MUSIC

Two-Steppin Tucson’s Musical Roots

August 6, 2012 | Monica Surfaro Spigelman

Tradition & Tejaño, Folk & Fest

It’s the time of year when the charm and depth of Tucson’s musical diversity is most magically apparent. Clubs resonate with norteño accordions or fast picking fiddles. There are train whistles and steel drum, two-step rhythms of relaxed waila or frenetic cumbia, mariachi harmonies of violins and trumpets. Suffice to say that Tucson is home to one of the longest and most eclectic musical tables in the West.

Some say that Tucson’s multicultural party is tied to a larger trend of incorporating traditional themes and instrumentation in indie music. For example, there’s Beirut, who worked with The Jimenez Band for March of the Zapotec. And of course there’s Calexico, with its tejaño-norteño influences.

Perhaps Tucson is just part of this bigger picture. But so many believe that the way Tucson borrows on and interprets its multicultural roots for music is miles above the rest.

Traditionally Yours

Tucson is a huge small market with a self-perpetuating cultural music scene that takes pride in what it is, looking to its roots for inspiration and new sounds, says Susan Holden, whose husband was one of the fathers of Tucson cultural music. Jonathan Holden, who died earlier this year, helped start KXCI community radio in 1970s and later founded Rhythm & Roots Concert Series in the mid 1990s. Susan and a team of volunteers continue “music as medicine,” the Rhythm & Roots mission. “Jonathan would say that music was like an electrical current that moves seamlessly throughout the world,” she says. “What starts in the cultural bones of one place, like Tucson, adds its unique sounds to a global energy source that influences everything.”

Tucson’s unique musical current takes its charge from sources that are inspired by our borderland culture, founded in local Native American social music and spiced up by American West alternative country. What is so musically alluring is how this city just mixes it all up.

Pete Rodriquez, DJ and owner of Five Star Productions, sees how cultural music blends with Hip Hop and R&B as he travels around Southern Arizona for quinceañeras and other community events.

“You can see that a lot of the music from O’odham and Yaqui groups is influenced by sounds from Sonora and Texas,” says Rodriquez, who also is Yaqui. “For example, Selena tunes often are remade into Chicken Scratch by Tohono O’odham bands, or rancheras are remade into Yaqui language songs,” he notes.

Musical influences cross folklore and culture, melding international rhythm and instruments and modernizing sound with techno and pop. The bottom line is that everyone participates: kids to middle-aged or elder – it doesn’t matter. Tucson turns out to take in diversified music, with everyone dressed in their unique fabulousness to just have fun. DJ Rodiquez highlights cumbia as a popular style and tempo which always packs the dance floors. “Ask a band to play “Mi Yaquicita” and watch the dance floors rock,” he says.

Two-Step Salute

One regional social dance demonstrating a most widespread and diverse influence is waila. In this music also known as chicken scratch, Tohono O’odham traditions and people give life to an extraordinary range of local music.

Waila’s altered variant of polka crosses genres in melodies passed on from generation to generation since the 19th century. Waila-style two-step is rooted in the music of German immigrants who came to Tucson to help build railroad. It blends imported continental European polka with Spanish-influenced norteño and other border sounds. In the old-style waila, bands only used fiddles and stringed instruments. Accordions and saxophones were added mid-1900s. Contemporary bands now use more rocking amplified sound with electric guitar, bass and drums.

Rock the Root

Around town, stand-out bands are rocking the local scene with their culturally-inspired popular music. Rodriquez, who knows the trends as a mobile DJ, points to Gertie and the T.O. Boys as a popular waila band. Gertie has performed at Tucson Meet Yourself, the Tucson Festival of Books and around Tucson.

For tejaño lovers, there are other top performers who headline regularly at the local casinos and clubs like Blue Moon on South 4th. One, Los Gallegos, is a group of brothers who create borderland dance-floor energy. They have regularly have scheduled sets at the Desert Diamond Casino’s Monsoon Night Club. Their last studio album, titled “Viejas Canciones,” translates as “Old Songs,” (which is a tribute to the way many groups first learn their music, according to Rodriquez).

