Chicano Batman: L.A. Band Is Taking Cues from All Over the Musical Map

Photo by Itzel Alejandra Martinez

By Aly Comingore, Santa Barbara Independent

Take a walk through East L.A., and you’ll witness firsthand what gentrification looks like. For decades, these predominantly Latino neighborhoods were considered unsafe, run-down, etc. But increasingly high rents on the city’s more “posh” Westside eventually started driving people out, or rather, eastbound to more affordable housing and commercial real estate. Nowadays, the Eastside is home to much of the city’s creative capital, with chic restaurants, shopping, movie houses, and grocers popping up by the day. Meanwhile, the city’s Latino population is either struggling to hang on or moving elsewhere — to places like South County, Orange County, and the Inland Empire. It’s a story that could be told and retold about some faction of every city in America, Santa Barbara included. It’s also the world in which Chicano Batman came to life.

Comprising friends Bardo Martínez (vocals/keyboard/guitar), Eduardo Arenas (bass), Gabriel Villa (percussion), and Carlos Arévalo (guitar), Chicano Batman is a band that skirts any easy pigeonholing, though not necessarily by design. Formed around Martínez’s onetime solo project of the same name, the group plays music that’s not only deeply rooted in soul and the blues but also mixed, mingled, and shaken up by each of the member’s cultural reference points. There are notes of tropicália and cumbia, as well as bossa nova, pop, and funk. The lyrics are written sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English, and often cross back and forth throughout the band’s live shows.

“I was really excited about playing this certain type of sound,” said Martínez as he recalled the band’s formation from the back of their tour van last week. “I wanted to get this sound that comes from late-’60s Latin American and Mexican soul music, where the bass and the drum sound are really tight. It’s almost like hip-hop in a sense, but it was coming from bands trying to imitate American soul music.”

With the rhythm and bass acting as foundation, Martínez and his mates started slowly piling on sounds, relying heavily on jamming and vibe to steer the process. On the band’s recently released sophomore album, Cycles of Existential Rhyme, Chicano Batman gravitates more toward heady guitar work, but the two-step melodies are ever present. “I’ve always listened to the same stuff,” laughs Martínez, “I have this playlist with a lot of random soul music, psychedelic stuff, but it all has that same type of vibe, from Little Saigon to Colombia.”

In many ways, Chicano Batman’s music is indicative of its locale — it’s fluid and complex, sort of like a sonic melting pot. “L.A. is kind of a microcosm of the world,” Martínez says of the band’s hometown. “From what I have noticed, it tends to be very materialistic. Everyone wears their persona on their shoulders, and a lot of times I feel like everyone is fronting. But I also think we’re maybe part of a new wave of folks who are trying not to be that way.”

In the coming months, Chicano Batman will premiere its first collaborative film score, written for a soon-to-be-released PBSproject. But Martínez also has his sights set on some bigger goals, including collaborations.

“We want to build bridges with everybody. I want to do a collaboration with Kendrick Lamar,” he laughs. “And it’s possible. It’s all about being genuine. That’s why I play music — I genuinely want to communicate what I have in my heart. We don’t see ourselves as a Latino band. We’re a band just like any other band. And soul music is kind of the perfect vehicle. It reaches out to everybody.”

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Interview with author & poet Daniel Olivas

Mayra Calvani, examiner.com

It's an honor to have here today accomplished poet, novelist, short story writer and editor Daniel Olivas. As if this isn't enough, he also is an attorney with the California Department of Justice and a regular contributor to La Bloga, a very popular Chicano/Latino literature blog. Olivas was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to answer my questions.

BIO: Born and raised near downtown Los Angeles, Daniel Olivas is the middle of five children and the grandson of Mexican immigrants. Olivas received his BA in English literature from Stanford University and law degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. By day, he is an attorney with the California Department of Justice where he has worked in the Public Rights Division since 1990. He is married to his law school sweetheart, Susan Formaker, and they have a 19-year-old son, Benjamin. They make their home in the San Fernando Valley.

Olivas is also the author of five books of fiction including the forthcoming Anywhere but L.A.: Stories (Bilingual Press, fall 2009), and a children’s book, Benjamin and the Word / Benjamin y la palabra (Arte Público Press, 2005). He edited the landmark Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Bilingual Press, 2008). Olivas has been widely anthologized including in Sudden Fiction Latino (W.W. Norton, forthcoming 2010), and Hate Crimes: Social Issues Firsthand (Greenhaven Press, 2007). His writing has appeared in many publications including the Los Angeles Times, La Bloga, The Jewish Journal, The MacGuffin, Exquisite Corpse, El Paso Times, PALABRA,California Lawyer, The Elegant Variation, and New Madrid. His first poetry collection,Crossing the Border, will be published next year by Ghost Road Press.

