The Many Threads And Generations Of Chicano Soul, All In One Place
More than half a century after it crept into the DNA of young Mexican-Americans in the southwestern United States — particularly in Southern California and Texas — Chicano Soul endures. Chicano Soul in California has been well-documented, in Ruben Molina's book Chicano Soul and in several documentaries. The Texas version happened away from media and music limelight as a wonderfully provincial scene unto itself, and persists through events like the Friday Night dances at Pueblo Hall in San Antonio, retro bands like Eddie and the Valiants and the San Antones, and through DJs such as the Austin Boogie Crew, Jason Saldana's El West Side Sound in San Antonio and the Fistful of Soul collective in Houston — all spinning vintage tracks in clubs across the state.
No look back, though, is as far-reaching and ambitious as The Look at My Soul: The Latin Shade of Texas Soul album project, hatched by 42-year-old, Austin-based producer-writer-arranger-guitarist Adrian Quesada. Released late last year on Nacional Records/Amazon Music, the album will be performed live for the first time at Lincoln Center in New York this Saturday (July 27), with a cast that includes first-generation Chicano Soul stars Ruben Ramos, El Gato Negro (The Black Cat) and Johnny Hernandez from Little Joe and the Latinaires.
Quesada will also be performing with one of the opening acts, the Black Pumas, his new band with lead vocalist Eric Burton. Black Pumas are standard-bearers of the psych soul sound buzzing around Austin; dominated by mid-tempo ballads, along with tinges of psychedelia, funk and groove – a sound that could easily pass for a new version of Chicano Soul. But in no way is this
