an atmosphere of vigorous academic debate.1 Rarely, however, did these
friends provide the kind of material support bearing on the life-or-death
struggle for existence that figured so prominently in Darwin’s theory of
evolution and natural selection. Therefore, it is not surprising that, in con1
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Introduction
trast to his recurring treatment of the subject in the short natural history
of his own development, Darwin referred to friendship only a handful of
times in the sum of his scientific works on human evolution.
The apparent discrepancy in Darwin’s own writings—between the importance of friendships in his own life and the role that friendships might
have played over the course of human evolution—reflects current thinking
about friendship in the modern West.2 Many of us have friends, and they
reward us in diverse ways, engaging us with stimulating conversation, improving our mood, and relieving us from minor inconveniences by sharing a ride, lending a hand, or taking the time to think through problems.
However, while friends make us happy and help us in small ways, it is not
entirely clear that they are important in the high-stakes game of survival
and reproduction.3 As the twentieth-century social commentator C. S.
Lewis wrote, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. . . . It
has no survival value.” In line with this view, theories of human evolution
have generally neglected the adaptive importance of friendships, instead
focusing on exchange regulated by kin-biased altruism, pair-bonding, or
strictly balanced give-and-take.
The purpose of this book is twofold. First, it brings to the foreground
the unique ways that friendships, defined here as long-term relationships of mutual affection and support, have helped people deal with the
struggles of daily life in a wide range of human societies.4 Depending on
the culture, friends share food when it is scarce, provide backup during
aggressive disputes, lend a hand in planting and harvesting, and open
avenues of exchange across otherwise indifferent or hostile social groups.
And behavior among friends is not necessarily regulated in the same way
as behavior in other relationships, such as those among biological kin or
mates. Nor is it regulated in terms of strictly balanced, tit-for-tat exchange.
Rather, I will argue that the help provided by friends is regulated by a system based on mutual goodwill that motivates friends to help each other in
times of need. How humans are able to cultivate goodwill and successfully
maintain friendships when the potential for exploitation is theoretically
so great is a fascinating question, and one that will figure prominently in
this book.
Beyond the basic unifying elements of mutual affection and support,
friendships can be established and maintained in diverse ways across cultures, many of which are difficult to reconcile with ideals of friendship
in the United States and Europe. People in other places and times have
inherited friendships from parents and other family members, sanctified
friendships through public wedding-like rituals, and entered friendships
Introduction
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3
based on the wishes of family and community elders.5 In many societies,
close friends are sufficiently valuable that it is acceptable to violate the
law to protect them. And some defining features of friendship in the U.S.,
such as a focus on emotional rather than material support, are of minor
importance in other societies. Therefore, in addition to identifying core
features of friendship, the book’s second goal is to document and account
for the recurring yet diverse ideals and behaviors associated with friendship in human societies.
I approach these goals from three perspectives—developmental, ecological, and evolutionary—each of which opens up complementary vistas
on how friendships have emerged as a social form among humans and
how they continue to arise in everyday life. The first perspective taken in
the book is developmental and acknowledges that much of human behavior is fashioned through a process of social learning that takes place over
a lifetime. Therefore, this book examines how people learn the rules of
friendship in their natal cultures and how they cultivate friendships with
one another over time. The second perspective is ecological and recognizes
that a key human adaptation is the ability to adjust behavior to the vicissitudes of local environments. Thus, we might expect friendships to vary in
their particular functions and developmental trajectories in different ecological settings.6 For example, how do the friendships of foragers in harsh
and highly variable environments differ from those of steadily employed
middle-class citizens of a modern nation-state? Are there societies where
friendships are unnecessary or indeed absent, as some scholars have proposed? The third, evolutionary, perspective asks how behaviors among
friends ultimately influence survival and reproduction, why a capacity for
something like friendship might have arisen and endured among humans,
and what other animals might possess the capabilities necessary for the
cultivation of friendship-like relationships. From these three perspectives
on friendship’s origins, I develop an account that ranges from ultimate
evolutionary explanations of friendship’s ubiquitous appearance in human
social life to proximal descriptions of the psychological processes involved
in learning and regulating behaviors among friends in changing and
uncertain contexts.
Before proceeding further, it is worth considering in more detail what
we mean by friendship, how it differs from other kinds of relationships,
and how friendships uniquely aid in the struggles of daily life (box 1).
Philosophy perhaps more than any other discipline has dealt with these
issues, and I begin by reviewing how philosophers have defined friendship,
not only in terms of which behaviors are observed among friends, but also
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BOX 1
Introduction
What Is a Friend?
Friend is a slippery concept. Among Lepcha farmers in eastern Nepal, the
closest word for friend can be extended to many kinds of relationships,
including trading partnerships with foreigners, relationships based on
mutual aid, and childhood companions (Gorer 1938). In English, politicians
use it to address masses of supporters, nation-states use it to declare economic and political alliances, and social networking sites use the term for
any kind of mutually recognized tie. As a testament to its conceptual spread,
the word friend is spoken and written more in English than any other relational term—even more than mother or father (Leech, Rayson, and Wilson
2001). In the midst of such ubiquitous and diverse usage, one aim of this
book will be to identify what is meant by the word friend and how individuals
who self-identify as friends, and especially close friends, feel about and
behave toward each other. While this approach works well in Englishspeaking contexts, it poses serious problems when one travels to other cultures that use other words for friend-like relationships. I discuss in more
detail how to deal with this issue of cross-cultural translation in chapter 2.
what underlying motivations guide such behaviors. Next, I briefly outline
how the approach to regulating behaviors among friends differs from that
used in other relationships, such as those between kin or between partners
who exchange on the basis of quid pro quo (something for something).
Finally, I propose that this way of regulating relationships provides one
solution to a recurring problem in evolutionary biology and the social sciences: mutual aid in uncertain environments. These three questions—how
is friendship regulated, how does friendship differ from other relationships, and why is friendship useful—will arise throughout the book.
Philosophers Defining Friendship
In contrast to its relative neglect by students of human evolution, friendship
has been a recurring topic in philosophy.7 Big names in Western thought,
ranging from Aristotle to twentieth-century French philosopher Jacques
Derrida, have attempted to identify the essential qualities of friendship,
to define its place in the social order, and to give advice on dealing with
friends. Aristotle devoted two of the ten books in his Nicomachean Ethics
to the subject and laid out the necessary conditions for the relationship: a
friend must wish well for the other, the other must share this goodwill,
Introduction
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5
and both must recognize that these feelings are mutual. Predating many
later treatments of friendship, Aristotle’s work also made clear distinctions
between friendships based purely on mutual utility and those based on
mutual goodwill. Twenty-four centuries later, Jacques Derrida, the father
of philosophical deconstructionism, wrote an entire book on the challenge
of knowing whether someone is a friend or an enemy.
Non-Western intellectual traditions have also given friendship serious
thought. In their advice on leading a proper life, the Buddha and followers of Confucius outlined the types of friendships that one should seek in
daily life and those that one should avoid. Over three thousand years ago
in present-day Punjab, Vedic hymns were written that enumerated the
obligations of friends: friends should provide food and protect one another’s honor, and foremost should not abandon one another in times of need.
These diverse traditions frequently define friendship in terms of rules
and violations—how one should behave toward friends, what friends
should do for one another, and examples of false friends who violate codes
of good conduct. For example, in his advice to followers in the Sigalovada
Sutra, the Buddha outlined five appropriate behaviors toward friends that
closely reflect modern Western ideals: (1) be generous, (2) speak kindly,
(3) provide care, (4) be equal, and (5) be truthful. According to the Buddha,
friends will return the favor by offering protection and consolation in
times of need. In the same text, the Buddha also illustrated four violations
of friendship as “foes in the guise of friends”: (1) the selfish friend who
only fulfills his duty out of fear, (2) the friend who promises much but
does not deliver when one is in need, (3) the flatterer who speaks ill behind
one’s back, and (4) the ruiner who leads one to intoxication, late-night revelry, idle entertainment, and gambling.8
Behaviors such as being truthful and providing care often play an important part in philosophers’ definitions. However, behaviors alone are insufficient to define friendship. We also need to understand what makes people
want to engage in these behaviors and how these expectations are enforced
and encouraged. Consider drawing up a contract with a close friend stating the conditions under which each should help the other or resorting to
small claims court to address a close friend’s bad behavior. These measures
would not conflict with most of the Buddha’s rules, but they would likely
violate our own notions of friendship. Though the Buddha focused mostly
on the rules of friendship, he also recognized the importance of how the
rules are followed, by stating, for example, that friends should not help out
of fear but rather from feelings of compassion and loving-kindness. More
broadly, people in a wide range of cultures carefully avoid certain kinds of
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Introduction
accounting—such as strict give-and-take—when interacting with friends.
A recurring theme of this book will be how friends follow and enforce the
rules of friendship, and why this distinguishes friendship from other kinds
of relationships, such as kin ties or trade relationships based on reciprocal
exchange or barter.
Friendship: A Special Kind of
Reciprocal Altruism
Friendship is only one among many ways that humans—and other organisms—co-regulate one another’s behavior.9 Among cooperative relationships, for example, evolutionary theorists have generally focused on those
regulated by kin-biased altruism, pair-bonding with mates, and strict titfor-tat exchange.10 How do human friendships differ from these kinds of
relationships?
