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It was in the hallways of Garfield High School and on the streets of East Los Angeles where members of Los Lobos first began to surprise their listeners.
Louie Perez and David Hidalgo were childhood friends and, like many young American musicians at the time, were engulfed by the invasion of British rock-and roll. They were also first-generation Mexican-Americans, and lived at home, where traditional Mexican music was a constant in the background.
In East L.A., different cultures collided along with countless styles of music, and it was in this climate that one of America’s great rock bands formed. The melting pot of sound created by Mr. Perez, Mr. Hidalgo and their band, Los Lobos, soon took California, and then the nation, by storm.
“It was unheard of for kids out of high school to play the music their parents were listing to,” Mr. Perez said during a phone interview last week from his home in California. “To a certain degree, from the very beginning, the songs I’ve been writing have been autobiographical. Even today, and I’ll be 57 in January, I still discover things that are part of my experience growing up in East L.A.”
Los Lobos, which is Spanish for “The Wolves,” will perform on Friday, November 13, at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center at 8 p.m. The band is in the midst of a national tour to promote the release of its new album “Los Lobos Goes Disney,” a surprising and thus far critically-acclaimed Latin remake of beloved Disney classics.
Mr. Perez said the band had one album remaining on its contract with Warner Brothers, and had recently wanted to make a children’s album.
“When I talk about this album, I often think of Hendrix,” Mr. Perez said. “He had one record left on his deal, and threw together ‘Band of Gypsies,’ which was the most incredible record of his career.”
The idea of a band with punk, blues, rock and Spanish-language roots recording Disney songs seemed strange at first, but Mr. Perez and his bandmates, who, after 36 years, still include Mr. Hidalgo, Caesar Rosas and Conrad Lozano, were never ones to follow conventional wisdom.
“I grew up listening to the music my mom liked, David was around music and I think the same went for Conrad and Caesar. Music was always around,” said Mr. Perez, who, along with the other three original members, is joined by sax player Steve Berlin and drummer Cougar Estrada on tour. “We started Los Lobos in 1973 and decided to learn a couple Mexican songs for our parents, and then we made our way back to rock-and-roll in the late ’70s.”
Los Lobos became a staple on the California club scene in the 1970s. Following one of their best shows at the famed L.A. nightclub Whiskey A Go Go, the band was signed by Slash Records, a small label known mostly for its work with punk musicians. The first EP Los Lobos put out, “…And a Time to Dance,” was released in 1983 and included the song “Anselma,” which won a Grammy Award for best Mexican-American performance.
Soon after, the band, along with the entire Slash label, was picked up by Warner Brothers, which then released the follow-up album, “How Will the Wolf Survive?” which also drew critical praise. By 1987, the band was a regular on the California music scene, and later that year recorded songs for the movie “La Bamba,” which was based on the life of another Mexican-American musician, Ritchie Valens, who died in a plane crash in 1959. Almost immediately following the movie’s release, Los Lobos became known around the world.
“I don’t have it hanging on my wall, it’s probably in a box somewhere, but I have gold records from Africa,” Mr. Perez said when asked about the commercial success of the album, which placed Los Lobos on top of the Billboard charts.
“We became a household name,” he continued. “Pop stardom seemed compromising, though, especially for a band that was as eclectic and artful as we were. But the fact remains that we had a song on the top of the Billboard charts for seven weeks—a 100-year- old Mexican song by four Mexican kids from East L.A. You don’t need much more validation than that.”
Los Lobos did not compromise its sound in the wake of “La Bamba, and put out an album of traditional Mexican music followed by the release in 1992 of the experimental album, “Kiko,” which Rolling Stone magazine described as “an evocative, avant-Latin-pop album.” Los Lobos had clearly escaped the temptation to produce music for more mainstream audiences, choosing to stick with their roots instead.
“We sound like a jukebox in south Texas,” Mr. Perez said with a laugh, before turning more serious. “What happened is we maintained our sense of discovery and still found new places to be inspired.”
The Disney album represents the latest departure from what fans of Los Lobos have come to expect. The band takes on 13 classics such as “Heigh-Ho” from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” from “Song of the South,” and “Cruella de Vil” from “101 Dalmatians,” among others. The songs are classics, but the sound is new, and purely Los Lobos.
“It was a cool experience,” Mr. Perez said of the Disney album. “I discovered a lot of things in the process of doing this, and the record company knew we would put our own stamp on this thing.”
Los Lobos will perform at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Friday, November 13, at 8 p.m. For ticket information, call 288-1500 or visit www.whbpac.org.
on Nov 10, 2009