Since I began writing online, I’ve had a number of offers by websites for me to write for them. Among them were a website that focused on Mexican music and a college admissions consulting website. I never expected to get these offers, but now I understand that they’re a part of writing online. Nothing came out of the offers I received. The Mexican music website has been “Under construction” ever since I responded to their email and never received a response. It was up and running when I received their email.

I’ve worried about accepting any of these offers. They were unpaid and I wanted to receive some payment for my writing. I fear what can become of my writing once it’s online and I have to deal with repercussions or have it reproduced and distorted by anyone. I want more control over whatever I write. Hmph. I’m in a pickle.

The final concern I’ve had was with others making money off my writing. There were two offers that I rejected for this reason. They were in areas, mostly college admissions, where I feel I have a lot of knowledge and I can make money from that knowledge and I have to protect it to make sure that my services are not cheapened by my advice being out there for anyone to find or someone else to use because I write for their website. I’ve always kicked around the idea of starting a college admissions consulting service, especially in the Gateway Cities of Los Angeles. That’s as much as I can write about that idea.

I know that if I somehow want to make writing a supplemental part of my income, I have to accept whatever I’m offered and blah blah blah… I want to create some sort of professional reputation before I start accepting offers to write at websites. I don’t entirely mind writing at other websites, seeing as how I write over at L.A. Eastside.com.

Someday, I’ll make it a habit it to write here. Until then, this comic will describe me perfectly.

XKCD.

When I started writing here, I did not expect this site to become my outlet for what I eventually realized is the subject I can go on and on writing and talking about: music. When I finished high school and began college, I held more of an interest in politics & history, with minor interests in ethnomusicology and urban planning/history. After a month at Harvard, I knew that I would never be deeply interested in politics and history. Those were not subjects that I wanted to dedicate four years and countless energy studying. After that, I became lost. What would I spend four years studying that would make me happy and interest me enough to justify staying up late and writing papers?

As my college experience devolved and my dislike of Harvard intensified, I looked into studying urban planning/history and/or ethnomusicology at Harvard College. I couldn’t find conclusive information online or from pamphlets and Harvard professors & advisers were of almost no help. I knew what I wanted to study; I just couldn’t find the program (or programs) that allowed me to focus on those topics. I declared Sociology as my concentration, but I really had no idea why the hell I chose it. I should have hounded the Music Department or some other department about how their department could accommodate me. I stupidly chose Sociology without probing much how they could accommodate me.

I wasted a year-and-a-half of my education lost and without finding how I would be able to study what I was really interested.

Blogging (I despise this term, but there’s no better way to describe it) helped me discover that my real interest was in music, Mexican music, to be exact. I always doubted that it was my real interest because I have little formal education in music. Almost all of my knowledge comes from playing in mariachis and listening to Mexican music. Urban history is interesting and I like it, but I’m really interested in it in a case-to-case basis and how it intersects with music in L.A. I want to expand and continue with research on the spread of Mexican music in Los Angeles and other urban areas of the United States. All my writing on music has benefited me in other areas, but that’s for the next post.

I apologize for the cussing. It’s not something that’s part of my daily writing. I want to be frank with you, dear reader, and deleting the cussing would be a disservice to how I feel and think about subjects.

I went months without writing, and here I am restarting this thing. How many times have I said I am taking time off or dropped off the face of Blogtitlán or your RSS reader and then reappeared with a random post, only to disappear again? It’s been really hard for me to write here. I make excuses for myself as to why I am not writing: I don’t want to give up a lot of my privacy, I have other things to do, it’s not something that I am getting paid for and as such, I am not interested. What a fucking joke.

I started this thing because I had a habit of keeping some sort of online journal where I could write whatever I wanted and hope that people responded to what I wrote. I found people who would read this site and might comment every so often. It’s fine, good. I don’t know what this site’s role has become since I started college. At times I used it to document what was happening with me and to let people know about it. That’s too much of an invasion of privacy. My teenage years with an online presence in social networking sites taught me many things, chief among them to not put my life on display for anyone. I didn’t want some stranger in high school to come up to me and tell me “I enjoyed what you wrote about your mariachi gig in Downey this weekend.” Who the fuck are you and why are you telling me this to my face? Once I started college, I saw how many pictures were posted on Sundays or Mondays detailing the weekend’s indiscretions. “Ooh, this will come back to haunt me when I run for office!” I once heard someone say about the pictures. Didn’t help that you were drunk, huh?

