cactusmusictx.com<\/a><\/p>\nLa\u00a0Rotta usually calls his designer pals to create eye-catching flyers for his Latino American Popular Music course over at UH. Right on Time Design came up with this semester\u2019s bold-and-brown flyer, bordered (we see what you did there!) with head shots of such past and present Latino stars as Ritchie Valens, Bad Bunny, and Selena.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI will literally post those up on campus, and the university posts it on their social media,\u201d says the Houston-born-and-bred La\u00a0Rotta, 44, on a video call from a dance-studio parking lot. (His daughters had a class.) \u201cI post it on my social media, just as a way to spread the word. \u2029And it’s worked, you know. I have a full class.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a tradition La Rotta began when he was at Columbia University, doing postdoctoral research and teaching a class on BIPOC rock-and-roll history, in the late 2010s.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to entice students, and I wanted to advertise it,\u201d he says. \u201cI mean, I want students to take the class, and the university doesn’t necessarily always advertise the class \u2013 especially if it’s an upper-division elective. It just kind of depends on how that word is spread. So, I just like to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though Hispanic Heritage Month wraps up on Oct. 15, La\u00a0Rotta still has a busy, free-to-the-public schedule of Latino-centric events ahead of him. On Thursday, he will host a 50th anniversary screening at MATCH of \u201cChulas Fronteras,\u201d Les Blank\u2019s 1976 documentary on the stars of norte\u00f1o\/conjunto music and the Mexican-American migrant workers along the Texas-Mexico border who enjoy it. (He\u2019ll also moderate a post-screening panel afterwards.)<\/p>\n
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On Oct. 18, he\u2019ll play a Latin jazz set at the Menil Collection\u2019s \u201cSounds to Live By\u201d outdoor listening event. And, in November, he\u2019ll once again bring DJ\/Chicano soul historian Ruben Molina to the record shelves of Cactus Music, for a discussion\/signing of his latest book \u201cThe Dreamy Side: Rhythm & Blues and Chicano Culture in 1950s Los Angeles.\u201d Later that night, La Rotta and Molina will play some Chicano soul at the Heights bar Johnny\u2019s Gold Brick.<\/p>\n
La Rotta is also angling to be a chronicler of Chicano music \u2013 particularly from Texas. Next April, University of Texas Press will release his first book \u201cThe West Side Sound: San Antonio and the Birth of Chicano Rock & Roll.\u201d An on-again\/off-again project he started way back in 2012, when he was a grad student at Texas State University, \u201cSound\u201d will be an oral history on San Antonio\u2019s Chicano rock scene, assembled from interviews he did with Tejano and Chicano artists from his myriad bus trips to the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve picked it up and dropped it over the years, just because of going to get my PhD at U of H, but I pursued this topic as my dissertation topic at U of H,\u201d he says. \u201cI mean, the topic of Latinos and rock and roll, of the Chicano rock and roll phenomenon, has been covered, but sparsely. And, usually, it’s focused on the West Coast\u2026 So, this is a way to think about that story of rock and roll histories and put a spotlight on this new history of rock and roll, told from the perspective of the Spanish-speaking borderlands. \u2029And San Antonio is really an epicenter for this entire culture of music, of history, of Mexican Americans creating rock and roll music.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a music enthusiast with Colombian roots, La Rotta makes it his mission to inform people, whether it\u2019s those who attend his events or his very own students, of all the contributions Latinos of every shade have made to American music. And he\u2019s always open to bringing fellow scholars and music heads in on the discussion. Recently, he had Texas writer\/music historian Joe Nick Patoski join his Latino American Popular Music class via Zoom to talk about Texas tejano queen Selena, the subject of Patoski\u2019s essential 1996 biography \u201cSelena: Como La Flor.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s safe to say that La Rotta lives, breathes, and teaches Latino American music. \u201cI don’t know that I am an expert on any of these topics,\u201d he says, \u201cBut I do have what has been, I think, a lifelong interest in music and music culture that I’ve been able to hold on to and has carried me through grad school, DJing, record collecting, and writing. I care about it extensively, and I have been able to have an ear that is evolving, and I want to expand my taste and knowledge and my understanding of the histories\u2026 I hope and aspire to learn more and to be more inclusive in the way that I present those histories, and to also do this in a collaborative fashion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd,\u201d he continues, \u201cif I have any talent at all, it’s just being able to organize these things and put them out to the public.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"University of Houston and Houston City College music historian Alex La Rotta Courtesy Alex La Rotta Archie Bell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-457081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}