Observers have frequently noted similarities in the ways people behave
toward close friends and closely related kin. In both cases, people often
help for the sake of helping, rather than from fear of punishment or out
of some expectation of return. People apply similar vocabularies, of love,
loyalty, and goodwill, when talking about close family and friends. Indeed,
they often explicitly incorporate non-kin friends into their families by
calling them sister, brother, aunt, or uncle. For these reasons, some scholars have argued that friendship may be an application of the mechanisms
regulating kin-biased altruism to non-kin individuals.11 However, despite
these superficial similarities, helping behaviors among friends differ in
important ways from those among kin, depending in different ways on
feelings of closeness and the costs of helping, a topic I will explore further
in chapter 3.
Another possible foundation for friendship is pair-bonding between
mating partners. Like biological kin, spouses and mates talk about love
and loyalty, and they often help one another in unconditional ways. In the
U.S. and other societies, many people refer to their spouse as their best
friend. Indeed, friendships may recruit many of the same psychological
and physiological processes involved in cultivating pair bonds. However,
there are some problems with this explanation. Other mammals also form
long-lasting pair bonds. For example, mouse-like prairie voles enter lifelong monogamous unions that focus on common territory defense and
pup rearing. However, these bonds require sexual activity (or human
intervention to influence choice of mates) to form. Therefore, if human
friendships are based on a template of pair-bonding, we must also explain
Introduction
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7
how friendships can arise without the other trappings of pair-bonding,
such as sexual desire, sexual behavior, and another common feature of
human pair-bonds, single-minded, romantic obsession with a partner
(chapter 4).
Finally, friendship also shares many similarities with reciprocally
altruistic behavior whereby unrelated individuals help others depending on the quality of past exchanges and on the expectation of aid in the
future. Such behavior is inherently risky, because one person may cheat
by first enjoying the help of another but then failing to help in return. In
his groundbreaking 1971 article “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,”
Robert Trivers described how altruistic behaviors among non-kin could
evolve by natural selection if costs and benefits were equally exchanged
over sufficiently numerous interactions. Although not as common as kinbiased behaviors, such exchange relationships appear occasionally in the
natural world. In coral reefs across the Pacific Ocean, bluestreak cleaner
wrasses provide parasite-removal services to larger fish. In Central Mexico,
vampire bats frequently regurgitate valuable blood-meals to share with
hungry (non-kin) partners. And around the world, humans engage in all
manner of reciprocal exchanges, whether we consider Nama pastoralists
sharing water in the dry deserts of southern Africa, Tausug farmers of the
Philippines rushing to the support of friends during feuds, or Ache foragers of South America sharing the fruits of their hunting and gathering.12
A decade after Trivers’s account of the evolution of reciprocal altruism, political scientist Robert Axelrod and evolutionary biologist William
Hamilton formalized (and dramatically simplified) the concept of reciprocally altruistic behavior in a game called the prisoner’s dilemma. In the
canonical prisoner’s dilemma game, police have arrested two partners-incrime, but without a confession from either of the conspirators the police
can only make the case for a lesser charge. Hoping to divide and conquer,
the police separate the prisoners into soundproof cell blocks, and they
give each prisoner the opportunity to rat out his mate. If both prisoners
keep quiet (thus cooperating amongst themselves), they both enjoy the
much-reduced sentence of six months’ jail time. If only one squeals, then
he goes home scot-free, but the sucker faces a ten-year sentence. If both
squeal, they both face a steep three-year sentence. If they know they’ll
never meet again, each prisoner does better alone by squealing. However,
if both squeal on each other, then they get more time than if they had both
kept quiet. The prisoner’s dilemma game cleanly captures the trade-off
between potential gains to be made by cooperating (in this case keeping
quiet) and the possible risks of exploitation at the hands of a selfish partner.
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Introduction
Using a repeated version of this game, where the same players must
face one another over many interactions, Axelrod and Hamilton showed
how individuals following a simple cooperative strategy, popularly known
as tit-for-tat, could avoid exploitation and outperform greedy defectors.13
Tit-for-tat involved simply cooperating with a partner until that partner
defected, at which point one refused to cooperate any further. The strategy
only required knowing a partner’s previous actions and opened up the possibility that organisms as simple as bacteria might have the capacity to
cooperate. It also captured the kinds of quid pro quo exchanges often found
in arm’s-length commercial trades among humans.14 The mathematical
elegance of the repeated prisoner’s dilemma game was also appealing, and
over time reciprocal altruism became synonymous with tit-for-tat cooperation in the repeated prisoner’s dilemma game.
The standard repeated prisoner’s dilemma game, while elegantly capturing the tension between the temptation of immediate gratification and
the promise of long-term cooperation, also represents a very limited view
of the conditions in which cooperation might evolve. First, it assumes
that the opportunities for helping a partner occur in lock-step alternation
with uniform costs to helping, so that one could readily and immediately
observe if a partner was cheating. In the real world, however, the opportunities to help a friend can be spaced over very long intervals in unknowable ways and involve vastly different costs and benefits. Needs can also
become highly unbalanced. Due to a string of bad luck, for example, one
friend may need a steady flow of help while the other friend needs none.
Moreover, a friend may legitimately not be able to help when the need
arises. The uncertain timing and size of needs and the uncertain ability of
particular friends to help at a moment of need make the task of regulating
reciprocal aid in such contexts very difficult. In such situations, a simple
strategy based on keeping a strict balance of benefits and costs (e.g., tit-fortat) would be very brittle. At the slightest failure of a partner, it would lead
to the dissolution of friendship at best and recurring retaliation between
partners at worst, with no possibility of repair. Over the past two decades
researchers have dealt with some of these issues, such as the uncertain
timing of needs, while leaving others relatively unexplored.15 However, to
deal with these added contingencies in exchange, one must often consider
more complex strategies, raising questions about how humans could actually do the mental calculations required to enact such strategies.
In addition to these theoretical problems with tit-for-tat in regulating cooperation in real-life environments, there is an empirical problem.
There is abundant evidence that human friends don’t help one another in
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9
a tit-for-tat manner by responding directly to the balance of favors or a
partner’s past actions. Indeed, friends frequently avoid such strict accounting. Rather, when making decisions to help, they focus on the twin facts
that so-and-so is a friend and she is in need.16 In such cases, evaluations of
friendship rather than accounting of past and possibly future exchanges
are the most proximate reasons for the decision to help. This move, from
choosing to help based on a tit-for-tat accounting system to helping
because a friend is in need, also has implications for how people think and
behave with friends. The question “Is Ella a friend?” requires new criteria
to discern Ella’s goodwill and feelings in the friendship. What are Ella’s
intentions toward me? Does she consider me a friend? Does she understand
my needs and preferences? Does she pay too much attention to the balance
of exchanges? These are important questions, because they bear indirectly
on a partner’s willingness to help in the future.
The addition of novel elements in decision making, in this case the
task of evaluating the quality of one’s friendship, opens up new potential
for disruption of decision making and thus novel forms of exploitation.
For example, unknown individuals, from panhandlers and con artists to
politicians, often invoke the term friend to prime our helping behavior. In
his famed book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
described a number of tactics intended to make people feel that they are
your friends so that they will help you in the future. It is also possible for
chronic inequality to develop among friends as long as both feel that each
still maintains goodwill. Such patterns of exploitation are a result of relying on friendship as the proximal reason for helping rather than focusing
directly on the history of exchanges. A major question in this book will be
how such attempts to divert and generalize the construct of friendship succeed (and fail) in altering real helping behavior, and what defenses people
use to deter such manipulation.
Why Friendship, and Why Humans?
Friendship bonds bear some resemblance to bonds between closely related
kin and mating partners and to ties based on quid pro quo exchanges. But
a central part of this book will be to show that friendship involves a unique
set of regulatory processes. Feelings of closeness are important predictors
of help among friends but much less so among biological kin, suggesting that helping among friends is not due to a confusion of friends with
kin (chapter 3). Friends do not need sexual attraction, sexual behavior, or
the common rearing of offspring to cultivate their relationships, as occurs
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Introduction
among mating pairs (chapter 4). And close friends violate many of the
rules proposed for maintaining reciprocal altruism. Close friends eschew
strict reciprocity, rather helping based on need. Friends are less sensitive
to the balance of favors than are strangers and acquaintances and are more
generous to one another, even when their partner won’t find out whence
the kind act came (chapter 1). From an evolutionary perspective, what
selective pressures might have favored this need-based, low-monitoring
form of reciprocal helping, when other, more basic modes of regulating
cooperation and exchange were likely available?
I propose that the psychological systems underlying the ability and propensity to cultivate friendships were selected (or at least not rooted out by
selection) because they uniquely addressed common adaptive problems of
cooperation and mutual aid in uncertain contexts. In other words, friendship, as a system regulating altruistic behavior, solves a computational task
in uncertain environments that cannot be met by simple reactive exchange
strategies, such as tit-for-tat accounting.
Humans are relatively unique among animals in their capacity for
cumulative cultural learning, whereby novel tools, activities, preferences,
and artifacts can emerge and be preserved with some degree of fidelity
over generations.17 With this capacity for culture comes an explosion in
the kinds of goods and favors that individuals can exchange, including
food, knowledge of good foraging sites, child care, access to mates, shelter
construction, sex, mentoring, guard duty against animal predators and
other human groups, safe haven in other villages, support in disputes,
grooming and parasite removal, labor, implements for hunting and food
preparation, and manufactured goods, such as cloth, string, weapons, tools,
and prestige items.18 Compare this to the relative paucity of goods and services observed in exchanges among our closest relatives—chimpanzees.19
The great diversity of possible exchanges among humans, as well as the
uncertain timing of needs in each of these domains, drastically increases
the complexity of strict accounting based purely on inputs and outputs.