Los Hermanos Quatro of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe is prominent in the Arizona Yaqui community, he continues. Another band playing music together in South Tucson for almost 14 years is La Nueva Onda.

One more local favorite, according to Rhythm & Roots’ Holden, is Carnivaleros, a band “almost norteño in a white-guy kind of way,” she says. For about a decade this group has combined back-porch BBQ-style music with mariachi, polka, Tex-Mex as well as blues. Many of its songs spin stories of local folklore (like the song, “Black Cloud Over Oracle,” inspired by the 2010 sheriff-inspired uproar at the Glow Festival) and use traditional instrumentation like the kazoo and triangle.

Singing Sonora

Underneath all the local accents are themes related to the desert and the region’s environment. Guitarist Gabriel Ayala, the current Native American Awards “Artist of the Year” who’s also a member of the Yaqui Nation, knows that the desert and cultural roots help shape his compositions. Although he performs globally, Ayala lives and composes in Tucson, where song is an important expression in both Yaqui religious ceremony and social dance. Ayala often composes outside, say, in a monsoon, and allows his musical composition to come from the place where heart meets mind and nature. “When I compose I sing the melody first,” he explains. “The desert can inspire my work.”

Dr. Jim Griffith, Southern Arizona’s cultural curator and founder of Tucson Meet Yourself, says the musical identity in our region is a richly complex picture, much of being played out at parties, processions and ceremonies. From Dr. Griffith’s book, Southern Arizona Folk Arts: “What is really going on is a kind of ethnic service left over from the days when the communities were much smaller and self contained, and when entertainment, when it happened, was usually provided by friends, neighbors or family members.”

As musicians continue to use traditional elements that reaffirm a connection to roots, fans of local sounds have plenty to celebrate this fall. Leading the pack and pulling together the biggest and most unique assortment of all that’s ethnic is Tucson Meet Yourself, the free folk-life festival scheduled October 12-14.

In addition, Tucsonans wanting to learn more about the history and the variety of waila styles should visit Himdag Ki:, the Tohono O’odham Nation’s Cultural Center and Museum located in Topawa, just south of Sells. The “Tohono Kaidalig: Tohono O’odham Piast Ñe’ñei” exhibit opens this month, featuring a rich selection of historical waila photos and multi-media. The exhibition is accompanied by a re-creation of old-time waila stage as well as instrument displays and recordings. There’s an opening reception on September 13 with traditional foods and live waila performances. The Cultural Center and Museum also will bring together local musicians in a waila series to be scheduled in conjunction with the exhibit, which will run for about six months.

If all this isn’t enough, there are small clubs around town featuring performers rooted in the city’s abundant cultural diversity.

Tucson is still that collection of small communities which blends roots in many ways to create great music. In the end, it all means the same: Tucson’s traditions totally rock. Go out and enjoy them this season.

photo, top: Randy Miramontez / Shutterstock.com. photo, bottom: Gabriel Ayala, Native American Artist of the Year

That’s Some Bossa Country!

July 7, 2011 | Lee Gutowski

Louie Levinson
photo: Jamie Manser

Louie Levinson, the guitar and pedal steel player in Tucson country band Cochise County All-Stars, “grew up behind my dad’s bar in Tombstone. And all the music I love the most came from the jukebox at that bar, the Corral,” he says. That jukebox was stocked with straight old country and western tunes and, of course, popular Latin sounds and Mexican dance music.

“I remember secretly listening to the record ‘Jazz Samba Encore’ by Stan Getz when I was like nine. My dad would play it all the time, but I listened to it when I was at home alone – I guess I was embarrassed to like ‘old people’ music,” he laughs. Eventually, the kid who grew up running around in a Tombstone saloon brought the influence of that jukebox with him to Chicago, and finally back to his southwestern Arizona stomping grounds.

