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Rolas de Aztlan: Songs of the Chicano Movement, compiled, annotated, and produced by Estevan César Azcona and Russell Rodríguez. Smithsonian Folkways Recording, SFW CD 40516.
For anyone interested in how music and political movements form symbiotic relationships, this recording offers the first culturally-compiled cross-sampling of the politically-charged music of the Chicano Movement. Twelve tracks are derived from LPs published in the 1960s and 70s; three tracks from the 1980s; and four from the 1990s. Among the source recordings are El Movimiento Chicano (1973), ¡Sí Se puede! (Yes We Can) (1977), ¡Viva la Causa! Sounds of the Delano Grape Strike, featuring El Teatro Campesino (1966), ¡Huelga en General! Songs of the United Farm Workers (1976), Mestizo (1974), and Chicano Music All Day (1985), to mention only a few. The question that will undoubtedly arise, and which I attempt to address, is "why this particular selection?"
It is with affection that I refer to the "hit parade" of the Chicano Movement that is represented in the very excellent compilation Rolas de Aztlán: Songs of the Chicano Movement, compiled, annotated, and produced by Estevan César Azcona and Russell Rodríguez. Azcona authors the liner notes and collaborates with Rodriguez on individual song notes, lyrics, and translations. Rola refers to a song in slang typical of the Movimiento; the term is derived from a rola as the piano roll that equaled a single song. These are the rolas, the compositions and performances that rolled out of the Chicano Movement when the Movimiento was in full force during the early 1970s. Aztlan, a term attributed to Chicano activist poet Alurista (b. 1954), refers to a mythical place in the north where the people lived before they went south to become the Aztecas, imperial rulers of Tenochtitlan, on the present site of Mexico City. As a political concept, Aztlan lays claim to a mythical ancestral Chicano homeland on this side of the U.S. - Mexico border, and to the greatness attained by the Aztec Empire in Tenochtitlan and beyond. (David Carrasco, Religious...