Now, what is soledadenmasa’s role? What do I want this site to do for me so I enjoy writing and restart with weekly or daily posts? Should I just shut down the site and quit L.A. Eastside while I’m at it? But what if I get the urge to start posting again? I ask myself these questions each time that I have been on hiatus for a while and have contemplated returning. I am unsure of how I want to answer them. I hope to maintain this site and contribute more regularly at L.A. Eastside because I really want to keep writing. Yes, I’m not getting paid. Maybe I should add a PayPal Donate button to my site, or can I only do that if I am a starving writer/artist who is trying to write a book in a foreign land but have run out of money because I spent my advance on booze and expensive lodging?

I really hope that you, dear reader, visit often or subscribe to my RSS feed so you can read my rants. Writing online has led to offers I didn’t expect. I’ll detail those more in other posts. See you soon, I hope.

I feel as if I’ve spent the past months staring at nothing, hoping something emerges and changes everything. How I’ve been wrong. I’ve been in this position for such a long time that anything else seems alien. Nothing feels natural.

Photo: Eric Grigorian for The New York Times

This past weekend, the N.Y. Times‘ Travel section revisited Los Angeles, focusing on narcocorridos and venues that play an important part in its spread throughout Los Angeles. It went better this time than the last time they visited L.A.

Narcocorridos, and by extension, any form of Mexican music that is born and nourished in Los Angeles, are not covered much in the United States. Almost every time narcocorridos are mentioned in media, it’s tied with the current Mexican Drug war fiasco and spoken about negatively. I once sat in on a discussion with a well-known Mexican journalist at a university and she all but blamed the whole situation in Mexico & the Americas on narcocorridos. The whole time I sat there, I shook my head, unable to comprehend how someone could explicitly blame corridos for the “drug war” in México.

Coverage of narcocorridos in the U.S. is much different than in México. The United States is much less subjective than México in its coverage of narcocorridos. Mexican journalists have bought the Mexican government’s argument that narcocorridos are to blame for the drug trade and must be banned from radio play. American journalists have gone further into narcocorridos, documenting its rise and popularity among Mexicans in the United States and the constant airplay in radio. It’s a musical form that allows the children of Mexican immigrants to become immensely popular, though the singing is sometimes sub-par.

The N.Y. Times did a good job with this article, going around to small bars locations around mostly South-Central & Southeast L.A., the origins of most forms of Mexican music & artists that have emerged from L.A. (Voces del Rancho, Chalino Sanchez, Adan “Chalino” Sanchez, Saúl Viera “El gavilancillo,” Pedro, Lupillo, & Jenni Rivera, etc.). Of course, no article about contemporary Mexican music in Los Angeles can ignore Chalino Sánchez and this article is not the exception.

I don’t know what more to say about the article. I think it’s a good primer on Mexican music in Los Angeles, as good as can be expected from any Travel section. While most Travel sections stay the hell away from any area between Downtown L.A. and the beaches of southern Los Angeles county, this article treated them better than I’ve heard some people in L.A. talk about these areas.

¿Qué piensan?

DISCLOSURE: The owners of El Farallon & El Dorado Night Club are relatives of mine. Additionally, many workers at these establishments, past and present, are relatives or family friends.

Image at the top of the post is taken from the article’s accompanying slideshow. Crossposted at L.A. Eastside.

I have been away from the internet since yesterday. Instead of writing a post two days before Friday, I’ve decided to just post Joe Bataan’s “Mestizo” for your pleasure. It’s Friday, enjoy it a little bit more. There are some who can’t enjoy the day, no matter how bright the sun shines.