Levinson picked up the guitar while he was a student at Cochise College. “My roommate had one and taught me a few chords,” he recalls. “But it was all about messing around, having fun.” He adds, self-deprecatingly, “I didn’t play my first professional gig ‘til I was in my 30s!” By that time, Levinson had moved to Chicago to work in the steel business.

“Little known fact: I was actually a weekend sportscaster on Channel 13 (in Tucson) when I was fresh out of college,” he smiles. “But when they weren’t giving me a full-time anchor position there, I decided to leave.” He’d met a Chicago girl whose father was in the steel business and promised him a job. For the next 24 years, Levinson lived in Chicago, sold steel, and played steel – guitar, that is, as well as “regular” guitar. His specialties, of course, are his favorite types of music – “honky-tonk country and Latin jazz-influenced stuff.”

The spirit of that old barroom jukebox in Tombstone fueled Louie’s playing all the way to Chicago. There he started Mestizo, a Brazilian jazz-oriented band. (It was with Mestizo that he had his first professional shows.) Meantime, Levinson worked his pedal steel chops in a handful of Chicago country outfits, including local favorites the Peterbilts and Whisky Tit.

As happens to natives from this area, Levinson felt the pull and returned to Tucson ten years ago. “I love Tucson. There are so many great musicians here that I’ve gotten to play with regularly,” he says. Among them was author, music writer, editor, and bass player extraordinaire Ed Friedland, who played with Levinson in Big in Vegas. In Friedland’s website bio, he recalls his days in Tucson, playing with Big in Vegas: “I enjoyed that more than all the ultra-hip jazz I used to think was the shit.”

Cochise County All-Stars feature two Tombstoners (Levinson on pedal steel and vocals, and drummer Pete Torberg) and Willcox native Sabra Faulk, a double-threat on vocals and bass. Rounding out the group is Mississippi bluesman Gene Holmes on guitar. Louie’s other musical mistress is the Latin-rooted Bossa Rhythm Project, with Levinson bringing the guitars, “Uncle” Dave Jeffrey on drums, Jack Wood on bass and Robert Moreno on a myriad of percussion instruments. “We play some songs from Jazz Samba Encore. After all, it’s my desert island record.”

You can catch Louie playing around town all summer with either of his bands, or keep your eyes peeled for his duo with Gene Holmes. Some dates for your calendar: Bossa Rhythm Project, Tue, July 5 at the SkyBar and Sun, July 17 at 17th Street Market; Cochise County All-Stars, Sun, July 24, at Music on the Mountain (Summerhaven) and Sat, Aug 13, at 2nd Saturdays Downtown.

Tesoro: Live in Studio 2A

July 2, 2011 | Jamie Manser

TesoroCover web Resistance is futile, the songs are too bewitching. The album, recorded at KXCI 91.3FM, consists of gorgeous notes adroitly composed and negotiated, sauntering from the enticing seduction of flamenco to jazz sensibilities. Tesoro calls it Flamenco Fusion. I dig that they fused in Tool’s “Forty-Six & 2” along with saluting Paco de Lucia, Chris Burton Jácome and Tito Puente.

It’s been over five years since Tesoro issued a disc, and the party takes place on July 9 from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. at Sullivan’s Steakhouse & Bar, 1785 E. River Rd. Other summer dates include: July 13, 29, 30 at Casa Vicente, 340 S. Stone Ave.; July 22, August 20, 26 at Hacienda del Sol, 5601 N. Hacienda del Sol Rd.; August 27 at La Encantada, 2905 E. Skyline Dr.

TesoroTucson.com has all of the details.

The Power of Music

July 1, 2011 | Jamie Manser

Pioneering Discoveries in the New Science of Song
by Elena Mannes
Walker Publishing Company (2011), 288 pages

Science will not embrace visceral knowledge without evidence to back it. What humans, and our species’ ancestors, have innately known about the importance of music for hundreds of thousands of years is now being proven through modern science. Namely, that music and/or sound are fundamental aspects of individuals, societies, creatures on this planet, Earth, other planets and the universe as a whole.