One possible solution to this accounting problem would be to avoid it,
and to instead rely exclusively on the goodwill of closely related kin for
help in these domains. However, over the course of hominin evolution,
some favors, such as access to mates, food sharing across ecological zones,
and support in disputes with kin, would have been difficult if not impossible for close kin alone to provide. In the highlands of Papua New Guinea,
Binumarien horticulturalists more than double the number of available
gardening helpers by relying on biologically unrelated “social kin,” who
are as reliable as biological kin in providing aid. Ju/’hoansi foragers in the
Introduction
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11
southern African desert invest in social insurance against hungry times
by cultivating extensive webs of friendship outside of their circle of closely
related kin. Yanomamo villagers in Venezuela rely on marital alliances,
in addition to ties with close genetic kin, to build up coalitions that are
sufficiently large to win in community-wide brawls. These examples are
admittedly limited to contemporary human groups, but they also represent common forms of exchange—food sharing, labor exchange, and coalition support—that would likely have been important throughout human
evolution.20 The fact that friends are so reliably cultivated and recruited
to engage in these kinds of exchange suggests that friendship plays an
important role beyond genetic kinship in solving these problems of everyday life.
The question “Why humans?” also draws attention to the physiological
mechanisms in humans that support the cultivation and maintenance of
this low-monitoring, need-based form of mutual aid. How are the brain
systems and neurotransmitters involved in other kinds of relationships,
such as those among romantic partners or human parents and their offspring, recruited to promote the unconditional aid and long-term bonding observed among friends? What role do the neuropeptides involved
in mammalian bonding, such as oxytocin and vasopressin, play in the
development of friendship? And how do these systems operate differently
in humans than in other animals? In terms of development, what physiological and psychological mechanisms mediate the unfolding of friendship, such as the often long courtship that leads from acquaintanceship to
unconditional support, the increased forgiveness among friends that can
preserve a relationship from premature death, and the transformation of
thought from calculated help to knee-jerk altruism? Many of these questions do not have definitive answers yet, but I will do my best to review the
growing body of research on physiological and psychological systems that
likely underwrite the human capacity to make and keep friends.
The Book
The general outline provided so far raises a number of questions that I
will discuss in more detail in the chapters to follow. To what degree does
something like friendship recur across human cultures, and are there core
features that define friendship in these diverse settings? How does friendship differ from other kinds of relationships, such as those based on biological kinship or sexual attachment? How do people come to view others
as friends, and what defenses do they use to avoid incorrectly assuming
KIMBERLY KATTARI
Texas A&M University
Email: kkattari@tamu.edu
Viva La Razabilly
The Cultural Politics of Latinx Rockabilly1
ABSTRACT The contemporary rockabilly subculture is often thought to primarily reflect, embody, and cele-
brate the white Southern American culture that gave rise to the music and fashion in the 1950s. Accordingly,
some have suggested that the active participation of Latinxs seems perplexing. This article draws on ten
years of ethnographic research to explore why Latinxs do not view their enthusiasm for Southern-born rockticipants, underscoring and documenting its relevance across several generations, then examines how
Latinxs have uniquely engaged with and customized the subculture in ways that reflect their bicultural heritage and experiences. This work draws ethnomusicological attention to the reasons Latinxs have identified
with rockabilly culture and the ways they have contributed to it, contesting assumptions of the characteristic
“whiteness” of this subculture. The documentation, acceptance, and acknowledgment of Latinx involvement
in rockabilly is not without political significance, particularly given the subculture’s historical incorporation
of Confederate imagery. The growth, strength, and recognition of Latinx rockabilly represent a meaningful rewriting of the genre’s racial politics, highlighting the historical involvement of non-Anglos in the scene and
encouraging diverse participation today. KEYWORDS popular music, ethnomusicology, subcultures
The ladies are in classic polka-dot dresses and signature Bettie Page hair, flirtatiously stirring
their drinks. The guys have rolled-up pant cuffs, rolled sleeves, cigarettes and pompadours.
Everyone is dancing to the stand-up bass, drums and reverb guitar in this spacious hall. It’s like
a scene out of Grease, with one major difference: Nearly everyone here is Latino.
–
JUAN GUTIERREZ,
2
“LATINO
ROCKABILLY IN LOS ANGELES FTW,” LOS ANGELES
WEEKLY
. I would like to express my appreciation for the numerous rockabillies who took the time to talk and muse at
length about their participation in the rockabilly scene. I particularly want to thank Del Villarreal, Rockin’ Vic, Al
Martinez, Remy Casillas, Tawney Estrella, and Jorge Vargas who each continued to offer resources and analytical
observations well after their initial interviews. For support that made possible the ethnographic research for this
article, I am grateful to the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University. I would also like to thank
Leonardo Cardoso, Jayson Beaster-Jones, James Ball III, and this journal’s anonymous reviewer for their invaluable
wisdom and feedback. Finally, I also thank those who offered insightful comments on my presentation of this topic
at conferences of the Society for Ethnomusicology and during the Junior Faculty Symposium hosted by the Popular
Music Section of the American Musicological Society. This article is dedicated to all the fans committed to
keeping rock & roll wild.
. Juan Gutierrez, “Latino Rockabilly in Los Angeles FTW,” LA Weekly, August , http://www.laweekly.
com/westcoastsound////latino-rockabilly-in-los-angeles-ftw?showFullText=true.
Journal of Popular Music Studies, Vol. , Number , pps. –. electronic ISSN -. © by the Regents of the
University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article
content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/
journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/./jpms.....
95
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abilly music and culture as an incongruity. This essay first considers why rockabilly resonates with Latinx par-
. Within the rockabilly subculture, “vintage” usually designates original items that were manufactured more than fifty
years ago, while “retro” refers to reproductions produced today inspired by vintage style.
. Many women choose to either imitate the famous s pin-up model’s straight black bangs cut neatly above the
eyebrows, or pin and spray their hair into two “victory rolls” on top of their head, a s style named for the way the
large round curls resembled exhaust rolls generated by WWII planes.
. Following the discourse most of my interlocutors use when self-identifying their race and ethnicity, I employ the
gender-neutral term “Latinx” to refer to those who live in the US who trace their heritage to one or more of the
Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America (including, historically, the area of the US that was once part of
Mexico). Some of my interlocutors used terminology that specifically conveyed their family’s country of origin, such
as “Mexican-American.” Many of the participants and performers referenced in this article are Mexican-American, but
not all, prompting me to frequently resort to the more general term “Latinx” in order to avoid homogenizing the diverse
identities of members of this scene. Some of my interviewees self-identified as “Latin,” “Hispanic,” “Raza,” or “Chicano”
(or its alternative spelling “Xicano”). The few interviewees who chose either of the two latter terms were usually familiar
with the context of their politicized use since the civil rights activism of the s (often the result of academic exposure
to the subject in college) and were keen to avoid terms such as “Latin” and “Hispanic,” which linguistically emphasize
the European colonization of indigenous Americans.
. Sabra Stratton, “Rockabilly Festival Fuses SoCal Latino Culture and Rock ‘n’ Roll,” The Student Life, April ,
http://tsl.news/articles////lifeandstyle/-rockabilly-festival-fuses-socal-latino-culture-and-rock-n-roll/; Esther
96
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WINTER 2019
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Los Angeles boasts one of the largest rockabilly scenes in the world, so I knew that the annual
Rockabilly Festival at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, would be a fantastic ethnographic opportunity to observe and document the way several thousand attendees expressed
their enthusiasm for the music and material culture of the mid-twentieth century. Upon
arriving, I squeezed my conspicuously out-of-place Honda between a boat-sized
Caddy and ‘ Chevy, walked past car club members lounging in folding chairs by their sparkling and shining custom vehicles, and followed the music to a deejay spinning records while
a band set up on the stage in the quad. Dancers jived, bopped, and strolled as tunes by Elvis
Presley, Wanda Jackson, Ritchie Valens, and Johnny Burnette echoed across the campus.
Attendees were dressed in vintage garments from the s or modern retro3 reproductions:
men sported crisp button-down plaid Pendleton shirts with neatly ironed and cuffed jeans
over motorcycle boots or Converse All-Stars, and women wore flared A-line dresses or
curve-hugging pencil skirts with heels, flats, or saddle shoes. Men greased their hair back in
slick, shiny pompadours, and women showed off their perfectly styled Bettie Page bangs or
victory rolls,4 finishing the look with an artificial flower pinned above one ear. In these ways,
this festival was like numerous others I have attended over the course of ten years of ethnomusicological research on the rockabilly subculture, a community responsible for keeping
mid-twentieth century popular culture alive by driving classic cars, wearing vintage and retro
clothes, collecting and spinning records from the s, attending concerts by performers
from the original movement, and supporting current artists who play covers of old tunes in
addition to contemporary rockabilly.
But what made the event characteristically representative of the Southern California
scene was its primarily Latinx5 demographic and the distinct way in which participants
celebrated Latinx culture along with, or rather through, rockabilly music and culture. In fact,
it was sponsored and organized by the Latino/a Student Association to recognize and
celebrate the historical and cultural significance of rockabilly to the Southern California
Latinx community.6 Vendors sold screen-printed shirts that read “Viva La Rockabilly”
(Long Live Rockabilly), “Mexabilly Pride,” and “Yo Tengo Rockabilidad,” (loosely
Cheung, “Rockabilly Festival Showcases Latino/a Cultural History,” The Student Life, April , http://tsl.news/
articles////lifeandstyle/-rockabilly-festival-showcases-latino/a-cultural-history/
. The folkloric cumbia developed in Colombia in the nineteenth century. The style used by the Moonlight Trio
and known throughout the Latinx rockabilly community in the Southwestern US derives from the style of cumbia that
developed in Mexico during the s and s, when Colombian singer Luis Carlos Meyer Castandet emigrated
there and worked with the Mexican orchestra director Rafael de Paz.