Yesterday, I read an article in the San Antonio Express-News that the Today show asked Mariachi Campanas de America not to play the mariachi’s anthem, “El són de la negra.” Here’s a bit from the article:

That popular folk song, whose title translates to “The Song of the Black Woman,” was the renowned mariachis’ first choice for their performance Wednesday on the “Today” show. But the show’s producers asked Campanas de America not to sing it when “Today” broadcasts from the Arneson River Theater next week.

“It’s the mariachi national anthem,” said Belle Ortiz, manager of Campanas de America. “We always play ‘El Son de La Negra.’ Everybody plays it.”

The reason for rejecting it? “Because they didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings because of the name of the song,” Ortiz said.

A show spokeswoman said this was not a case of political correctness.

“The song ‘El Son de La Negra’ was by no means deemed too controversial for ‘Today,’” publicist Megan Kopf said via e-mail.

“We always consider several song choices for our musical performance segments on the ‘Today’ show. For this particular segment, we decided to go with a song selection that is both appropriate for our wide-ranging ‘Today’ show audience and that also keeps with mariachi tradition.”

This is clearly the Today show worrying too much about offending a group of people over a song that is not offensive at all. I don’t but the Today’s show explanation at all. If I were put in the position Campanas was put in, I would rather lose the work than not be allowed to play this song. “La negra” is an essential part of the mariachi repertoire and is universally recognized. It is synonymous with mariachis and México.

Another aspect of this situation is the actual meaning of “La negra.” The most commonly accepted meaning is that the song is about a woman, “La negra”, the black one. This analysis hinges on the lyrics “Negrita de mis pesares/ojos de papel volando” (“Black one of my sorrows/eyes of paper flying). Those verses don’t make any sense. The proper lyrics (which fell out of fashion, for some reason) are “Negrita de mis pesares/hojas de papel volando” (Black one of my sorrows/Sheets of paper flying).

A few weeks back, this very topic was discussed over at El Mariachi.com. There is no definite interpretation of “La negra” because the song is from the mid-to-late 1800s. The meaning that I prefer is that “la negra” refers to a train. The beginning of the song is that of a train picking up steam and the train is “la negrita de mis pesares,” which brings sorrow to the author because his love has not come on the train. As the train passes, the wind picks up sheets of paper.

Other parts of the songs don’t fit well into this intepretation, but that is probably because of the time that has passed since the song was first written. Everyone interprets the song differently, but interpreting the song as inappropriate because its “kind of saucy” is insincere, considering the airplay that other, more objectifying, songs receive from T.V. shows.

I have a lot of respect for musicians who record songs music from a different culture because of a genuine interest and love of the music. While sometimes the effort comes off as hokey, most of the time the final product is very well done and it’s an example of cross-cultural admiration. There are cases where this cross-cultural admiration is not done properly, goes to lawsuits, and the original composer is screwed over. “(I Did It) My Way” is translated from a French song and later was translated to the Spanish, maintaining its message and sounding great, whether it’s Chente with a mariachi or Sinatra with a band.

I can’t remember if the following is true or imagined, but years ago, I heard a Spanish-language version of “That’s Amore.” I think it was José Alfredo Jiménez with a mariachi. I’m still trying to find it, but I have not succeeded. I hope it’s not a figment of my imagination.

Earlier today, I came across a George Strait recording of José Alfredo’s “El Rey”. I love it. I am a fan of country music, especially recordings that don’t sound over-produced or glossy. I’m happy Strait arranged their version closely to the traditional arrangement. In an interview, Strait talks about his adoration for mariachi music:

I admire country music and its musicians because its true artists acknowledge the shared musical roots of the U.S.A. & México. It’s Anzaldúa’s cultural borderlands, the melding of different musical traditions. It’s not something that I have not seen a lot of in California’s musical history. I don’t understand why it was more prevalent in the Southwest and not in California. I have gone on for too long. There will be more on these topics at other times.

This is part II of yesterday’s post.

