HERNANDEZ: It is that Afro-Caribbean connection that's been there for hundreds of years mixed in with a little bit of the Espanol and first nations. MERAJI: Hernandez says that rhythm is the beating heart of son jarocho. MERAJI: Alexandro Hernandez is an ethnomusicologist at UCLA and a musician, too. "La Bamba" is a son jarocho song.ĪLEXANDRO HERNANDEZ: This strum to "La Bamba." (Playing guitar). Out of that mashup, a musical style was born called son jarocho. And because cultural fusion has long been a means of survival, African, Indigenous and Spanish traditions got mashed up. MERAJI: Enslaved Africans were brought a few hundred years ago to Veracruz, Mexico. And that landed on the shores of Veracruz. Valdez still doesn't know the exact meaning of the song's title, but he did lots of research for the film and thinks it's a reference to umbamba (ph) from Africa. MERAJI: Luis Valdez wrote and directed the 1987 film "La Bamba" about the life and death of Ritchie Valens. LUIS VALDEZ: If there's any one song that represents the Americas, it is this one song, "La Bamba." It was popularized during the golden age of Mexican cinema, around the 1940s. MERAJI: Story goes that a 17-year-old Mexican-American kid from the San Fernando Valley named Ritchie Valens probably heard this version of "La Bamba" growing up, sung by Andres Huesca. MERAJI: As right as "La Bamba" is for these times, it's got a long, long history.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDRES HUESCA SONG, "LA BAMBA") And when you hit a song and something like that happens, you know on a cellular level this is something that's right for right now. IRWIN: And he was dancing to a song that was multicultural by its very nature and sound and beat. We're the supreme race, but that is the supreme beat. NOAH: Even one of the Nazis can't help but dance along. In Charlottesville, they murdered that woman with a car. NOAH: A white supremacist gets up to give a speech, and he doesn't get punched. MERAJI: Trevor Noah saw a video of the rally online and talked about it on "The Daily Show."
TREVOR NOAH: The absolute best counterprotest I have ever seen. And it just occurred to me, I was like, let's try "La Bamba." (Singing) Da da da da La Bamba. And he starts talking about rounding up all you degenerate whores. IRWIN: There's this guy we call Angry Santa, a KKK guy - unabashed. He's a public defender in Knoxville and says they used that sound system to drown out the speakers on the other side of the street with music. MERAJI: Chris Irwin was one of the organizers. And the counterprotesters brought a sound system.ĬHRIS IRWIN: And it was a nice one. Last fall, in Shelbyville, Tenn., counterprotesters faced down neo-Nazis and white supremacists. SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI, BYLINE: Let's begin in the present or the not-too-distant past.
MY MENORAH LA BAMBA CODE
From our Code Switch team, Shereen Marisol Meraji has the story. And for our ongoing music series, we're going to explain why this Spanish-language song with Afro-Mexican roots is an enduring American anthem. That, of course, is "La Bamba." It was the very first song in Spanish to hit No.
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