. In addition to the members of Moonlight Trio, Latinx rockabilly performers in Southern California include
Marlene Perez and Victor Mendez of The Rhythm Shakers; Omar Romero of the Stringpoppers; Luis Arriaga,
Santiago Bermudez, and Angel Hernandez of Luis and The Wildfires; Bebo Garcia, Noah Martinez, Derek Medina,
and Alex DeMeza of Bebo & The Goodtime Boys; Carlos Gomez, Iggy Garcia, Jessie Gomez, and Alex Vargas of
Hi-Strung Ramblers; Pachuco Jose, Jorge Zamora, Gil Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Aguayo of Pachuco Jose y Los
Diamantes; Vicky Tafoya and Vince Maldonado of The Big Beat; and Ricky Salazar and brothers Danny and David
Arechiga of Gamblers Mark.
. Robert G. Rose, “Viva La Rockabilly & Psychobilly!” Remezcla, January , http://remezcla.com/music/vivala-rockabilly-psychobilly/.
. Rose, “Viva.”
. For the purposes of this article, I consider the Southwestern US to include California, Nevada, Arizona, New
Mexico, and Texas.
. Alan Wilson, interview, November .
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translated, I Have Rockabilly-ness). Several attendees wore zoot suits, honoring the Mexican
American pachuco youth movement of the s to ‘s, which predated rockabilly.
Tattoos, clothing, artwork, and knick-knacks for sale featured sugar skulls, Mexican flags,
and Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada’s iconic skeleton illustrations. Local band Moonlight Trio (featuring Mexican-American musicians Al Martinez, Aaron Martinez, and Tony
Macías) opened their set with a popular Spanish-language cumbia,7 “La Negra Tomasa,” but
they played it in a rockabilly style with upright bass, drums, and an electric Gretsch guitar.
Later, the deejay spun Spanish-language rhythm & blues and rock ‘n’ roll records from the
s to s in between popular English-language classics.
The festival was a clear indication of how the Southern California rockabilly subculture
is cultivated and supported by Latinx fans and performers.8 Music journalist Robert Rose
has written about the significant involvement of Latinxs in Southwestern rockabilly communities, observing that “if you head West where the scene is much more prevalent, I think
you’ll notice that without Latinos in rockabilly and psychobilly [a related subculture], there
essentially would be no scenes.”9 He notes that some of the largest rockabilly events take
place in California and Nevada, where “at any given time at least % of the crowd is Latino, yet no one seems to notice or care, it’s so ingrained in the scene and the culture out
here, well it just simply . . . IS.”10 Even international artists notice and appreciate the vitality
and enthusiasm of the Latinx rockabilly scene in the Southwest.11 The Sharks, an early innovator of British psychobilly, chose to play the final show of their career in Los Angeles
because of the young, energetic, and excited Latinx audiences they found there. One member of The Sharks told me: “When we play in L.A. or anywhere like that, it’s packed with
-year-old Mexican kids and they’re the coolest. Two years ago, we played the Ink’N’Iron
Festival in Long Beach, and all the kids were going crazy, and like % are Mexican.
They were young, so they were into it. I love playing in America. The Mexican audience really comes out and supports.”12 In short, rockabilly is thriving in areas with large Latinx
A meme circulated on Facebook in February
2016 expressed the idea that rockabilly embodies and
expresses white privilege.
FIGURE 1.
. Niki D’Andrea, “Phoenix’s Latino Rockabilly Set Turns the Beat Around,” March , http://www.
phoenixnewtimes.com/--/music/phoenix-s-latino-rockabilly-set-turns-the-beat-around/full/.
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populations, such as the Southwest, for this demographic is largely responsible for sustaining
and supporting the scene.
Yet, as Niki D’Andrea of The Phoenix New Times observes, “Mexican rockabilly sounds
like a strange idea to most people. The pervasive view, even today, seems to be that rockabilly
bands comprise white guys with pompadours who drive classic cars and play twangy, reverbdrenched guitar.”13 A meme posted on Facebook in an online group for rockabilly fans corroborated this assumption, defining rockabilly as “white privilege cosplay” (fig. ). Many
who commented on the meme considered it a humorous but accurate representation of the
subculture as a type of “costume play” for privileged whites who spend time and money
nostalgically “acting out” the rockabilly lifestyle of the s (or what they imagine that to
be) through vintage cars, fashion, music, and accessories. Others interpreted it to mean that
the rockabilly scene is so expressly associated with white Southern American culture, historically and performatively, that it allows non-Anglos to “cosplay” white privilege.
Either interpretation of the meme was predicated on a widely shared belief that rockabilly is fundamentally and inherently representative of a Southern Anglo American history
. Nicholas F. Centino, “Contested Ground: Razabilly Boogie and the Latino Rockabilly Scene,” KCET
ArtBound, July , http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/los-angeles/contested-ground-razabilly-boogieand-the-latino-rockabilly-scene.html.
. Literally translating from Spanish as “The Race,” the term “La Raza” was inspired by the political activism of the
s Civil Rights movements and signified an ethnic pride in the indigenous heritage of Latinxs and Latin Americans
as a response to assimilationism.
. Centino, “Contested Ground.”
. Michelle Habell-Pallán, Loca Motion: The Travels of Chicana and Latina Popular Culture (New York: New
York University Press, ), .
. George Lipsitz, “Cruising around the Historical Bloc: Postmodernism and Popular Music in East Los Angeles,”
Cultural Critique (Winter –): –; “Land of a Thousand Dances: Youth, Minorities, and the Rise of
Rock and Roll,” in Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, ed. Lary May (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, ), −.
. Steven Loza, Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
).
. Anthony Macías, Mexican American Mojo: Popular Music, Dance, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles, –
(Durham: Duke University Press, ).
. Ben Quiñones, “Naa Na Na Na Naa: How the West Coast Eastside Sound Changed Rock and Roll,” LA
Weekly, December . http://www.laweekly.com/news/naa-na-na-na-naa-.
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and identity. From about to , white artists from the South, such as Elvis Presley,
Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Burnette, and Buddy Holly, developed and popularized a particular style of rock ‘n’ roll by blending rhythm & blues elements into their country & western music. Rockabilly exploded on radio, television, and concert circuits, exposing
teenagers to a rebellious and controversial genre of music that combined the slapback style
of string bass and characteristic guitar solos of country & western with the sexual innuendos,
twelve-bar blues form, and backbeat-driven, uptempo energy of rhythm & blues. Because
of its historical roots in country & western and the racial identity of most of its innovators,
rockabilly is “all too often—and often wrongly—racialized as music by and for white
people,”14 as Nicholas Centino observes.
The involvement of many Latinxs in contemporary rockabilly scenes problematizes
assumptions about the “whiteness” of this subculture and raises questions about why Latinxs
are so actively involved. Centino writes: “the seemingly incongruous pairing of rockabilly
music with Latino and Latina fans have left many casual observers wondering why
working-class Raza15 youth in the urban metropolis of st century Los Angeles are attracted to the music of rural southern white musicians of the mid-th century.”16 Pervasive
assumptions about Latinxs’ taste in popular music and culture further fuel people’s disbelief
that they would be interested in a Southern-born style of country-tinged rock ‘n’ roll.
As Michelle Habell-Pallán points out, stereotypes about the musical preferences of Latinxs
also led to a silencing of their participation in punk. Her analysis of Pretty Vacant, Jim
Mendiola’s indie film, considers how Latina protagonist Molly Vasquez subverts
“stereotypical expectations of what constitutes the interest of Chicanas” by actively engaging
in punk.17 Likewise, Latinx rockabillies have been questioned for participating in a subculture that many people assume they would not be interested in.
This article de-mystifies this “seemingly incongruous pairing” by examining how
and why Latinxs identify with and resignify rockabilly. While the invaluable scholarship of
George Lipsitz,18 Steven Loza,19 Anthony Macías,20 Ben Quiñones,21 and David Reyes and
SIDE A: CONTEXTUALIZING LATINX IDENTIFICATION WITH ROCKABILLY
CULTURE
Track 1: “My family has always listened to rock & roll (and/or rocanrol)”
When asking my interlocutors what motivated and sparked their interest in rockabilly, their
first response usually touched on the historical legacy of mid-century music within their
own families and communities, in the US as well as in Latin America. They did not view
. David Reyes and Tom Waldman, Land of a Thousand Dances: Chicano Rock ’n’Roll from Southern California.
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, ).
. Nicholas Centino’s dissertation, Atomic Chicanas/os: Embodied Memory and the Raza Rockabilly Scene of
Los Angeles, and an article he wrote for KCET ArtBound in constitute the only published sociological work on
Latinx participation in rockabilly other than this author’s own work.
. For grammatical convenience and clarity, I use “America” in this essay to refer specifically to the US, rather than
the Americas as a whole. Likewise, “American” here is used as an adjective to describe something pertaining to the US,
given that the English language lacks an equivalent to the Spanish-language word “estadounidense” (which could be
literally translated as “United Statesian”).
. Habell-Pallán, Loca Motion, .
