Y La Bamba has been many things, but at the heart of it is singer-songwriter Luz Elena Mendoza’s inquisitive sense of self. Today, Y La Bamba has released “Mujeres”, an anthem of female empowerment and the A side of the 7-inch b/w “Paloma Negra” — out this Friday, Oct 26 via Tender Loving Empire. Y La Bamba also announces the Feb 8 release of Mujeres with the title track.
“This song was written last year after having one too many misogynistic experience with men,” says Luz. “This song is for my mother and for all of us womxn, who have and still battle the fight to be heard. A song screaming, I am not your object, I am Intelligent, Strong, Full of Heart, Emotional, Powerful and Brave.”
Their fifth record, Mujeres, carries on the Portland-based band’s affinity for spiritual contemplation, but goes a step further in telling a story with a full emotional spectrum. Coming off Ojos Del Sol, one of NPR’s ‘Top 50 Albums of 2016’, Mujeres exhibits the scope of Mendoza’s artistic voice like never before. “Soy como soy,” Mendoza says, and that declaration is the bold— even political— statement that positions Mujeres to be Y La Bamba’s most unbridled offering yet.
The record exists in the post-2016 landscape of a national identity crisis, and Mendoza explores what it means to be a Mexican American woman by leading us through places we are afraid to go. Mujeres ventures in to the discomfort of the stories we tell ourselves. Those of our past, our futures. We all have these stories somewhere inside of us, but with Y La Bamba, Mendoza forges new narratives from old stories of heritage and family, tracing history while forging modern chicana feminism.
“Music is an extension of everything I have inside. It’s how I emote,” Mendoza says. The raw honesty of Mujeres is in fact the raw honesty of Mendoza. Armed with the emotionality of traditional música mexicana and the storytelling of American folk, Y La Bamba’s artistry is not just their musical ability but Mendoza’s search for unadulterated truth. It is in an ancestral, spiritual journey in which Mendoza comes to terms with the influence and limitations of her upbringing. Mendoza’s experience of childhood summers in the San Joaquin Valley listening to mariachi, of being raised strict Catholic by immigrant parents, of being a woman having to prove herself to the boys, paints strokes of both melancholy and healing on the tracks. “From the way that my family struggles, to the way they shoot the shit… it’s so different from whiteness,” Mendoza says. “It’s a different dimension.”
Y La Bamba exists in the dimension of the Mexican American imagination: somewhere cynical and optimistic at the same time. While there is a celebration of the Mexican creativity that has informed Mendoza’s life, there is a darker side to reconcile with. Where do mujeres fit in to the American story? What are the sins for which we are all guilty? How do different generations interact with the world? How can a culture become visible without tokenization? It is no surprise that in Mujeres, Y La Bamba’s first record with Mendoza at the helm of production, Mendoza contemplates these questions to tell her story. But it is not just Mendoza’s story. Challenging a narrative and dealing with the emotionality of that effort— that is everyone’s story.
Y La Bamba starts a U.S. tour tomorrow with a hometown show in Portland, followed by two shows in LA at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Oct 27 and The Lodge Room on Oct 28, crossing the country to murmrr in Brooklyn on Nov 15, Songbird n DC on Nov 16 and ending in Philly on Nov 18. A full list of tour dates can be found below
Y La Bamba Tour Dates
Oct 25 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
Oct 27 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Oct 28 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
Oct 29 – San Diego, CA @ Space FKA The Hideout
Oct 30 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar
Nov 01 – Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress
Nov 02 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
Nov 03 – Taos, NM @ Taos Brewing
Nov 06 – Santa Fe, NM @ Second Street Brewery
Nov 08 – Denver, CO @ Lost Lake
Nov 09 – Geneva, NY @ The Cracker Factory
Nov 10 – Geneva, NY @ Hobart and William Smith College
Nov 11 – New Haven, CT @ Cafe Nine
Nov 12 – Providence, RI @ Alchemy
Nov 13 – Portland, ME @ Space
Nov 15 – Brooklyn, NY @ murmrr
Nov 16 – Washington DC @ Songbyrd
Nov 18 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live