Rating:
Genre:
R&B
Release Date: 05/06/2008
Friend for Life is a recording that for all practical purposes should never have been made. It has nothing to do with anything that's out there on the gringo American music scene -- and that's part of what makes it so necessary. Until you've heard this record, don't say the words "alternative" and "music" in the same sentence again. It seems to exist out of time and out of place -- though not space.
Ersi Arvizu will be virtually unknown to all but the most ardent of music fans, in particular those who loved the
Latin soul sounds of East L.A. in the 1960s, or who were fans of the killer rockers
El Chicano in the '70s. Even
Ry Cooder, the album's producer, didn't know who she was until a few years ago when he discovered her voice on some old singles by
the Sisters, a vocal trio (with two sisters) who scored nationally with
"Gee Baby Gee" and
"Ooh Pooh Pah Doo," on
Bob Keane's
Del-Fi label.
Cooder did his homework and found her in a recording studio cutting demos for an
El Chicano reunion -- it is her voice you hear on the classic singles
"Sabor a Mi" and
"I'm a Good Woman," which helped to cement the
Latin rock explosion that began with
Santana. Both songs are still regarded as East L.A. anthems, depending on your neighborhood.
Cooder recruited her for his
Chavez Ravine album, the wonderful concept recording that told the story of the biggest ruse in Los Angeles history where they bulldozed a neighborhood to build a ballpark.
Arvizu played the part of
Ms. Chavez Ravine on the album. She was hard to coax and cajole, but
Cooder was able to use his charm, some money, and a future favor to cajole her into doing his project.
Arvizu didn't want to be a singer, but a boxer. Her father trained fighters in the family's garage tuned gym, and although he never acquiesced to her dreams, she eventually did manage to get four professional bouts in and came away 4-0 -- all were knockouts -- before her family found out. After she left
El Chicano, she moved to Arizona and trained young fighters while driving for Fed Ex; music was not a concern until the fateful day
Cooder came snooping. These 12 songs are
Arvizu's musical autobiography. Writing with pianist
Joey Navarro, she's surrounded by a killer band that includes
Cooder,
Jim Keltner, founding
El Chicano member guitarist
Mickey Lespron, bassist
Rene Camacho, a killer horn section starring trombone ace
Francisco Torres and saxophonist
Brandon Fields, to name two, conguero
Johnny Sandoval, and a slew of backing singers who include her sisters on a pair of tracks and
Willy Mondragon,
Lance Moody, and
Juliette Commagere.The punchy organ and dirty ass funky guitar in
"Windows of Dreams" (a tune about watching the boxers in her father's gym through holes in the walls) introduces the husky, hearty
Latin soul-inflected voice of
Arvizu to the listener. The backing vocals, the crackling
Keltner drum kit playing double-time in a shuffle between Pachuco boogie,
reggae backbeat, and rhythm & blues, and the horns all lay down the groove hot and thick; this is pure steam heat. It's a feminist anthem that exists outside the canon of feminist art, especially as she celebrates boxers from Cisco and Eddie & Manny Castillo to Oscar Del La Hoya.
"El Arbol," sung with her sisters
Mary and
Rosella in Spanish, is pure
bolero, full of steamy passion with popping snares,
Navarro's B-3, and the horns swirling in the cut.
The jazzy, nocturnal ballad
"En Al Tambo" gives way to a shape-shifting conga rhythms of
Sandoval as
Arvizu recounts in Afro-Cuban
son the tales of
El Chicano playing in community centers, auditoriums, and correctional facilities. And on it goes, this 50-minute journey through a life is also a journey through time; not as nostalgia, but as a continuum that informs the present and looks to the future as the integration of a lifetime of victories, hardscrabble existences, defeats, and the gratitude for its depth, dimension, and diversity. In
Arvizu's songs, the East Los Angeles of another time lives, eternally. It's music, culture, battles, and celebrations, an America within an America. And she can still sing her ass off -- check the gorgeous ballad
"Mi India," the primal Latin rocker
"Soledad (Ya No Puede Ser)," and the shimmering nightclub ballad cum
arabesque "Angel De Mill Voches." There is even a killer, modern-sounding funky
Latin soul number called
"Cruising to the Hop" that exists in the no man's land between Nuyorican soul and Los Angelino fingerpopping soul. It's a burner that's worth the price of the disc all by itself for the killer horn charts and B-3 groove. No matter how you listen to it,
Friend for Life is unlike any record you will hear in this calendar year or perhaps any other. It is both timeless and ancient, and therefore points a way to a future so far ahead we can't imagine it in any other way than aurally. One thought, though: it would be a shame to let a voice like this one go to waste. This album should be the soundtrack for a book, a film, an aural history of a very special place and time that America (in general and Los Angeles in particular) has done its very best to erase.
Anti should get an award for releasing this.
Arvizu, her songwriting partner
Navarro,and
Cooder all deserve Grammys for celebrating the best of American music regardless of the marketplace. This is one time that it's fine for
NPR to jump on the bandwagon, because everybody should.
~Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
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