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Tom Waldman22 has underscored the often-ignored role Latinxs have played historically in
the consumption and production of this music, contemporary Latinx engagement with rockabilly has not been systematically explored.23 My original ethnographic research documents
the reasons rockabilly still resonates with Latinxs, shedding light on the continued relevance
of mid-century American24 popular culture to those who participate in this subculture. Like
Habell-Pallán, who underscored the ways in which Chicana punks “appropriated, reshaped, and critiqued imagery from unexpected sources, such as British youth musical
subculture, to invent local cultural practices that allowed them to express their realities
in a public context,”25 I demonstrate how Latinx rockabillies identify with this “unexpected” musical source and use it to express their own identity and experiences. The
data for this article stems from ethnographic fieldwork conducted from to ,
including regular observation of rockabilly events throughout California, Nevada, and
Texas that led to countless informal conversations and dozens of formal interviews with
Latinx rockabillies. While my research focuses on the American Southwest, where rockabilly scenes are thriving because of the high concentration of Latinxs in the general
population, I also spoke with Latinx rockabillies outside of this region. As this article
demonstrates, some Latinx rockabillies trace their interest in mid-century popular music
to the specific socio-cultural history and context of Latinx communities in the Southwest, while other Latinx rockabillies identify with the genre for reasons that are not necessarily tied to a particular geographic or cultural history.
I organize this article into two “sides,” a nod to the classic records lovingly collected
by vintage enthusiasts: Side A explores the explanations Latinxs give for their interest in
rockabilly, exposing the reasons they do not view their enthusiasm for a style born out of
Southern Anglo American culture as an incongruity, while Side B analyzes the ways in
which they have uniquely engaged with and customized the subculture to reflect their own
heritage and experiences.
On the weekends my father and I would go to swap meets and thrift stores looking for old
records. His tastes ran towards country, hillbilly, Western swing, and early rock & roll,
and my mother was more into doo-wop and rhythm & blues, so I absorbed both sides of
that. Those were the kinds of records I would look for and find at garage sales. I realized,
wow, there must have been a whole lot of interesting stuff going on in Los Angeles
because I was finding all these local records, like artifacts left over from some longforgotten scene from the past.30
Similarly, Rockin’ Vic, a Mexican-Ukrainian-American rockabilly deejay from Los Angeles,
remembers that when he began his hunt for vintage clothes and records, he had only to visit
the local St. Vincent’s thrift store in Lincoln Heights (a predominantly Mexican-American
neighborhood in Los Angeles) or find a nearby yard sale.31 The quantity of vintage items he
found in those neighborhoods was evidence of the significant participation of Los Angeles
Latinxs in the music and fashion of the s.
. The history of Latinx involvement in popular music during the mid-twentieth century is documented by Macías
(), Quiñones (), Lipsitz (), Loza (), and Reyes and Waldman ().
. Reyes and Waldman, Land of a Thousand Dances, .
. Macías, Mexican American Mojo, .
. Quiñones, “Naa Na Na Na Naa.”
. Robert Williams (aka “Big Sandy”), interview, May .
. Victor Czerniak (aka “Rockin’ Vic”), interview, July .
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their identification with rockabilly culture as a supposed incongruity because they were
aware of the ways Latinxs and Latin Americans have contributed to and engaged with rock
‘n’ roll for generations.26
Many of my interlocutors’ families have been living in California since at least the middle
of the twentieth century. They knew that Latinxs there actively supported rhythm & blues
acts like Johnny Otis, Richard Berry, and Chuck Higgins in the s and ‘s.27 They
spoke with pride of Mexican-American rock ‘n’ roll star Ritchie Valens (née Valenzuela),
feeling that his “journey from humble origins to national success, his heartfelt love ballads,
and his three-chord rock songs gave an entire cohort of Mexican-American youths the confidence to start their own bands and express themselves through music,” as Macías notes.28
As my interlocutors attended backyard parties, quinceñeras (celebrations for a girl’s fifteenth
birthday), and car shows, or as their relatives wrenched on their cars in the garage or on the
street, they heard the “East Side Sound” of mid-s Mexican-American rock ‘n’ roll bands
from Los Angeles in songs such as “Whittier Boulevard” by Thee Midniters, “Farmer John”
by The Premiers, “Land of a Thousand Dances” by Cannibal & the Headhunters, and
“La La La La” by The Blendells.29 Big Sandy, the Mexican-American singer and guitarist
of a popular traditional rockabilly band in Southern California, grew up listening to the
American roots music his parents enjoyed. When he went record collecting with his father,
he uncovered an abundance of vintage music in predominantly Latinx neighborhoods,
demonstrating the degree to which Latinx fans consumed popular American music in the
mid-century. He recalls:
Many of my Southern Californian interviewees felt that their interest in rockabilly was
due to the fact that rhythm & blues and rock ‘n’ roll music has been a part of their families’
aural and socio-cultural experience for generations. As Rockin’ Vic points out:
During the s, Rockin’ Vic discovered artists such as Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, and
Elvis Presley while listening to Art Laboe’s radio program and his father’s record collection.
By the age of sixteen, he had become a “full-fledged rockabilly hepcat.”33 Similarly, Tony
Macías of Moonlight Trio remembers that his family played country & western, rhythm
& blues, and rock ‘n’ roll from the s and ‘s while he was growing up. He believes this
predisposed him to become a rockabilly musician: “I was hooked instantly the first time I
heard contemporary rockabilly bands as an adult. As I started getting more into it in the
early to mid-nineties, I realized I knew a lot of the songs they covered from what my parents
listened to when I was growing up—Hank Williams, Marty Robbins, Ritchie Valens, and all
that—so it was easy for me to get back into it. I’d been around it all along.”34 This was true,
too, for many of the young Latinx performers who emerged from the Pacoima era in the late
s. They were reminded of how Ritchie Valens, born and raised in Pacoima, became one
of the most popular rock ‘n’ roll stars before his career was cut tragically short as the result of
a plane crash in . It was no wonder, they remarked, that they were raised to feel like they
had a legitimate stake in rock ‘n’ roll music and could express themselves through rockabilly
without finding it incompatible with their heritage. This was, after all, the music that their
communities had been participating in for generations.
Some of my interlocutors’ families were not in the US during the s, but they too grew
up hearing rock ‘n’ roll and understood it to be a significant part of their families’ musical
culture. As Eric Zolov documents, s rock ‘n’ roll remained popular in Mexico much
longer than it did in the US.35 The commercial popularity of rocanrol led to the production
of countless Spanish-language covers and rock ‘n’ roll originals by Mexican recording artists,
. In Robert G. Rose, “Rockabilly & Latinos: A Remixing Case,” Remezcla, May , http://music.remezcla.
com//latin/rockabilly-latinos-a-remixing-case/.
. Czerniak, interview.
. Tony Macías, interview, January .
. Eric Zolov, Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture (Berkeley: University of California Press,
), .
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The Mexican American experience in the s and s left an indelible impression on
popular culture in cars, music and fashion that never died and has been passed on generation to generation. . . . If you revisit the history of American music there are many
unsung Latin heroes of the s and s who played jump blues, doo wop, rockabilly,
and rock & roll. To name a few: Lalo Guerrero, Don Tosti, Trini Lopez, Freddy Fender,
Tito Guizar, Danny Flores (aka Chuck Rio), Chan Romero and of course Ritchie Valens.
Many Latinos already know some of these artists from their parents and grandparents.
And DJs like Art Laboe and Huggy Boy have played oldies for generations of Latinos on
AM radio, and often included in their sets s rock & roll, doo-wop and rhythm &
blues. If you are a Mexican American from East L.A., chances are, you more than likely
grew up on oldies in your house. To get into the rockabilly scene today, really isn’t a far
stretch.32
Latinos for the most part are invested in their own heritage and proud of their traditions.
A lot of Mexican families take pride in their family’s history; they like to listen to their
grandparents’ stories of how they grew up. They hear about how it was in the ‘s and
‘s. Growing up I talked to guys who saw Little Richard in the ‘s! They talked about
what it was like to live in the ‘s as a Mexican [-American]. We take pride in that
history.41
. Otto Fuchs, Bill Haley: The Father of Rock & Roll (Gelnhausen, Germany: Wagner Verlag), .
. D’Andrea, “Phoenix’s Latino Rockabilly.”
. Al Martinez, interview, January .
. Danny Arechiga, interview, January .
. Oscar Reyes, interview, October .
. Czerniak, interview.
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and some Anglo-American performers even relied on (and catered to) the Latin American
audience after their popularity waned in the US. Case in point, legendary rockabilly performer Bill Haley relocated to Mexico in the early ‘s, signed with the Mexican label Orfeón
Records, had an unexpected hit with “Twist Español” on an album that became the bestselling album in Mexican recording history up to that point, recorded seventeen songs
in Spanish, and featured Latin rhythms and instrumentation on tunes such as “Jimmy
Martinez” and “Jealous Heart.”36 Phoenix rockabilly musician Marco Polo developed an
appreciation for Spanish-language rocanrol and then English-language rock ‘n’ roll, while
growing up in Mexico City: “I heard the Mexican Johnny Cash. Before I heard Gene Vincent, I heard the Mexican Gene Vincent. I listened to the Mexican Elvis Presley—his name
was Vivi Hernandez—before I knew of Elvis Presley because my dad was very into rock ‘n’
roll.”37 Likewise, Los Angeles performer Al Martinez told me: “Rock ‘n’ roll, like ‘s style,
was still popular in Mexico in the ‘s and ‘s. People look at their parents and their grandparents and they were all dressed like that. Even Bill Haley was recording in Spanish in
the s. There’s a lot of music that I have that’s Spanish rocanrol from the ‘s.”38 Dave
Arechiga from the Southern Californian band Gamblers Mark told me that this represented
his experience as well: “When we were growing up, my dad used to play ‘s Spanish rockabilly. We’d be listening to musicians like Elvis and those other rockabilly cats but in Spanish.”39 Oscar Reyes, a rockabilly event promoter in San Antonio who grew up in Mexico,
was familiar with the s Spanish-language rocanrol of Los Teen Tops and Los Hooligans
from Mexico City: “At least for me, I think my interest in rockabilly really has a lot to do
with my upbringing. I grew up listening to it because of my dad. I know for a few other people here, it’s the same thing—they grew up listening to Spanish rocanrol, along with the
American rock ‘n’ roll everybody knows.”40
In short, Latinx rockabillies articulated to me their interest in keeping alive a musical tradition that their families and communities have historically participated in, whether it was
in the US and Mexico. When I asked them why they were committed to carrying on this
legacy rather than exploring more contemporary popular styles, they typically brought up
cultural values they suggested are intrinsic to Latin American and Latinx families. Rockin’
Vic explained:
A lot of us were raised by our grandparents and they were listening to that music. My
grandmother was a big influence on me. I grew up with her and she curled her hair every
day. Our connections with our ancestors and our grandparents are really strong here, so
we learn a lot about the past from them. I talked to one girl at the festival who learned
from her grandmother how to curl her eyelashes with a spoon. A lot of our families were
poor, so they learned to do things with creativity and style.44
Like many Latinx rockabilly fans I spoke to over the course of my fieldwork, Ungelbah’s
participation in the rockabilly scene today celebrates and keeps alive the history of her
communities’ participation in mid-century popular culture, a narrative often left out of
conventional (white) representations of s rockabilly culture.
