Chicano Rock - Overview

Overview

There are two undercurrents in Chicano rock. One is a devotion to the original rhythm and blues and country roots of Rock and roll. Ritchie Valens, Sunny & the Sunglows, The Sir Douglas Quintet, Thee Midniters, Los Lobos, Malo, War, Tierra, and El Chicano all have made music that is heavily based on 1950s R&B, even when general trends moved away from the original sound of rock as time went by.

Another characteristic is the openness to Latin American sounds and influences. Trini Lopez, Santana, Malo, and other Chicano 'Latin Rock' groups follow this approach with their fusions of R&B, Jazz, and Caribbean sounds; but all of the groups and performers have some of these influences. Los Lobos in particular alternates between R&B/roots rock and the Tex-Mex/Latin rock style.

The 1958 hit song "Tequila!" was written and sung by the saxophone player Danny Flores (not to be confused with Danny David Flores, a former member of Renegade) and performed by The Champs. Flores, who died in September 2006, was known as the "Godfather of Latino Rock." One of the most celebrated rock pioneers was the short-lived Ritchie Valens, whose death is marked as the Day the Music Died. Songs by Chicano led bands like Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs' "Wooly Bully" and Question Mark & the Mysterians' "96 Tears", while not by definition "Latin Music", may have a Tejano influence in their whirling keyboard runs and beats.

In the mid-1980s Chicano teen rock band Renegade landed on the international music scene, sporting a combination of heavy metal instrumentation with more pop oriented melodies, resulting in a new sub-genre, termed "commercial metal." The four teens — Kenny Marquez on lead guitar and vocals, Luis Cardenas on drums and vocals, Tony De La Rosa on rhythm guitar and vocals and Danny David Flores on bass guitar and vocals — have been referred to as Chicano rock gods, amongst Mexican-Americans. Renegade or Los Renegados as they are called in Latin-America, went on to sell more than 30 millions units worldwide, with a series of hits in Mexico, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent, the United States.

Groups like Ozomatli and Quetzal had led the new wave of Latin Rock groups that fuse multiple musical genres.