Olivas has just learned that the University of Arizona Press has accepted for publication his first full-length novel, tentatively titled The Book of Want, which will be published in 2011.

MAYRA CALVANI : Thanks for this interview. It's a pleasure having you here at the Examiner. Why don't you start by telling us a little about yourself and how you started writing.

DANIEL OLIVAS: When I was very, very young—in preschool—I was creating little books. I loved telling stories. My parents always read to us and our house was filled with books. But I never imagined that someone would actually want to publish my books let alone that my books would be studied in college.

When I majored in English literature at Stanford, I purposely didn’t take any creative writing classes thinking that I wouldn’t be able to “do” anything with it. But I always remained creative in my non-academic activities. For example, I was a staff artist and then art director of Stanford’s humor magazine where I not only drew cartoons but also wrote a few pieces. In law school at UCLA, I was appointed editor-in-chief of the Chicano Law Review (it’s now called the Chicana/o-Latina/o Law Review) where I edited pieces and wrote a legal article on an important immigration court decision. As a lawyer, I’ve written many articles and essays for legal publications. Eventually, I started to write fiction. This was in 1998 when I started writing a novella. It was a way for me to deal with grief arising from my wife’s multiple miscarriages. I helped Sue and our son, Benjamin, with their emotions, but I wasn’t dealing with mine very well until I started writing. It proved to be quite cathartic.

After selling my novella to a small (and now defunct press), I couldn’t stop writing. Eventually, my short stories started being accepted by print and online literary journals. Then one of my poems was accepted by Lee & Low Books for a children’s anthology, Love to Mamá, edited by the great Pat Mora. I figured that as long as editors kept accepting my stories and poems, I’d keep writing.

CALVANI: You write in English with a little Spanish thrown in depending on the character. Can you tell a little about this “code switching” and why you utilize it in your writing?

OLIVAS: I admit that I’m a pocho. My Spanish is not very good. My parents were raising us bilingually but when I was three, I stopped speaking completely. This lasted a whole year. During that time, my parents panicked. They took me to be tested. At the end of the testing, the doctor told them that I was of normal intelligence but he strongly recommended that they cut all Spanish in the household. This was in the early 1960s so the bias against bilingual homes was fairly strong. In any event, my parents agreed to follow the doctor’s recommendation. So, I struggle with my Spanish but I try to have some of my characters switch between Spanish and English when it’s appropriate for that character. I want my fiction to ring true so I think it’s important that I do that.

CALVANI: Please tell us about your latest anthology, Latinos in Lotusland. It has garnered a lot of rave reviews. What inspired you to put this anthology together?

OLIVAS: I was sick and very tired of what allegedly well-read book critics called classic “Los Angeles fiction.” Whenever some critic said this, he or she typically referred to novels or short stories that involved movie moguls, starlets and Malibu scenery. Seldom did you see Chicanos or other non-white characters unless they fell into some ugly stereotype. I wanted to change this and bring together fiction by Chicanos and other Latinos about my hometown. The result was 34 amazing and powerful stories going back to 1947. We have authors who have written many books alongside writers who are at the very beginning of their careers. I am so delighted by the response we’ve had to the anthology. It has been and will be taught in universities such as Rutgers, UC Irvine, and Ohio State. And we’ve had Latinos in Lotusland readings from L.A. to Chicago to Denver to Santa Barbara and elsewhere. I’ve been so honored and enriched by the authors who are in the anthology.

CALVANI: Latinos in Lotusland is a great title. Why “Lotusland”?

OLIVAS: The original working title was Latino L.A. but Gary Keller, the director of Bilingual Press, wanted to explore other potential titles with me. So, he suggested that we use a nickname for Los Angeles. One nickname is “Lotusland” which harkens back to the mythological race of lotus (or “lotos”) eaters “represented by Homer as living on the fruit of the lotus and living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness and idleness” according to The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Therefore, the term has entered the English language to mean “a place or state of idle pleasure and luxury, contentment and self-indulgence.” (Websters New Millennium Dictionary of English.) Some non-native Angelenos decided long ago to pin it on Los Angeles. As William Safire explained in a New York Times essay:

“La-La Land is a play on the initials L.A., perhaps influenced by Lotos-land in ‘The Lotos-Eaters,’ a poem by Tennyson: ‘In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined / On the hills like Gods together.’ In his 1941 novel, The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald had a character describe Hollywood as ‘a mining town in lotus land.’”

