Bandwidth: Aquí están Los Cenzontles
on May 11, 2012
Meet Los Cenzontles, a Mexican folk band and musical academy based in San Pablo, California. To say that this group’s sound is eclectic would be an understatement. Their sound ranges from Tejano music to classic rock to re-imaginings of traditional Mexican musical genres such as the boleros, corridos, rancheras and the Son Jarocho.
The core members of the group also operate the Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center, a music school with more than 250 students, in addition to their recording and performance commitments. The group has produced 19 albums in less than two decades, while touring throughout the US, Europe and Latin America.
Their songs’ subject matter also runs the gamut from love to loneliness, to pride in their Mexican American roots and to politics, often abandoning subtlety and surprising their audiences with lyrics that convey indignation for what they consider to be draconian immigration laws.
If you want to catch the group live, they’ll be playing at Temescal Street Fair in Oakland on July 8. To learn more about Los Cenzontles, click here.
You can check out past issues of our new Bandwidth series on Oakland and Richmond musicians here.
Do you have a suggestion for an Oakland or Richmond-based band that we should profile as part of the Bandwidth series? Send suggestions for Oakland-based bands to staff@oaklandnorth.net and for Richmond-based bands to news@richmondconfidential.org.
Oakland North welcomes comments from our readers, but we ask users to keep all discussion civil and on-topic. Comments post automatically without review from our staff, but we reserve the right to delete material that is libelous, a personal attack, or spam. We request that commenters consistently use the same login name. Comments from the same user posted under multiple aliases may be deleted. Oakland North assumes no liability for comments posted to the site and no endorsement is implied; commenters are solely responsible for their own content.
Oakland North
Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.