Journalist Robert Rose theorizes that “the old ‘rebellion against parents’ theory doesn’t
really hold water for most young Latinos in this [scene]. In many cases, it was the parents
or an uncle or aunt, who[,] perhaps themselves children of those searching for a better life
in ‘El Norte,’ not only embraced the lifestyle but helped to create it. If anything, young Latinos seem to be following in their footsteps [and] will probably pass the culture down to
their kids.”45 Indeed, young children are often present at all-ages rockabilly festivals and car
shows, dressed up in s clothing or pulled along in a stroller designed to look like a hot
rod (fig. ). Latinx families continue to cultivate an appreciation for the cultural legacy of
rockabilly and how it was central to their identity as Americans and Latin Americans for
generations. This understanding of Latinx and Latin American participation in rock ‘n’ roll
complicates the assumption expressed by the meme in the introduction, demonstrating that
rockabilly did not (and does not) only resonate with whites; it has been an integral part of
the musical and cultural experience of non-Anglos since the mid-twentieth century.
. Reyes, interview.
. Ungelbah Dávila, interview, July .
. Dávila, interview.
. Rose, “Viva.”
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Oscar Reyes had a similar point of view: “I think it has to do with Mexican family culture.
A lot of Mexican families are really close. Many people get into what their parents are into
because they’ve grown up with it. My dad and I talk about the music all the time. We can
connect that way.”42 Although his siblings do not share his enthusiasm for rockabilly, he says
they appreciate the way he keeps their father’s music and style alive.
Accordingly, many rockabillies told me that their participation in the subculture is a personally meaningful way to understand and honor the historical experiences of their relatives,
situating themselves within a long tradition of Latinx involvement in rock ‘n’ roll culture.
For example, Ungelbah Dávila organizes an annual rockabilly festival in Tucumcari,
New Mexico, along Route and created La Loca Magazine “to tell the stories of everyday
people whose experiences and talents make up our country’s unique cultural landscape, creating authentic representations of what it means to be American.”43 Her magazine often features stories handed down over the generations, paying tribute to the resourceful ways
Latinxs and Native Americans engaged with popular styles of the last century. She explains:
Track 2: Cruisin’ to the oldies
Most rockabilly events feature car shows or special parking areas reserved for the display
of mid-century vehicles that have been uniquely and meticulously customized.46 Given
the integral relationship between classic cars and rockabilly today, it would be remiss to
neglect the importance of vintage car culture in Latinx communities, another gateway
through which many discover the contemporary rockabilly scene. The lowrider tradition dates back to , when Mexican-American Gilbert “Gil” Ayala opened Gil’s
Auto Body Works in East Los Angeles. He and his brother Al were among the first to
chop and lower the tops on Mercury cars from the late s and were particularly
known for their popular fade-away fender look, which stylistically extended the front
fenders to gracefully “fade away” toward the rear of the car. These customized works of
art were driven as slowly as possible, subverting their intended purpose as a means of
transit; as George Lipsitz explains, lowriders “celebrated cars as a means to pleasure, joy,
and excitement, not as transportation to work or as a means of accomplishing mundane
tasks.”47
. For more on the relationship between custom cars and rockabilly style, consult the video documentary Rebel
Beat: The Story of L.A. Rockabilly, produced by Elizabeth Blozan, which includes interviews with pinstripers,
mechanics, and car show participants.
. Lipsitz, “Land of a Thousand Dances,” .
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A youngster enjoys the Rockabilly Festival at Pitzer College from his custom “hot rod”
stroller (photo by author).
FIGURE 2.
. Habell-Pallán, Loca Motion, .
. D’Andrea, “Phoenix’s Latino Rockabilly.”
. Czerniak, interview.
. Alex Tapia, interview, September .
. Remy Casillas, interview, June .
. In fact, the term dates back to the nineteenth century, and while there are various theories on how it initially
developed, some have suggested that the term originated in the American Southwest where Mexicans changed
wagon axles. For more on the development and evolution of the term, see Adams (), Bender (), or De
León ().
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The artistic modification of old cars represented—and still represents—a do-it-yourself
strategy that Habell-Pallán attributes to “the practice of rasquache, a Chicana/o cultural
practice of ‘making do’ with limited resources.”48 As Niki D’Andrea points out, “It
wasn’t necessary to spend thousands of dollars buying a new car that everyone would
notice; they could buy an old beater and turn it into a custom lowrider with minimal
money and a lot of hard work.”49 Like many of my interviewees, Rockin’ Vic has been
surrounded all his life by old cars in various states of repair and beautification: “every
other house in my neighborhood when I was growing up had an old Chevy or Ford in
the driveway. There’s a long proud history of it.”50 Today he owns a Chevy Custom
and understands his vehicle as a semiotic signifier of the creative way in which economically
marginalized Latinxs have historically engaged with American material culture.
The rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm & blues music that was popular on the radio when these
cars were first manufactured and customized has remained the primary soundtrack for
working on old cars, slowly cruising in them, and displaying them at car shows. Accordingly,
Alex Tapia, a Cuban-Chilean-American vintage car enthusiast and event promoter in San
Antonio, suggests that many were first introduced to rockabilly upon hearing it in shops
and garages while working on vehicles with their families or car clubs.51 Remy Casillas, a
Mexican-American event promoter in Los Angeles, agrees: “The music gets passed down
among the hard-working greasers who are working on cars. You think, ‘What am I supposed
to listen to in my car?’ Oldies, R&B, rockabilly, any of that stuff makes sense. And that’s what
they’re hearing from their car club friends. So they start going to rockabilly events.”52
Remy’s interview touched on the reappropriation of the term “greaser,” providing further
insight into the historical relationship between Latinx identity politics, fashion, cars, and
rockabilly. He mentioned how the term once had derogatory connotations, referring to the
greasy appearance Latinxs inevitably acquired while working mechanical jobs that no one
else wanted.53 In the s, when rock ‘n’ roll popularized the custom hot rod through
music and movies, the greasy hair of the mechanic was resignified as fashionable, and
pomade began to be used as a substitute for mechanical grease to style the slick pompadours that still identify rockabilly “greasers” today. For Latinxs at the time, the greasy
hair they associated with having to fix up their own cars suddenly became “cool,” in the
same way that their old, battered cars had become a source of pride and beauty through
creative customization. This proved to be a symbolically salient resignification for members of the Latinx community who remembered the originally disdainful and disparaging use of the term “greaser.” Remy’s passing use of the term was semiotically loaded,
Track 3: Relating to the performers, style, sounds, and values of rockabilly
Finally, my interlocutors also identified with rockabilly because certain characteristics of the
genre and its cultural history resonate with particular aspects of their Latinx experience and
identity. For instance, several expressed an affinity with the working-class identity of the
original rockabilly movement and its performers. From the moment Mexican-American
deejay Del Villarreal (from Detroit) saw a movie featuring Elvis, he felt a certain kinship
with the “rags to riches” celebrity: “I really identified with Elvis. He was poor, his family was
low-class—they weren’t even middle-class, and they worked hard for their money, so I identified with it.”54 Likewise, deejay Rockin’ Vic related to the bold way rockabilly performers
expressed their working-class experiences: “Rockabilly is working-class music that celebrates
the ups and down of being disenfranchised. It was dangerous and defiant music; it has an
edge. Inner city Latinos like myself can relate.”55
Rockabilly artists strategically used fashion to embody confidence and empower themselves in response to their working-class status, another aspect with which several Latinx
fans of the genre identified. Historian Michael Bertrand points out that, like Southern
African Americans, whose music they were influenced by, early rockabillies “knew what
it meant to be marginalized and stripped of dignity . . . possessing little power, integrity,
or ‘property’ that others in the larger community were obliged to recognize or respect.”56
Many African Americans affected a high-class fashion style that accentuated their
. Del Villareal, interview, October .
. Czerniak, interview.
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referencing the way economically marginalized Latinxs contributed to the defining aspects of rockabilly culture as their mechanical skills became popularly valued and their
greasy hair became socially fashionable. Many of my interviewees explained that their
participation in the rockabilly subculture today continues to foster and honor this historical relationship between rockabilly, cars, and fashion within the Latinx community
and they pay tribute to this history through their band names: Grease Demon, Dragstrip
Demons, The Hell Caminos, Hotrod Hillbillies, Moonlight Cruisers, Crash Cadillacs,
and the Grease Creepers.