Word had spread that my uncle’s health had deteriorated and a stream of distant family members, friends, & acquaintances were visiting my uncle while my aunt (who used her visa to stay in the Bay Area with him), uncles, grandfather, & (sometimes) dad kept my uncle company. My dad last saw my uncle about a week-and-a-half before my uncle died. It was clear that he would die soon and everyone allowed my dad time alone with my uncle. My uncle was the child before my father, with only two years between them.

On March 2, around 10:30 am, my mom called my cell phone and left a message. I was in class with terrible cell phone reception. The missed call and message did not show up on my phone until around noon, before I had lunch. It was one of those winter days that I really like: cold, with no clouds, only a bright sun warming people. I had already developed a resistance to cold weather and enjoyed walking because the opposing sensations of warm sun & clothes and cold air felt great. Before I walked in to have lunch, I felt my phone vibrate and listened to my mom telling me my uncle had died that morning.

I wasn’t shocked by the news; I knew the day would arrive. We were prepared for this death, but I didn’t know what to feel about his death. My uncle and I were never close and I did not know how I should conduct myself. My family has always held that when someone close is near death or has died, no music should be played. That week, for the first time, I decided not to go to a mariachi performance. I felt that though I was unable to attend the memorial service with my family, not performing would be my way of honoring my uncle. The next time I am in the Bay Area, I want to visit his grave, as a goodbye.

A few days ago, I was looking through old photo albums, trying to find pictures to scan. I came across a series of photos taken a few weeks after my birth. In them, my now-deceased uncle is holding me, smiling.

This is my 200th post.

The title of this post comes from a scene from the film Macario. In the above clip, it starts at 2:21.

I’ve thought a lot about death in the past few weeks. I know this isn’t the kind of thing that I should publish or mention so publicly, but I’m not about to practice so much self-censorship.

I’ve never dealt with death directly in my life. No one in my immediate family has died in my lifetime. My paternal grandmother, maternal grandfather, & a maternal uncle died before I was born. I wish I had met them, if only to know how they were and how we would have interacted. My maternal grandfather, Jesús, died a few months after my month’s birth and my maternal uncle, Benjamín, died in the mid-1970s in San Leandro. My paternal grandmother died in 1986, a few months after my parents immigrated to the United States.

The only death in the close family in my lifetime was that of one of my paternal uncles, who died in March. I was not able to attend his funeral, as I was at Harvard and didn’t have the money to travel to San Francisco & back for a half-week. I was in the Bay Area last weekend, but we didn’t visit his grave. I wish we had because I was unable to be there for his burial. The last time I saw him was on New Year’s Day, when my dad & I visited the Bay Area and stayed with him for a number of hours. His health had deteriorated in the last decade, more so after a car accident in L.A. put him in a coma for a few days.

After we returned to L.A. and I was back at Harvard, it was hard for me to get my uncle’s health out of my head. Each day, it was more and more obvious that his candle neared extinguishment. My dad began to go to the Bay Area more often. In February, I think he was in the Bay Area every other weekend. My dad would leave Los Angeles Friday night by Greyhound, be picked up by one of uncles, go to the hospital to see my uncle, and be on a Greyhound bus back to L.A. Saturday night.

Part II tomorrow.

So much for the writing exercises. I’m taking a break from writing. Might be back next week, but definitely will be back in August.

This post was originally published in English on April 11, 2008, to observe the tenth anniversary of the death of Saúl Viera, “El gavilancillo.” Since then, it has become the most read post at Soledad en masa. I’ve received a number of comments in Spanish and I thought it was worthwhile to translate it to Spanish.

Este artículo fue originalmente publicado en inglés el once de abril del 2008 en observación del décimo aniversario de la muerte de Saúl Viera, «El gavilancillo». Desde aquel día, se ha convertido en el artículo más leído en Soledad en masa. He recibido un número de comentarios sobre el artículo en español y pienso que lo correcto es traducirlo al español.

* * *

Hoy, once de abril de 2008, es el décimo aniversario de la muerte de uno de los cantantes más famosos de Los Ángeles, Saúl Viera. Fue asesinado en el estacionamiento de un restaurante Denny’s en Bellflower, CA, por un individuo desconocido. Su novia, que estaba al lado del Gavilancillo, no fue lastimada.