In Elena Mannes’ new book, which grew out of her 2009 PBS documentary “The Music Instinct: Science & Song,” she covers biochemistry, neuroscience, physics, anthropology, ancient history, the cosmos and countless experiments that point to the fact that music, basically, rocks hard core.

Heady at times, as music theory and science are, the book is still accessible to the layman, but having a science and music background certainly helps. The coolest elements in this read are the numerous factoids that should convince anyone of music’s potency. Only four percent of the human population won’t get it, those individuals who are amusic and lack normal pitch perception. Speaking of pitch, it turns out that the auditory cortex is laid out in pitch order!

With the technological advances in medical science, researchers have conducted experiments that map brain activity when subjects are listening to and playing music. “There are so many different brain areas involved,” Mannes writes, “that one can say we have a veritable ‘brain orchestra’ going on inside our heads when we are involved with music.”

Beyond just hearing music, there is also the physicality of sound vibrations. The process of hearing involves the energy of sound waves moving through the air, into our ears, through our eardrums with cellular activity telling the brain what frequencies are coming through. Because sound is vibration, this doesn’t limit it to the hearing. Deaf people can also experience music, albeit differently, but all of us consume it bodily.

Our relationship with sound starts in utero. Studies have found that fetuses begin their auditory education in the third trimester. Because of this, newborns have experienced the cadence of their parents’ language pre-birth. In turn, it affects the way they cry. The wails of a baby have musical intervals, which are different depending on their parents’ language: “French infants have more rising melody contours than English and Japanese infants.”

The process of learning to play music and sing builds more brain matter and neural pathways, making the brain of a musician physically different from that of a non-musician – and markedly so in people who learned at a young age. However, the beauty of the brain’s plasticity means that adults still have the ability to “develop new neural networks to process music.”

Listening to music also targets the brain’s pleasure zone. I call it the musicgasm, science links it to the neurochemicals released during those Oh My God parts of a song. Hence the saying – sex, drugs and rock & roll.

The beauty of music is that it doesn’t have the same consequences of sex and drugs; it is good medicine, if you will. It helps with depression, eases physical pain, creates joy and brings people together. We all know this. It’s nice that science is finally catching up to prove it.

More information on Elena Mannes is at MannesProductions.com.

Metal Rhythms & Spanish Beats

December 1, 2010 | Jamie Manser

Domingo DeGrazia

Domingo DeGrazia is buttoned down at this lunch interview, but the visual belies a multifaceted character that cannot be defined by shirt-and-tie attire.

Attorney by day, Spanish guitarist by night, DeGrazia is a man with passions of robust depth and breadth which translate to his performances. Live shows are utterly captivating – gorgeous notes by his band of adept musicians fly deftly about. DeGrazia’s style culls from many eclectic genres, Spanish and Latin are obvious, but he says a lot of his rhythmic styles come from “straight metal.”

As a teenager, “the first songs we tried to play as a band were off the (1991 Sepultura) Arise album,” DeGrazia said. “It is crazy how much in common flamenco and metal really do kind of have…common movements from chord to chord and common rhythmic structures, if you can isolate the bare parts.

“There have been a couple of (flamenco) guys that did some of that. Rodrigo y Gabriela did some Metallica covers and played with Alex Skolnick from Testament and it comes off pretty well. You wouldn’t be able to tell much difference in the soloing if they played metal on nylon flamenco guitars because it’s all the same kind of key structure.”

As country and punk are not mutually exclusive, nor is Pink Floyd and bluegrass (see Pickin’ on Pink Floyd: Bluegrass Tribute), Domingo was a teenager into metal while also being attracted to world beats. Raised in Tucson, DeGrazia was influenced by the town’s Hispanic music, Native American bands and from attending tribal celebrations.

“I was inclined to listen to it and like it but I couldn’t play guitar well enough to actually make those ideas come to life. So, it wasn’t until late teens into early-mid twenties that I actually developed tools to be able to play and get the ideas out. And even now, there are still more ideas, but I’m technically limited, I can’t get all the sparkles of imagination out. But it’s coming. It’s easier now.”