Even for those rockabilly fans whose families did not live in the US during the midcentury, this cultural legacy is something they have embraced and identified with. Hector,
for instance, came to the US with his parents when he was young. He began to participate
in the vintage car culture that was prevalent in his predominantly Latinx neighborhood and
was thus exposed to the strains of rockabilly and “oldies” music that echoed from peoples’
cars and garages as they worked on their mid-century cars and turned them into works
of art in traditional rasquache fashion. So even those whose own families are not directly
connected to the historical legacy of “greaser” culture in the US have become involved
in the rockabilly scene through their experiences with car culture in Latinx neighborhoods.
Accordingly, the Latinx rockabillies I interviewed did not consider their interest in rockabilly music and style as an incongruity at all, but rather a direct representation of cultural
practices that signified their experiences in Latinx communities.
attractiveness to the opposite sex—even when they had little to offer in terms of financial
resources—providing them with a crucial sense of control over their own bodies and opportunities.57 Bertrand argues that Elvis’s adoption of a fashion style associated with African
American rhythm & blues culture was motivated by the same goals, given his own marginalized socio-economic background. Today, many Latinxs who participate in the rockabilly subculture relate to this strategy for projecting confidence, self-worth, and power through
detailed attention to one’s appearance, an antidote to experiences of humiliation and poverty.
For example, Javier explains that his appreciation for rockabilly fashion is influenced by his
father’s calculated use of the style:
Rockin’ Vic told me that his attention to fashion stems from values his family instilled in
him that reflect a similar approach: “We take pride in our clothes. We wear nice clothes and
enjoy getting dressed up. Looking sloppy is too easy; looking first-rate is hard, but it’s important. It’s part of the culture, dressing up and going to church, looking nice, shining your
shoes, looking like you make more than you actually do. My family and relatives all dressed
that way.”59 For Javier and Vic, then, the “classiness” of rockabilly fashion further attracted
them to the subculture as they drew connections between the ways their families and rockabillies like Elvis strategically used clothing to command respect and project self-worth.
Some contemporary participants also mentioned that they identified with the way
some rockabilly celebrities looked. Popularly known as “El Vez, The Mexican Elvis,”
performer Robert Lopez remembers thinking “Elvis must be Latino, like us” because his
character in Fun in Acapulco looked like his uncles, with their continental slacks and
slicked-back pompadours.60 Deejay Del Villarreal, too, felt Presley’s appearance was similar to his own: “I identified with his swarthy good looks. He had black hair and seemed
a little dark. I thought he looked a little like me.”61 Del’s nickname, “The Aztec Werewolf,” pays homage to another ethnically ambiguous celebrity he identified with: radio
personality Wolfman Jack (born Robert Weston Smith). Smith transmitted his popular
rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm & blues program from Mexican “border blaster” stations that
. Michael Bertrand, “I Don’t Think Hank Done It That Way: Elvis, Country Music, and the Reconstruction of
Southern Masculinity,” in A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music, ed. Kristine M. McCusker and Diane
Pecknold, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, ), −.
. Bertrand, .
. In Elizabeth Blozan, Rebel Beat: The Story of L.A. Rockabilly, Betty Vision Entertainment, .
. Czerniak, interview.
. Karen Schoemer, “Shake, Rattle and Roll with the Mexican Elvis,” Rockabilly Hall of Fame, , http://www.
rockabillyhall.com/elvez.html.
. Villareal, interview.
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When you wear the suit and everything, you get respect, you get attention, you get free
drinks. Who’s gonna mess with you? I got all the tricks from my dad. The suits, the shoes,
the hair, the watch. He’s from Mexico and right before he crossed the border, he’d change
into his suit and tie. All the others on the bus were still in their ranch clothes and they
would be harassed by the authorities. But when immigration came over, they would
always leave my dad alone and would end up apologizing: “sorry for the disturbance, hope
you have a nice ride.”58
could legally exceed the maximum wattage allowed in the US, allowing his show to be
heard all across America. Del describes his curiosity about the entertainer’s racial
identity:
I first learned of him watching American Graffiti. He was so interesting and so appealing
to Mexican Americans, especially in Southern California. No one knew if he was Mexican
American, or African American, or white. He was broadcasting from Mexico, so it seemed
like he could be . . . He was really careful with the media—there weren’t a lot of photos
of him, or in the few photos he had on his sunglasses, and he had his big pompadour.
I always thought he was Mexican. He had these thick eyebrows, a cool goatee, and was
really hairy—like me! I thought this was obviously someone who has a similar background
as me.62
Ricky: The upright bass, which is obviously important to both rockabilly and psychobilly,
has a lot of roots in Mexican music. I went to Mexico this year and it’s still being used, not
miked up, just acoustic, like it used to be. Maybe the sound of it is like a trigger from our
parent’s generation to us.
Danny: That’s a good point. Maybe it gives us the feel of the trios, because they’ll have
the upright along with acoustic guitars. And like in mariachi, too, they have the big guitarrón that’s plays the same role as the upright bass in our music.66
Fans listed numerous rockabilly and rhythm & blues songs that appear to have been directly
influenced by Latin American music: Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” features horns which
seem derivative of mariachi, as does Bill Haley’s “Jimmy Martinez” and “Jealous Heart;”
Mexican Actor Tito Quizar teamed up with Fats Domino to produce a version of “La
Paloma,” a popular Spanish-language tune using the habanera rhythm that was also covered
. Villareal, interview.
. The title of the track was actually spelled “Slippin’ and Slidin’.”
. D’Andrea, “Phoenix’s Latino Rockabilly.”
. Martinez, interview.
. Ricky Salazar, interview, January ; Arechiga, interview.
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Other rockabilly enthusiasts related to the music itself, in which they recognized Latin
American influences. Niki D’Andrea argues that because of its characteristic swing, the rockabilly rhythm can be interpreted as a habanera, the dotted quarter-eighth-quarter-quarter
note rhythm that originated in Cuba in the eighteenth century and made its way into genres
as diverse as tango and reggaeton: “It can be heard . . . bouncing through the saxophone
section in Bill Haley’s version of “Shake Rattle and Roll,” popping out of the bass lines
and swinging through the saxes on Little Richard’s “Slippin ‘n’ Slidin” (sic),63 driving the
drums on Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock,” and most notably, giving Elvis Presley’s
rendition of “Hound Dog” its signature, springy beat.”64 Some of my interviewees
explained that the instrumentation used in rockabilly tracks also reminded them of various
types of folk and popular music from Latin America. Al Martinez, for example, recognized
similarities between the slap bass style of rockabilly and the resonant bass guitars used in
Mexican folk genres, such as son jalisciense (from which modern mariachi is derived) and son
jarocho.65 Ricky and Danny from Gamblers Mark raised the same observation:
by Elvis Presley and Bill Haley; and Elvis recorded the Mexican ranchera “Allá en el Rancho
Grande” (made popular initially by Jorge Negrete) with traditional gritos (trilled highpitched yells) and the characteristic polka rhythm. In short, my interlocutors recognized
many commonalities between rockabilly and Mexican music, not only providing further evidence of the transnational ways in which Latinx culture and rockabilly influenced each
other, but also making it easy to identify with because rockabilly sounded like the Latin
American music they grew up around.
SIDE B: THE CUSTOM LATINX ROCKABILLY SUBCULTURE
Track 1: Acknowledging and showcasing Latinx and Latin American rockabilly
Unsurprisingly, one of the most apparent differences between majority-Anglo and majorityLatinx rockabilly events I attended was the degree to which Latinx or Latin American artists
were represented. While any rockabilly audience might expect to hear some Ritchie Valens
tunes, a greater sampling of music by Latinx or Latin American performers is typically
played at events with a higher concentration of Latinx participants. For instance, Rockin’
Vic cues up tracks by Latin American rocanrol artists, such as Johnny Tedesco from Argentina, Los Llopis from Cuba, Los Saicos from Peru, and Los Gibson Boys, Los Apson, Los
Teen Tops, Los Camisas Negras, Los Silver Rockets, and Los Hooligans from Mexico. Del
Villarreal once played a Spanish-language version of Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire”
that I had not heard before. Latinx bands also regularly perform covers of classic songs by
Mexicans and Mexican Americans, giving them a rockabilly spin. Southern California band
Radarmen treated an enthusiastic crowd to a sped-up version of Freddy Fender’s “Wasted
Days and Wasted Nights.” Mariachis del Infierno, a band based out of San Antonio, Texas,
routinely covered Ritchie Valens’s ballad “We Belong Together” due to popular demand.
And Los Angeles-based band Los Bandits performed the Texas Tornadoes song “Hey Baby,
Que Pasó” to a crowd that eagerly sang along.
These performances introduce audiences to the historical legacy of rock ’n’ roll
among Latin Americans and Latinxs. This is especially impactful when Latinx deejays
and bands perform for an international audience, showcasing, for those who may not
know, the ways that Latinxs have been integrally involved in American popular music
for decades. Accordingly, fans around the world have discovered Spanish-language
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The first “side” of this article tells the story of why rockabilly resonates with my interlocutors, shedding light on how their enthusiasm for a style that originated from the US South is
not irreconcilable with, but rather reflective of, their own identity and historical experiences.