Chalino murió en 1992, Saúl en 1998… Ambos se convirtieron en «inmortales» de la Qué Buena, la radiodifusora que más toca sus canciones en L.A. Hoy día, uno todavía puede escuchar sus canciones en la Qué Buena. Ve a Huntington Park, South Gate, Bell, o cualquier otra ciudad en los alrededores y es seguro que escucharás por lo menos un automóvil tocando su música a alto volumen.

Antes de leer más, visita esta página de MySpace y escucha el corrido «Los 3 compitas de L.A.» mientras lees el resto del artículo. La canción debería ser titulada «Los 3 compitas de South Gate» ya que South Gate es la única ciudad nombrada en el corrido, pero solo digo eso porque soy de South Gate.

La música de Saúl Viera forma parte de la música de Los Ángeles al igual que la música de Toddy Tee y Los Lobos, música creada por individuos que no son parte de la cultura americana principal. Cuando lograron el éxito, la cultura principal (o mainstream) no les presto mucha atención. La cultura principal no notó que Chalino o Saúl llenaban el Parral o el Farallón o vendían cassettes en las pulgas como pan caliente. Para aquellos en los márgenes de la sociedad de Los Ángeles, eran los mejores, los más taquilleros, lo máximo.

La brecha entre la cultura principal y aquellos en los márgenes fue demostrado para todos cuando Adán Sánchez, hijo de Chalina, murió en el 2004, a la edad de veinte años y cuando apenas empezaba su carrera artística. Además, murió en el estado de Sinaloa, el lugar de nacimiento y deceso de su padre. La familia de Adán decidió tener un velorio público en Norwalk y una gran cantidad de gente se juntó. La policía fue sorprendida por la cantidad de gente. No pudo controlar el público y hubo enfrentamientos entre el público y la policía. Esta falta de preparación de parte de la policía demostró al mundo la ignorancia de la cultura principal sobre las culturas en los márgenes.

Aquí van dos canciones de Saúl Viera que quizás son sus más famosas, «Caja de muerto» y «Querido amigo». «Caja de muerto» es una canción muy rencorosa e interesante de Saúl Viera. Me encanta el odio que Saúl expresa en su voz. La Que Buena no hace ningún intento de censurar la palabra «pinche» cuando la canta Saúl y me causa risa.

«Querido amigo» es mi canción favorita del Gavilancillo. Me gusta la armonía entre las voces del Gavilancillo y del Rojo de Sinaloa. Es un buen cambio de los corridos que el Gavilancillo solía cantar. Una canción lenta y melódica con un mensaje de fraternidad.

Sintoniza a la Qué Buena hoy y escucha las canciones del Gavilancillo. Espero que la Qué Buena honre a uno de sus «inmortales». Ya que estoy en Boston, lejos de radiodifusoras de música mexicana y donde la mayoría de los mexicanos en la universidad no tienen idea de quienes fueron Chalino o Saúl Viera, tocaré la música de Saúl Viera a alto volumen todo el día desde mis bocinas y audífonos.

Unfinished portion of Chavez Park, Phase II, taken Sep. 2008

For as long as I can remember, South Gate has had a bike path along Southern Ave. It begins near Alameda, passes South Gate Park and reaches the Los Angeles River bike path via an entrance at Tweedy & Burtis, at the edge of abandoned industrial lots. As you can tell by the pictures, the bike path runs under the DWP’s transmission towers and often intersects residential streets far from the corner, creating a hazard whenever bicyclist and driver fail to look for oncoming travelers. LACMTA classifies it as a Class I bike path [pdf] until it reaches South Gate Park, at which point there are bike lanes on both sides of Southern.

