La Vida Yaya

Las fundadoras, Laura Rebolloso and Martha Gonzalez. When the lead singer of my favorite band comes a-calling for a special request to write about her new project, there is no way a super-fan can say no! As much as we are hounded to death to financially support everyone else's jogathon, spring break trip to Nepal, or buy magazines from guitar-playing Xanax junkies, once in a while comes a project that you wish you could fully fund on the spot. Alas, being $9,980 short, I'm doing my part and blasting this far and wide. Aside from being a Chicana singer/songwriter extraordinaire for the band Quetzal , Martha Gonzalez is also one educated chica. In 2007, Martha was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to head to Veracruz and write songs from a feminine perspective along with collaborator Laura Rebolloso, founder of Son de Madera , a son jarocho group in Veracruz. There Martha and other local women musicians gathered around kitchen tables and living rooms, multitasking songwri...

I moved to LA in 1993, to an whole new urban reality from a lush, green, laid back San Antonio. It is a very culturally Mexican city where cute little old white ladies wear chili pepper earrings and yellow Mexican dresses with ruffles and the Mexicans pack into George Straight concerts and eat polish sausage wrapped in tortillas (don't knock it til you try it). Cowboy hats and boots are bilingual yanno. Leaving the Riverwalk and the Guadalupe Culture Center, the mariachis, and the Battle of the Flowers for a new city was exciting and yet disappointing. LA didn't have that peaceful co-existence of cultures I was used to in SA. It was very much us vs them here in this ocean-lined metropolis. I expected LA to be bustling with Mexican pride and power. I was hoping to find Chicano leaders at the top of their game spearheading large festivals uniting the best mariachis, the best ballet folkloricos, and singers. Afterall, everyone who was anyone in the entertainment industry landed in...