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The Fresno Bee
Monday, May 11, 1998

Fresno trio uses music to serve humanity

The massacre of Mayan villagers in Acteal, Chiapas, at the end of last year touched people around the world in may different ways. Agustin Lira, Patricia Wells Solorzano and Ravi Knypstra of the folk group Alma (Soul) were so moved that they were inspired to write songs in their honor. And they did so this their hearts in their strings.

For more than a generation, the Fresno-based trio has created music in support of the rights of farmworkers, migrants, and indigenous people, who often are one and the same people -- wanderers, people of the sun, who "still remember what it is to be free." Their songs bring about pride and dignity to "those who have been here forever."

'The pilgrimage'

In 1967, Cesar Chavez, Leader of the United Farm Workers, gave Lira a small task: to create a song by the next day, the beginning of the famous Delano march to Sacramento. For one month, the marchers sang "La Peregrinacion" -- the pilgrimage -- which became the anthem of the UFW movement. Lira debuted his own music before more than 10,000 people at the Capitol steps.

Lira is an unheralded figure whose music is comparable to Bob Dylan's, and he is a co-founder of Teatro Campesino, the UFW theater company, and the writer and singer of many of the UFW's early songs,, including "The Picket Sign." But unlike Dylan, Lira has never viewed himself as part of the 1960's counterculture. Instead, he views himself as a messenger of a people whose culture has been under siege for 500 years. For him, his work is simply the continuation of a long historical struggle for human rights.

The folk trio, which has just released the CD "I Have Been Here Forever," is part of a tradition of mostly unsung artists, writers and musicians who place their art at the service of humanity. Commercial success is not part of their portfolio. Theirs is a tradition of giving of themselves in an effort to rehumanize society, contributing to a creation culture: they go beyond a culture of resistance to actively assert hope in the power of human beings to change their destiny.

Through their work, they strive to educate all people about injustices in the Americas. "We are not pandering to audiences. We are defending our humanity," Lira said.

They don't sing about nostalgia, but they do sing about "unwritten" history. Their rendition of Woody Guthrie's "Deportee," tells the story of a planeload of Mexican Laborers who died in a crash while being returned to Mexico in the '40s. And it evokes the spirit of all farmworkers who taught Lira how to perfect "boleros campesinos" (farmworker ballads) while on the picket line and who stood before strike-breakers with their feet "firmly on the ground." Its verse is powered by the memory of Lira's mother, a U.S. citizen who was illegally deported to Mexico in the '30s. As a result, Lira was born in Mexico and came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant and did not become a citizen until 1997.

Moving message

Wells Solorzano said that she hopes their music has the same impact as when she first saw Teatro Campesino. "They validated me," she said. She found a book on them and would go to sleep with it under her pillow. Many whites get sympathetically angry when they hear the music of Alma, and some ask questions, she said. "They're moved by the message. That's the first step to change."

"Lloran los viejitos [the old people cry] because music is the way to the soul," said Well Solorzano. And when they to the viejitos tell them stories. Young also respond to their music, especially when it's in Spanish, and particularly Spanish-speaking youth who hear their tongue in their songs.

Their mission, Lira said, is to remind people under siege that they are not alone, to honor their strength and "to wake up the memory" to the continuum of change and creation -- while stomping their feet to music.

Patrisia and Roberto are writers for Universal Press Syndicate. Rodriguez is the author of Justice: A Question of Race (Cloth ISBN 0-927534-69-X paper ISBN 0-927534-68-1 Bilingual Review Press), The X in La Raza II and Codex Tamuanchan (On Becoming Human). Both are the authors of Gonzales/Rodriguez: Uncut & Uncensored (ISBN 0-918520-22-3 UC Berkeley, Ethnic Studies Library). Rodriguez/Gonzales can be reached at XColumn@aol.com

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