The Mockingbird Effect
Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy’s students performing on stage. Photo by Antonio Sarabia & Rosa Angelica, courtesy of Los Cenzontles
With the audiobook release of his autobiography, “Bird of Four Hundred Voices,” Eugene Rodriguez traces for palabra his four-decade career as a musician and producer, and the spark that launched Los Cenzontles, the iconic California Latino music and art academy.
On a crystal-clear Sunday, in the hills above the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, I recently spent an unexpected afternoon talking about music, musicians, and the icons of the Latino and Chicano folk and rock scene.
I love all manner of music, and I don’t mind rhapsodizing with friends through lists of “the best of” in a number of genres.
But this particular Sunday in the San Francisco Bay Area was a sparkler — sun-drenched but tempered by a cool breeze — ideal for a hike along the bay shore or indulging in a way-too-long lunch at an outdoor café. So when a mutual friend introduced me to the legendary Eugene Rodriguez over mid-morning coffee, I suddenly had to choose: enjoy the good weather that makes us jealous on the Mid-Atlantic coast or nerd out about music with a cultural icon.
Three hours later, I was still in our friend’s tricked-out audio-visual room, exploring videos and recordings of artists like Linda Rondstadt and Los Lobos, fiddling with the room’s fancy tech, and comparing historical notes about the leading Latino folk and rock artists of our time.
I didn’t want to leave.
Call it the Mockingbird Effect.
Eugene Rodriguez with Fabiola Trujillo, Lucina Rodriguez, and Verenice Velazquez. from Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy. Photo by Craig Sherod, courtesy of Los Cenzontles
In 1989, Eugene Rodriguez founded the nonprofit Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy in the working-class community of San Pablo, not far from the UC Berkeley campus.
He was propelled into action, taking a break from a good run of producing music in Los Angeles, because he’d seen a build-up of social unrest at a time when youths were striking back against police abuse and racism that seemed baked into society. Many teens he’d been working with as a music and dance producer could have been lost in a dysfunctional public school system or to gang violence of the early 1990s.
As a way to reach introverted teens, Rodriguez forged Cenzontles as something of a refuge. He began to create opportunities for youth to discover the value of the music, art, and cultural traditions in their community, from the music their mothers and fathers loved, to the soul, rock, and blues rhythms that swirled around them. Kids could pick up and learn to play an instrument or focus on vocals or dance.
The academy has since thrived. Los Cenzontles (The Mockingbirds, from the Nahuatl language of the Mexica — OK, the Aztecs) has trained hundreds of young musicians and dancers who’ve toured the country and Latin America.
In an interview with palabra, Rodriguez offered something of a tour of California music history. He explored the motivation behind his new book and the latest collaborations with Rondstadt and David Hidalgo. This short documentary became a slice of all that, with music clips and images vital to the Cenzontles story.
So it’s a gift to society that Rodriguez has poured the last four decades of his life onto the pages of the autobiography, “Bird Of Four Hundred Voices.” It’s a fitting tribute to the real California sound: a delicious salad of Mexican folk music, blues, and the rockabilly that still draws youths to neighborhood garages and small clubs which over the decades have generated the likes of The Blasters and Los Lobos.
The Centzontles sound, if you must narrow it down to a signature note, is Mexican — a new rendition of rancheras, corridos, huapangos, and cumbias.
Eugene Rodriguez with his book, “Bird of Four Hundred Voices.” Photo courtesy of Los Cenzontles
As a producer, Rodriguez has fostered 30 albums and several films. He’s partnered with his friend Linda Ronstadt, Lalo Guerrero (the padrino of Chicano folk), blues master Taj Mahal, world music pioneer Ry Cooder, and Jackson Browne, the storyteller who conquered the pop airwaves. Along the way, Rodriguez has maintained a close relationship with Hidalgo and the California rock/folk masters Los Lobos.
Rodriguez writing and music have been featured in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and on NPR’s Alt.Latino podcast, the weather vane for the hottest in Latino music. Rodriguez’s work in music education has also been honored by the California Arts Council and the group United States Artists.
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What seems like Rodriguez’s incongruous start in the music business reflects the ad hoc feel of Los Centzontles’ Californio sound:
“At first glance, little about my childhood would have foretold that I would dedicate my life to Mexican folk culture,” Rodriguez writes in his book — a biography laced with lyrics and poetry that have moved him, from classic poetry to the writings of scribes in Mexico’s once-powerful indigenous tribes. “I am a third-generation Mexican American who grew up speaking English in a middle-class neighborhood in Southern California … Unlike other children and grandchildren of immigrants who distance themselves from their raw ancestral traditions as they acculturate, there was for me something in the unvarnished immediacy of roots music that gave me a sense of connection and possibility.”
Eugene Rodriguez, founder of the nonprofit Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy. Photo Mike Melnyk, courtesy of Los Cenzontles
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Ricardo Sandoval-Palos is a co-founder of palabra, and its first editor. A native of Mexico and raised in California, he’s an award-winning investigative reporter and editor, foreign correspondent and adviser to several nonprofit journalism organizations and news outlets. He co-authored “The Fight In The Fields: Cesar Chavez And The Farmworkers Movement.” A lifetime member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Ricardo is the PBS public editor - the liaison between nationwide broadcast and digital audiences and the network’s journalists and creatives. @ricsand
Sofia Sandoval is a regular contributor to palabra, editing video and articles. She’s an independent writer, filmmaker, and actress. A film history buff and an explorer of the works of Shakespeare, Sofia has worked with Women In Film And Video and the Imagination Stage and Silver Spring theaters, among others, in Maryland and Washington, D.C.