With the release this week of Mariachi El Bronx\u2019s new album, though, at last, the tense has changed from past to present. As the fire and fury of The gives way to grace and melody of El, for first time in far too long, listeners can once again marvel at the unique suppleness of this split personality. That one group can so fluently bridge the distance between punk and mariachi is without precedent in rock\u2019n\u2019roll. It\u2019s as remarkable as discovering that Megadeth are also the Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not in the business of tooting my own horn [but] I am very proud of what we\u2019ve accomplished here,\u201d Matt says. \u201cI do think that going from The Bronx to El Bronx\u2026 is something really special and unique. I think it\u2019s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a cold evening in January, Matt Caughthran beams in from the home in Los Angeles he shares with his wife. As morning sunlight casts its smile through the windowpanes of a room housing a library of records, the singer mitigates the brightness in his eyes with the aid of a black LA Dodgers cap. Two months earlier, up in Canada, an 11th inning rally against the Toronto Blue Jays in the final game of the World Series saw Matt\u2019s beloved team secure their second title in as many years. For a city that has of late endured more than its share of misfortune, the win was much welcome.<\/p>\n
As the group were recording their new album, up and across LA\u2019s vast terrain, Angelinos were being burned out of their homes by wildfires. Barely six months later, on the orders of President Trump, thousands of National Guardsmen were dispatched to the city to quell unrest in the wake of raids on undocumented citizens. As it so happens, no small number of this constituency come from Mexico, the country that in the 18th century first created mariachi music.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t be a white mariachi [band], specifically, and not stand in solidarity with the Hispanic community and what\u2019s going on right now,\u201d Matt says. \u201cFor me personally, what\u2019s happening in the country with regards to the immigration crackdown and people getting pulled out of their jobs and pulled out of their cars and pulled out of their communities, it\u2019s wrong, man. It\u2019s disgusting. It pisses me off.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the release this week of Mariachi El Bronx\u2019s new album, though, at last, the tense has changed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-131297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-the-bronx","13":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","14":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}