They meaningfully situate themselves within a tradition of Latinx and Latin American engagement with rock ‘n’ roll through cars, music, and fashion, and they feel a sense of familiarity with aspects of rockabilly music, style, and performers. The other side of this record
explores how they have also changed and contributed to the scene in ways that specifically
reflect their own culture and experiences. From the showcasing of performers, records, and
fashion styles that have not typically been represented in more Anglo rockabilly contexts to
the creation of new musical hybrids like cumbiabilly, Side B shows how Latinx rockabilly
has affected and reshaped rockabilly culture on an international stage.
I was familiar with Lalo Guerrero and Ritchie Valens, but I didn’t know that acts were
still doing Mexican rock & roll. The energy Lil Luis and the Wild Teens had on stage and
the attitude just blew me away. They were a band I felt I could record. In the studio,
I tried to capture that energy. I picked “La Rebeldona” out to be the single. It turned out
to be a hit in the scene around here and still is, even though it was released more than a
dozen years ago.69
Today, his roster includes many Latinx performers who are among the most popular contemporary rockabilly acts featured at Viva Las Vegas, as well as festivals outside the US.70
The Rhythm Shakers, for instance, have embarked on multi-date tours of Europe and
Australia, and Gamblers Mark joined Wild Records duo the Vargas Brothers to headline
Australia’s Shepparton Shake-Out, a s “Lifestyle Festival.” Rockin’ Vic and Del Villarreal are often contracted to deejay events all over the world, and they testify to the increasing
demand, particularly in Europe, for Latinx artists. Years of witnessing the changes in the
international rockabilly scene has led Rockin’ Vic to believe that “rockabilly, especially in the
Southwest, would be long dead if it weren’t for Latinos. If it hadn’t been for them, the scene
wouldn’t be thriving like it is. All the fresh new bands are Mexican American. The Europeans, all the people at Viva Las Vegas, they’re loving it.”71
. Czerniak, interview.
. In , Los Straitjackets, an instrumental surf rock band that performs in lucha libre (Mexican wrestling)
masks, collaborated with Mexican-American vocalists Big Sandy, Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos, and Little Willie G. of
Thee Midniters to record Rock en Español Vol. , an album of Spanish-language covers of s and ‘s rock songs,
and half of the songs on La Diabla, the release from Las Vegas rockabilly band Will & the Hi-Rollers, are in
Spanish.
. Reb Kennedy, interview, June .
. “Elise Salomon’s video Los Wild Ones () for more on Reb Kennedy and his roster of artists on Wild
Records.”
. Czerniak, interview.
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rockabilly and now feature it more prominently throughout the subculture. As Rockin’
Vic told me: “Whenever I play those records, the crowd loves it. And when I do it at
Viva Las Vegas [a popular rockabilly festival in Las Vegas attended by thousands of fans
from all over the world], the Europeans love it. They’re always saying, ‘Hey that’s so cool.’
And now I’ve seen British vendors at Viva selling Los Teen Tops CDs. It used to be really
hard to get them. So people are picking up on that.”67 As a result, there has been a growing demand for contemporary Spanish-language rockabilly, and several performers have
released new work to meet fans’ expectations.68
Contemporary Latinx rockabilly performers have increasingly been recognized and acknowledged within the international scene, further introducing audiences to the ways in
which Latinx artists are carrying on a cultural legacy of involvement in rockabilly. Some of
the most requested performers today are the Latinx artists featured on the Wild Records
roster, a Los Angeles-based record label founded by Reb Kennedy. Upon emigrating from
Ireland, Kennedy was disappointed to find a very lackluster and unenthusiastic rockabilly
scene in the US. But he was intrigued when he saw Lil Luis y Los Wild Teens perform at
an event promoted as “Mexican Rock & Roll” in :
Track 2: Representing African American influences and performers
. Lipsitz, “Cruising around the Historical Bloc,” .
. Macías, Mexican American Mojo, .
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Latinx participation in rockabilly today has also resulted in more awareness of the role
African Americans historically played in mid-century American popular music and culture. Events with a predominantly Latinx audience are far more likely than more Anglocentric scenes to feature African American music and performers. At a concert in
Houston, where most of the attendees were Latinx, Marshall Lytle from The Comets
(Bill Haley’s s rock ‘n’ roll band) was received enthusiastically and respectfully. But
the crowd showed the most energy and excitement for acts who played African American music from the s and ‘s, like Morry Sochat, the harmonica player, vocalist,
and bandleader of a Chicago electric blues and swing jazz band, and the Royal Rhythmaires, a rhythm & blues band fronted by an African American female vocalist with a gospel background. Similarly, the Memorial Day Weekend Rock ’n’ Roll BBQ in
Rosemead, California, another community with a majority Latinx fanbase, welcomed
Nikki Hill, a contemporary African American performer from North Carolina who
blends country, blues, gospel, rock ‘n’ roll, and Southern soul, and Big Jay McNeely, an
African American R&B saxophone “honker” whose career was sustained by Latinx fans
in the s and ‘s. The amount of respect and appreciation for the eighty-eight-yearold McNeely was palpable as the audience members honored an artist who was supported decades ago by some of their own parents and grandparents.
The tendency to embrace African American performers seems to stem, in part, from
an acute awareness of Latinx engagement with rhythm & blues from the s to ‘s.
George Lipsitz has noted that there were “families of resemblance” between African
American and Mexican-American communities in the mid-century due to their similar
experiences of discrimination and economic struggle.72 Contemporary Latinx participants recognize the historically significant way rhythm & blues and rock ‘n’ roll “facilitated cross-cultural affinities and allegiances” between marginalized communities as
black performers interacted with Latinx audiences in East Los Angeles.73 So while rockabilly has largely become reified as “white,” Latinxs have continued to showcase the
black music it developed from, the music some of their own families once participated
in because of their mutual understanding of one another’s experiences. As Latinx performers are increasingly featured on the international stage, they have reshaped a scene
that has traditionally privileged the music of white artists. By spinning their favorite records by African American artists and by highlighting rhythm & blues elements in their
own performances, Latinx artists have generated an increased appreciation for the black
roots of rock ‘n’ roll as well as the ways in which Latinx communities historically identified with African American music and communities.
The participation of Latinx rockabillies in the subculture has also revived pachuco
fashion and music, an indication of their awareness of another historical influence of
African American culture on Latinx communities. In the s, pachuco men wore
high-waisted, wide-legged drape pants, long-tailed coats with padded shoulders, a colorcoordinated fedora or porkpie hat (or a tall pompadour), double-soled black leather
shoes, and a watch chain that dangled to knee length; women (pachucas) often sported
the zoot coat and wore two-toned saddle shoes. The pachuco’s zoot suit was a MexicanAmerican adaptation of African American fashion that embodied and projected a
greater sense of self-worth and desirability. The jump blues-based music they listened to
in Southern California was introduced into Latinx communities by Johnny Otis. As
Rúben Guevara remembers:
The “Pachuco Boogie” compositions by Don Tosti and Eduardo “Lalo” Guerrero referenced the pachuco lifestyle and reflected the bicultural, bilingual experiences of young
Mexican-Americans steeped in a diverse post-WWII urban landscape.76
Southern California band Pachuco José y Los Diamantes has been instrumental in
(re)introducing rockabilly enthusiasts to this history. During his shows, Pachuco José slides
around the stage in full zoot attire and covers “Chicas Patas Boogie,” “Vamos a Bailar,” and
“Los Chucos Suaves,” singles recorded by Lalo Guerrero for Los Angeles-based Imperial
Records between and . The band has generated a revival of pachuco style
within the rockabilly scene in Southern California: several men at Pitzer College’s
Rockabilly Festival stood proudly in their zoot suits in front of their s “bombs”
(as the classic cars are called), some fans have hired the band for pachuco-themed
weddings, and jump blues and boogie are increasingly featured during deejay sets. These
ethnographic observations underscore the ways in which Latinx participation in the
contemporary rockabilly subculture has resulted in the increased acknowledgment of
mid-century African American popular music and culture, and particularly the ways
in which it historically influenced Latinx communities, diversifying a scene that many
people tend to associate with white performers.
Track 3: Hybridizing rockabilly with Mexican-American music and culture
Perhaps the most unique aspect of the Latinx rockabilly scene has been the intentional integration of Mexican and Mexican-American musical traits. As indicated in the opening vignette, Moonlight Trio pays homage to their ethnic background and experiences by
performing cumbias with a rockabilly twist, using upright bass, lead guitar, and drums, a style
. Caló is a form of slang, part English, part Spanish, associated with the pachuco dialect. It often plays with
rhyming patterns such as “¿Me entiendes, Méndez?” (You understand?) and “Al rato, vato” (Later, dude).
. Rúben Guevara, “The View from the Sixth Street Bridge: The History of Chicano Rock,” in The First Rock &
Roll Confidential Report, ed. Dave Marsh (New York: Pantheon, ), .
. Macías for more detailed accounts of pachuco culture.
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When Johnny first played the Angeles Hall in , introducing black jump blues to the
Eastside, he caused quite a sensation. His swing didn’t just swing. It jumped! And the
Eastside jumped right along with him. Chicano jump bands began to form—the first was
the Pachuco Boogie Boys led by Raúl Díaz and Don Tosti. They had a local hit, “Pachuco
Boogie,” which consisted of a jump type shuffle with either Raúl or Don rapping in
Caló74 about getting ready to go out on a date.75
. Some of their original cumbias so closely resemble traditional favorites that I sometimes assumed them to be
well-known classics. In an early draft of this article, I included their song “Chicarrones” in the list of cumbias they
covered. Guitarist Al Martinez caught the error, noting that this was one of their original tunes. He replied: “It’s
good to know we were able to write a cumbia that sounds like a decades old favorite!” Email communication
March .
. Guitarist Al Martinez explained their use of these instruments, which stems from his knowledge of their use ...
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