I’m guessing he is comparing himself to classically trained, Spanish guitar professionals because he is a damn fine guitarist. Self-taught, Domingo said he had three lessons with a brilliant musician, but wasn’t interested in being “a technician that was proper and stuffy. Rather than being a master technician, I’d rather be somewhat of a hack that can play a decent song.”

Play decent songs he does. The man was a runner-up in 2010’s Tucson Weekly Tucson Area Music Awards (TAMMIES) best guitarist category.

“That was something I did not expect. I didn’t know that anyone was listening.”

Here’s hoping the Grammy commission has its ears perked: two of DeGrazia’s albums are in the initial consideration round in four categories.

Since 2003, Domingo has released four full lengths and a DVD; one solo album, two of the disks and the DVD include his full band with The Bluest Sky mainly featuring Domingo’s guitar and Beth Daunis’ violin.

Currently, Domingo is working on another Spanish guitar album (Nuanced) as well as a Christmas album – which will have traditional and standards, and if, he says, “I can make it work, some new stuff.”

I’ll bet he can make it work. In his 36 years, the man has packed a punch. Before he was 20, Domingo had both his pilot and helicopter licenses. It makes sense that he subsequently earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Now a juvenile defense/family law practitioner, DeGrazia says that his life has been “a cool kind of meandering journey. I got lucky a lot; I was in the right place at the right time, had some good opportunities and worked really hard.”

What drives this insatiable student of life?

“When I was young several people in my immediate family died including a brother and my Dad. I have a strong sense that life is fleeting and I’m trying to pack in as much as I can before time or old age make me useless. I know it’s not the safest way to live, but I’ve got some cool stories.”

Check out music samples, and more info on upcoming performances, at DeGraziaMusic.com.

Kevin Pakulis Band: “Shadesville”

November 1, 2010 | Eric Johns

Kevin Pakulis “Shadesville”

I’ve learned a simple way to determine if I’ll have a long-term relationship with a new album. On first listen, is there at least one cut I must immediately experience again?

Kevin Pakulis’ recent release Shadesville got me to listen twice, and two more times. This tasty 10-cut disc features Pakulis’ ripping guitar work, with organ and piano virtuosity by Duncan Stitt and rhythm from bassist Larry Lee Lerma and Ralph Gilmore on percussion.

The first cut that hooked me was Dying By The Moment. It is great instrumentally and lyrically with one fabulous line after the other about a time in two peoples’ lives when living was edgy and thumbing rides to places like Shadesville was rote. Top cut of the last several months for me! I can relate to it, remembering being broke, broke down and having fun despite being utterly irresponsible and lost in the great West.

The music here, as is true for Pakulis’ 2004 release Yeah Yeah Yeah and Mockingbird Radio in 2007, reaches into and utilizes genre after genre. From a quirky and fast rocker about everything flying off the handle (Outa Hand) to a beautiful country ballad about the sacred nature of the grave of a dearly departed (Uncle Harlan) and on to a slammin’ honky-tonk number Heavy Load – there isn’t a weak track on the album.

Check out KevinPakulis.com to follow the band and its shows.

The Swigs: “Let it Come Down”

April 10, 2010 | Al Perry

photo: FotoVitamina (Salonia/Yates)

Longtime followers of the local scene may remember guitarist Kevin Henderson from his days in What Went Wrong. He’s been kicking around town (and California) for years. With this CD, it all comes together for him and his band – a great rock band in their prime. It seems like Kevin might have listened to a lot of Led Zeppelin in his life, though he only took the good parts – like Jimmy Page’s guitar style. His guitar work holds its own with anyone you care to mention, incorporating folk-based melodies (almost like fiddle tunes), Middle Eastern scales, and good ol’ fashioned blues rock into his solos. Two of the nine tracks are instrumentals, and there is an overall very high ratio of music to vocals.

