East LA band Quetzal makes music that makes people take to the streets — for 30 years
LOS ANGELES — At a parrot-green house in El Sereno, the Grammy-winning band Quetzal was tuning up for a monster jam rehearsal, a few weeks ahead of its free concert in downtown L.A. on Aug. 19.
The violinist had just arrived. A drum kit, piano and congas stood by in the living room.
But first the band's founders, Quetzal Flores and Dr. Martha Gonzalez — partners since their 20s in love, art and righteous activism — wanted to talk about Kevin de León, the disgraced L.A. City Council member who represents this largely brown-skinned, blue-collar sliver of northeast L.A.
Not every band would consider the nitty-gritty of local politics to be a vital component of its mission, its identity, its reason for being. But then not every band thinks about music and art as a social movement instead of merely "an adornment," in the words of Gonzalez, who happens to hold a Ph.D. in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies from the University of Washington.
For Quetzal, which formed, culture and politics are not discrete categories of human endeavor. They are kissing cousins comrades in arms. Just as the band seeks to unchain music from capitalist constraints, it aspires through art to lift politics beyond formulaic slogans and worthy but over-familiar tactics.