Of course, I use the name “Lotusland” ironically. As I explain in my introduction to the anthology: “[N]otwithstanding the fact that the characters who populate this anthology may have feasted on the City of Angel’s lotus flowers, they do not live in blissful oblivion and they certainly have not forgotten who they are.”

CALVANI: You have written many short story collections. Have you written novels as well?

OLIVAS: My first book, The Courtship of María Rivera Peña (Silver Lake Publishing, 2000), was a novella but I do love the short story form. Every word has to count. I’ve even dipped into the very, very short story form such as flash, sudden and hint fiction (hint fiction is a story of 25 words or fewer). One of my very short pieces will be featured in W. W. Norton’s forthcoming Sudden Fiction Latino (2010), edited by Ray Gonzalez and Robert Shapard. However, I have written a full-length novel that is made up of linked stories, many of which have been published in literary journals already. It’s called The Book of Want (as of right now) and has just been accepted for publication by the University of Arizona Press for its Camino del Sol series. I am so excited by this. I have enjoyed many of the press’s titles over the years so I know they publish wonderful books. Their author list is a who’s who of Chicano and Latino literature including such names as José Antonio Burciaga, Stella Pope Duarte, Luis Alberto Urrea, Kathleen Alcalá, Ray Gonzalez, Pat Mora, Sergio Troncoso, and Juan Felipe Herrera, to name but a few. We have a tentative publication date of 2011.

CALVANI: Do you outline your stories beforehand or do your ideas develop as you write?

OLIVAS: I never outline. That would take the fun out of writing! I let my characters take me where they want to go.

CALVANI: Let's talk about short fiction writing. What would you say are the three most important elements of a great short story?

OLIVAS: I can’t speak for other writers or readers, but I think that interesting characters play the primary role for me. If I don’t have characters I care about, my story goes nowhere. The second most important element (for me) is conflict. Without conflict, a story is boring, to put it simply. The conflict could be big such as two robbers arguing over whether they should kill for money, or small such as which tie a widower should wear on the first date since his wife’s death. Conflict and how the characters deal with it is at the center of all great short stories. The third most important element revolves around language. This, for me, is the toughest element because it truly involves what we call “art.” There are a million ways to convey one idea, but not all paths lead to the creation of literature.

CALVANI: You're a regular contributor to La Bloga, a very popular Chicano/Latino literature blog. What do you blog about?

OLIVAS: We’re pretty freewheeling over at La Bloga but, obviously, our primary focus is on literature. My blog day is Monday. I do author profiles, interviews, book reviews, notices of literary events, listings of writing opportunities, things like that. I try to write my post on the weekend before it goes live. I also like to cover Chicano and Latino artists, community activists, store owners. In other words, I focus on what we call “culture.” We don’t get paid for what we do so we do as we please. La Bloga was founded in 2004 and I was invited to join as a contributor a couple of years ago after the founders read some of my work on another literary blog, The Elegant Variation, which was created by the novelist, Mark Sarvas. Right now at La Bloga, we have eight authors working on the blog. It’s a great virtual home and I’m in the company of dedicated, interesting writers. All kinds of gente read us: students, educators, judges, lawyers, editors, book publishers, etc. I find that La Bloga keeps me in touch with so many readers and writers in a way that was not possible 15 years ago.

CALVANI: What's in the horizon?

OLIVAS: Well, I’m working with Bilingual Press to put the final touches on my new collection, Anywhere but L.A., which comes out this fall. I then must turn to promoting that book which takes a lot of time and energy particularly because I’m a fulltime attorney, father and husband, not necessarily in that order. I have to squeeze whatever little time I can out of an already hectic schedule. Then I will turn to my poetry collection, Crossing the Border, which will be published in 2010 by Ghost Road Press. I’m writing short stories, book reviews, and essays, here and there, that I am submitting to various publications. I’m participating in book events, too. I’ve started a new novel but I’m having a little trouble making time for it. And I’m reading, reading, reading all kinds of wonderful books and print and online literary journals.

CALVANI: Is there anything else you'd like to tell our readers?

OLIVAS: Number one: Support Chicano and Latino literature! Number two: Read a book! Number three: Get involved in your community!

CALVANI: Thanks for the great interview!

For more information go to : www.danielolivas.com

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