It really does hearken back to those old hard rock albums, but it is far more interesting than most of that stuff. Definitely guitar bliss, from the first note to the last. Ploughed In the Stars is a good example. It’s a showpiece for some breathtaking fretwork, starting with a few minutes of instrumental magic, before giving way to his re-write of the old cowboy song, Rye Whiskey. He employs acoustic guitars to great effect on Everybody’s Saying.

The rhythm section of this power trio is exemplary; in particular the Bonham-esque drums of Blake Bybke. Dorian Cacavas even wrote lyrics on two of the songs.

Recorded at Loveland, mastered by Dave Shirk, this is 5 stars all the way. From the evidence on this disc, the genre of guitar hero hard rock is hardly played out. The planets have lined up. The Swigs have arrived, and that’s a great thing.

Tunes online at myspace.com/theswigs; The Swigs play at Grill’s Red Room April 8 and at The Hut May 28.

Leila Lopez “Fault Lines”

March 1, 2010 | Jamie Manser

Leila Lopez Photo: Michael Longstaff

A 28-year-old talented powerhouse, the lovely Leila Lopez is known for writing gorgeous albums and does it again with Fault Lines. It’s a low key record, sad and reflective yet lovingly open-minded and hopeful; scribed by an old soul with Zen maturity.

“(Its) definitely love and a lot of sadness, but the kind of sadness that really opens me up and forces me to become more conscious of others and myself,” Lopez explained.

Her lyrics are inspirational, touching and wise; these are tunes that deserve attentive listening. Between Lopez’s dexterous playing and vocals, it’s easy to get pulled into the songs’ stories.

Lopez describes herself as more of an observer than an extrovert, someone who processes things internally and finds release in writing songs.

The musician’s disk is a precious gift, tilled and harvested over time. A couple of the tracks were on her 2003 All Songs, the rest of the songs, “and the ideas for a lot of them have been spread out over so many years,” Lopez said.

The multi-instrumentalist self-recorded and produced the album in her home and plays guitar, bass, cello, harmonica, banjo and drums on it with contributions from Paul Nosa (drums), Brian Green (bass), Christabelle Merrill (violin) and Courtney Robbins (guitar).

Lopez’s live band includes Green and Merrill with Bruce Halper (drums), and occasionally Robbins.

Visit LeilaLopezSongs.com for a sampling of her sound. The free, all-ages CD release show takes places at Solar Culture, 31 E. Toole Ave., March 27, 7 p.m.

Stefan George “Cloth”

February 10, 2010 | Jamie Manser

Photo: courtesy MJStringer Photography

“It’s pretty dark, but that’s the way it is sometimes,” Stefan scribed in a note that came with the CD.

Sure enough, it opens with the folky, stark-realities-are-depressing Bad Year for Clowns.

Though there are lyrical themes of a tough life throughout the 16 tracks, the bulk of the tunes are upbeat and catchy. And since its Stefan George, of course there is magnificent blues guitar playing on each track – six of them are just him singing and rocking his axe.

On the other nine tracks, local rock stars contribute their talents (hi – Lavinia White, Rosano Brothers, Jimmy Carr, Craig Schumacher, Bobby Kimmel, Tom Rhodes, Kevin Schramm, Brendan Dance, William Dan Carlos).

I deeply love more than half the tracks on this album and I also deeply love it when Stefan’s voice gets all Tom Waits gravelly-like.

I’m partial to the more upbeat stuff, so with that in mind, the highlights include: Pissin’ at the Moon – a nice ditty with playful horns by the Crawdaddy-O kids; Lucky 13 – songs about bad-ass sinners are always cool, includes tasty harp by Schumacher. Grooved and Rutted – drunk, bluesy, more sinner fun! Crazy One-Eyed Moon, God Damn the Things A Man Can’t Change (yowza!), God Protect Our Hope and Bier Ohne Liebe.

This one goes in heavy rotation! Pick it up for yourself at the CD release party on Saturday, February 20 at Plush. It is also available at 17^th Street Market, Folk Shop and CDBaby.com.