View Larger Map

That being said, I still cyclists riding on the sidewalk on the other side of the street or bicyclists on the street itself, though the bike path is just across the street. What gets into people’s heads to ride so unsafely when they have the option the ride safely, separate from cars, across the three-lane street? It’s bothered me every time I’ve seen it, both as a pedestrian and a driver. I’m not disturbed that asshole cyclists shut down the street (they don’t), it’s that riders do not take advantage of the opportunity to ride safely. Children’s races along the bike path are a welcome common sight, but I’d like to see more of the cyclists going in South Gate on the bike path. More (including images) after the jump.

As a kid, I rode on the bike path often, sometimes racing friends from one end of the block to the other. It’s a great bike path and it would be a better path to walk along if something was done about the weed-filled lots surrounding the bike path. I’ve always considered the DWP right of way along Southern a prime area to create a sort of Emerald Necklace through the middle of South Gate. South Gate & Hollydale parks are the only large parks in South Gate, each on separate sides of the L.A. River. Stanford Ave. & State St. parks are small lots of land, the former having a few slides, the latter being little more than a field on the northeast corner of State & Southern.

Playground at Chavez Park Phase I, taken Sep. 2008.

Around ten years ago, a portion of the DWP right-of-way was converted into Cesar Chavez Park, with slides, picnic areas, and shade at Southern & Santa Fe, a part of South Gate lacking in green space and far from South Gate Park. Stanford Ave. Park is two blocks south of Chavez Park, but it doesn’t provide the large space for a soccer game or a good water balloon fight.

The surrounding environment, Long Beach & Southern. Taken Sep. 2008.

Chavez Park may not have many trees, but it’s a good example of turning an existing empty lot of dirt & rocks into a green space that the community around enjoys. Sometime last year, South Gate finished Phase II of the Cesar Chavez Park project and turned the empty land along between Long Beach & State into a chain of parks. They are much better than the barren land I biked along when I was younger and they’re perfect small parks for the communities around Southern Ave.

The future for South Gate. Doesn't that look better than barren land?

The bike lane provides an opportunity for the city to improve the quality of life of its citizens (and possibly real estate values) by taking the completing the chain of parks. Currently, the General Plan of the city of South Gate is in the process of being updated and the park along Southern is one of the proposals for the new General Plan. To read the draft of the General Plan, click here [pdf]. You can also read the Parks and Recreation Master Plan here [pdf]. And please, instead of calling it Cesar Chavez Park, can we call it Southern Park? Not everything has to be named after Cesar Chavez.

I took all the photographs used in this post. Crossposted over at L.A. Eastside.

If you want to see how the barren lots look now & how Phase II looked during construction, mess around with the Google Street View.

With my return from Harvard, I decided that it was a good time for me to sell many of my books online. At the same time, my older brother came to the same conclusion, but found himself without the time to sell and ship books himself. I am our bookseller. Right now, we’re selling around sixty books and might put more on sale later, once I’ve read some of them or he decides to part ways with more books. Before returning, I sold some books to used bookstores in Cambridge and I was able to sell only three books for very measly prices. I checked the prices of those books on Amazon a few weeks back. I lost out on over forty dollars profit because I was shortsighted.

Selling books online has become my source of income in the past month. They’ve been on Amazon for two weeks and three books have already sold. I’ve had good luck with my deliveries. So far, no packages of mine have been lost or delayed by the USPS. I did some research and found that all my packages leave Los Angeles through the Los Angeles Bulk Mail Center (BMC) in Bell. Further research led to discovering the L.A. BMC’s bad reputation for delaying packages, sending packages the wrong direction, and losing them completely. I worry about lost packages because I don’t want to lose any single cent of the profit. Book selling is a minimal source of income right now and pretty fun. I enjoy the walks to and from the post office. It’s a very good and relaxing exercise.

With each order placed, I’ve checked out where the book is headed (It’s my own way to see if it’s going to be in good hands). The books have gone far in the U.S.: lower Louisiana, North Carolina, and my latest shipment is headed towards some office park in rural southern Ohio. The most recent book is Chicana Falsa. I was apprehensive about selling the books online because of the security risks involved with my accounts, but it was a risk I willingly took.

NOTE: As expected, my stats have increased since Monday. This is sweet. I’m now averaging fifty visits each day.