Linda Ronstandt together with Molotov Author Robert Mailer Anderson co-hosted musical bash featuring David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and rocker Dave Alvin to benefit Los Cenzontles: a school of arts and culture for young people, with special focus on contemporary manifestations of native and ancient traditions in music and the arts with roots in Mexico and Latin America.
Highlights below. Photos by Beth Stansberry.
Los Cenzonteles Folk Band, using native instrumentation (see below)
Playing percusson on goat's jaw. Real goat, real jaw.
Linda Ronstandt with Eugene Rodriquez, co-founder and musical director of Los Cenzontles, a community school operating out of the East Bay, in San Pablo and Richmond area for 20 years. Linda is a long time supporter. Los Cenzontles is a band, school, community hang out, and attracts musicians working in rock/polka/Cal-Tex-Mex traditoins to its Pachjanga jams from all over the country.
Dave Alvin (of Border Radio fame) playing "Fourth of July" with David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and Eugene Hernandez (right) and accordian player Flaco Jimenez (left). Pete Sears is on piano (Jefferson Starship).
During the later jam bassist Les Claypool, guitarist Jay Walsh and saxman Patrick Wolff (Patrick Wolff Trio) joined in.
Dancers.
World Famous Molotov Editions Photographer Beth Stansberry with poet and translator Gillian Conoley (works including--among many others-- On Feeble Love & Bitter Love, a fresh annihilation of dada manifesto by Tristan Tzara--just released from the infinite vaults of Molotov Editions)
Robert Mailer Anderson on stage with daughter Frances singing vocals, with back-up from Dave Hidago of Los Lobos and Los Cenzonteles Pachanga Jam musicians
Genuine Victrola: wind-up device that plays early recordings surpisingly loud with no use of electricity whatsoever. A purely mechanical device from before the electric era which piped music into the room before the concert itself began.
COLLABORATORS
Others piped in and dancing, wandering through the Pachanga dancing included the blessed and obscure, the divine and the bedridden, the holy and the forgotten, animals and dogs, some pictured above and others lost in the crowd: actors Edward James Olmos and Mykelti Williamson; sax player Joshua Redma; teachers and artists Lorena Oropeza and Astrid Rodriguez; former NAACP President Benjamin Jealous; photographers Jim Goldberg and Allesandra Sanguinetti; , Paul Pelosi; Oscar Villalon (Zyzzva); Mary Ladd; Peter Marvelis (City Lights Books); Julie Lindow; Peter Kaufman; Gina of Miami (whose Chicago father is renowned Karate sensei), Gina's sister in the wild pink skirt; and variois members of the Anderson-Miner clan together with Molotov collaborators from Ukiah to San Leandro who remain unidenitfied by design or happenstance in the shadows.
//DS