Three years in the making,
Chavez Ravine: A Record by Ry Cooder, is his first "solo" offering since 1987's
Get Rhythm. In addition, it is a concept album; but don't be afraid. It documents in mythical style the disappeared Los Angeles neighborhood of
Chavez Ravine, a Mexican-American district that fought over by real etate developers, urban planning activists and city government. It was bulldozed in a sleazy deal was cut and it was razed order to erect a stadium that woiuld lure Walter O'Malley's Brooklyn Dodgers to L.A.
Cooder's work has almost always concerned itself with what has been left out, marginalized, or relegated to the place of memory; it was inspired by a book of black-and-white photographs of the area by
Don Normark. Over the course of its 15 songs
Cooder poignantly, yet warmly, sets out to portray the flavor of the place, times, culture, chaos, and corruption of post-war Los Angeles. Here UFOs, the Red Scare, the Pachuco Scare, boxers, cops, hipster "cool cats," ordinary folks, race politics, class war, the radio,
J. Edgar Hoover, baseball, and of course musicians, slip in and out of this steamy, dreamy, seamless mix that evokes an emotional palette rich and complex. The tunes range from boxy
corridos, Latin swing numbers,
guarachas, Afro-Cuban
sons, smoky
polkas, moody atmospheric pieces, riotous good-time Pachuco
boogie, rootsy
rock, Costa Rican
folk songs, and
R&B tunes. Heroes and villains come and go in this panorama, all winding around in the little neighborhood where people hang out, sing, dance, make love, struggle and sweat for a better life in the American Dream. Sung in Spanish and English,
Cooder sought out musicians from the era and the place, including the late Pachuco
boogie boss
Don Tosti, the late legendary
Lalo Guerrero (the guiding force and spirit of the album who also passed away after contributing),
Ersi Arvizu, and
Little Willie G., all of whom appear with
Joachim Cooder,
Juliette & Carla Commagere,
Jim Keltner,
Flaco Jimenez,
Mike Elizondo,
Gil Bernal,
Ledward Kaapana,
Joe Rotunde,
Rosella Arvizu, and others.
"Poor Man's Shangri-La," is a finger-popping
rhumba where the extraterrestrial
Space Vato beams down in a UFO to check out the 'hood to the sounds of
Little Julian Herrera on the radio.
Little Willie G. and the
Commagere Sisters offer the lilting
"Onda Calljera," a
folk song documenting a war between locally stationed military and pachucos.
Chavez Ravine is an intricately woven web of covers including
"3 Cool Cats," by
Leiber & Stoller,
Guerrero's
"Corrido de Boxeo" and
"Barrio Viejo," and originals like the cinematic
"Don't Call Me Red" (where the taped voices of
Frank Wilkinson,
Jack Webb, and
Raymond Burr all dialogue intensely about the FBI and communist activities) and
"3rd Base, Dodger Stadium," sung by longtime
Cooder mate
James Bla Pahinui -- who plays the part of a stadium car parker whose home was covered over by the hot corner in the ballpark.
Chavez Ravine is sad and beautiful, funny, quirky and funky; it's got dirt under its nails and keeps listeners engaged from the jump with history and its colorful ghosts.
Cooder sends it all off with solace, and perhaps with some hope, in a version of
"Soy Luz y Sombra," a gorgeous
a cappella Costa Rican
folk tune with original music.
Chavez Ravine is easily the most ambitious thing in
Cooder's catalog, and it just may be the grand opus of his career. ~Thom Jurek
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