Y La Bamba bandleader Luz Elena Mendoza talks about the making of their new EP, 'Entre Los Dos,’ and queering the mariachi suit
“I moved to Mexico because it was time,” writes Mendoza from Spain, where Y La Bamba is currently on tour. “Guadalajara [feels] like home more than ever. It feels similar to how I was raised; my parents come from Aguililla y Coalcomán, Michoacán, and [had] limited resources. “El rancho” as they say, with a deep soaring nostalgia that haunts our blood. I moved to Guadalajara because I feel there is healing that needs to be done, as well as a letting go.
Recorded in Portland’s Center for Sound, Light, and Color Therapy, as well as the Besitos Fritos Studio,is an unsparing work of sonic catharsis. In both English and Spanish, Mendoza illustrates the wilderness of her bicultural, neither-here-nor-there existence, as it manifests in both her intimate relationships and the world at large.
, with whom Y La Bamba has previously performed — Mendoza’s state of in-between has undoubtedly informed her musical style. Along with Ryan Oxford, her co-producer and guitarist-vocalist, Mendoza slingshots spindly guitar riffs in “Rios Sueltos” and “Los Gritos.” And amid the melodrama of the title track, in which Mendoza threatens to jump out of her window, her fluttering strums meet the distant chatter of birds.
, like Rigo Tovar y su Costa Azul,” she adds; “[And] norteñas, old corridos like the ones Las Jilguerillas used to sing.” As a tribute to the legendary regional-Mexican artists who soundtracked her upbringing, the artist finally acquired her own mariachi players’ suit; although cut for a conventionally masculine silhouette, Mendoza dons it proudly while promoting“The mariachi suit means so many things,” she says.
Yet for all that she’s processed about her life as a queer, Mexican American woman in the United States — where the Latinx community faces increasing hostility under the Trump administration — Mendoza is no Pollyanna about returning to her parents’ country. “I’m certainly aware of the patriarchy, classism, racism and what is considered matriarchal within different regions,” she notes.
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