Music is liberty. It provides the forum to voice opinions, emotions,
and thoughts that can inspire social change. Music is democracy. The listener
can choose to turn it on or off, stay and listen or leave. Music is the
storyteller. With or without lyrics it says what words alone cannot express.
Music is medicine. It allows the listener to understand, absorb, and heal on
their own terms.
Aztlan Underground navigates time and space between the contemporary and the ancient to create music that reveals the unrestrained voices of indigenous peoples of the world. Through their own personal journey of enlightenment, they uncover the raw, painful, solitude of oppressed people transforming it with unbridled energy and emotion into their hard-hitting musical style.
For nearly 20 years, Aztlan Underground has cultivated a grassroots audience across the world from Europe to Australia and, most importantly, the Americas, from Canada to Venezuela. Initially disregarded as stereotypical American Yankees, Aztlan Underground shocks and awes foreign audiences with their respect for the ancient ways and songs of ancestors mixed with the modern, industrial sounds of today. They have performed with every socially important act from Rage Against the Machine, Manu Chao, to Fermin Muguruza, and Dead Prez. Aztlan Underground remains true to their name and beliefs by playing political rallies, underground venues, and anywhere the doors open.
At home, the band is considered an institution having influenced a whole new generation of musicians, bands, and free-thinkers. Giving back to the community, each band member, in one way or another, reaches out to troubled and incarcerated youth, families in need, and disenfranchised neighborhoods. Yet their hearts lie with their families. Whether cheering their children at sports, jamming alongside their brothers, or inspiring their father to make art, they never lose focus on family.
Growing up in poor, violent households where gang membership was the popular way out, Aztlan Underground band members found music. Their early musical influences went from one extreme, punk and metal bands favored by their classmates, to the other, cumbias, rancheras, and salsa heard at home. Picking up an instrument and grabbing a microphone was a cathartic experience that in a sense saved their lives. Through the healing power of music, four mystified souls joined together and found their medicine.
Their message is one of self-determination and decolonization. They challenge their audience to look within themselves, to their own life-giving forces, and human potential to realize that they are God. Individuals and the collective are strong and divine. They ask to confront personal demons and society’s ills to create a world filled with hope, answers, and a way forward. From the hurt and rage, they inspire positive action within themselves and others
Collaborating as a circle with no bosses and no leaders, each member contributes their personal story to the creation of a song. Four versions of the same story are told in four different ways at the same time. With this ritual, Aztlan Underground has independently produced and distributed three albums: Decolonize (1995), Sub-Verses (2001), and the self-titled album Aztlan Underground (2009). The band’s albums reflect a process of self-discovery and realization evolving from the anger of Decolonize to the new self-titled album featuring an evolution towards a more global, humanitarian struggle. The new album maintains the indigenous infusion of sounds and timelessness where the songs stretch the boundaries of the standard composition and become 8- to 9-minute nonconformist journeys.
Aztlan Underground is:
Joe “Peps:” bass, rattles, Native American wood and clay flutes
Maker of his own gourd rattles, clay flutes, and bird calls, Joe is as much a visual artist as he is a musician. He joined Aztlan Underground in 1994 after a chance performance at the now defunct Popular Resource Center in Los Angeles, well-known for having inspired cultural movements. Growing up in El Sereno, an urban reality surrounded by the Chicano experience of Los Angeles, he fostered his talent as a painter, sculptor, feather-work artist, bass player, and Native musician. He captures his thoughts, indigenous worldview, and oral histories through his art and music combining both on-stage with Aztlan Underground. Joe currently teaches art to youth in juvenile detention facilities. His intent is to pose questions through art and music and address urban social issues within a global age of poverty and oppression.
“The power of music is beyond just me. We’re simply a vehicle to inspire and send a message to empower, and enlighten. The world is at stake--the war--we’re all part of the puzzle. Everyone is being conscious, aware that the earth is speaking, things are changing.”
Caxo: drums
Ignacio “Caxo” Lopez comes from a long line of musicians such as his cantina guitarist grandfather Luis Lopez, flamenco and orchestra musician brother Rodolfo, and upright bass player brother Rosendo. Together they grew up amidst the flourishing barrio music scene of East Los Angeles listening to his mother sing while his father blared music by Perez Prado, Roy Orbison, and Jose Alfredo Jimenez. Still, as most colonized Native children, he attended church at 6 am every Sunday morning while longing for the mindless entertainment of Sunday morning cartoons. It was there that a pint sized lady named Lucy inspired Caxo to create music as she belted out prayer songs with enormous strength and conviction. Her powerhouse voice inspired Caxo to imagine creating music around it. He since has delved in to writing, art, and music. Performing since junior high he joined Chronic Atrocity and the death metal scene followed by Tezacrifico and Kontraattaque in the do-it-yourself hardcore punk rock scene in Los Angeles. Caxo joins Azltan Underground in the 2003 where his unfiltered expression fruitfully emerges.
“It’s about the language of expressing what we see in one another, helping give voice to the voiceless and shedding light on injustice.”
Yaotl: vocals, Indigenous percussion
Founding member of Aztlan Underground, Yaotl brings to the microphone the raw intensity of the concrete jungle that is the modern urban experience and combines it with the meditative chants of Ancient America’s timeless trance. The married father of four is determined to create a better world for the next generation having experienced a rough childhood filled with violence, abuse, and neglect. Having survived gang initiation and a violence-inducing coma, Yaotl turned to music. “Music saved my life,” he says. Heavily influenced by punk rock and “do it yourself” ethos, he left the gang life and formed his own band, Iconoclast. Listening to punk bands like Minor Threat and Rudimentary Peni who were anti-drugs, -alcohol, -war, and -authority, Yaotl began studying anarchism and thus began his insatiable thirst for information and truth. Fatherhood, he feels, has changed him completely. “It’s a reality check about the frailty of life.” It now fuels him even more to create a better life, another place, another way of co-existing.
Alonzo Beas: guitars, keyboards, synthesizer, native percussion, sequencing
Alonzo Beas is the electricity behind the innovative guitar playing and soundscapes found in Aztlan Underground’s music. Creating musical textures and beats through various instruments, guitar pedals, and computer software, he ignites the spark that takes listeners on a mystical voyage. His home base has always been the guitar, finding his center on the instrument. This is evident on-stage or in the studio. His musical influences are those that go beyond the scripted into the provisional, from rock to breaks, noise to industrial or even mariachi. He grew up in Northeast Los Angeles to Mexican parents and identifies strongly as a Chicano. His Mexican roots gave way to his vast knowledge of music. Always seeking a higher consciousness, he reaches beyond the barriers of labels to blend his past with the present to create cutting-edge uninhibited music.
“I want to convey a message of love, kindness, and peace when I create and perform music. It is significantly inspired by the mystery of where we come from and where we go when we die.”
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